Beer garden Berlin

Beer Garden....mmmmm

Sooooo Berlin - as you can tell from the title, we discovered the German beer garden! Aw we so want to have one of our own! Think hot summers night, social hub, tables and chairs, relaxing outside under big established trees and stars, drinking nice German beer and eating good food - convinced? I hope so!

FRIDAY

We took Friday off work - the day began crazily early, at 4.00am! We had to walk to find a night bus to get us to the meeting point for our tour. We then travelled to Stansted airport (approx an hour out of London), then flew to Berlin. We arrived to a sweltering 30 degree heat and soaked every minute of it up - the weather was just perfect for the whole weekend, heaven for the flagging vitamin D levels.

We knew we had flown in to Germany immediately - as we saw a guy at the airport with one of those classic german moustaches - you know the ones that are greased and rubbed together at the ends to form a straight point! Wish we'd asked him for a photo with us!

Once in Berlin we were met by a bus, and we toured around Berlin on this for about 2.5hrs or so. In this time we went to the Olympic Stadium - where we learnt that it was actually Hitler who instigated the whole running through different countries with the Olympic torch thing!

Us at Berlin Stadium

Jam at the Berlin Wall

We also saw heaps of the Berlin wall, and were shown round a number of sights. However, given the ridiculous hour we had woken up, our tour guides lulling voice soon had me nodding off :o)

Feeling extremely tired (and hungry) we checked into our hotel room, and made plans with our kiwi friends (we had met them on our Paris trip and organised to come on this trip with them). We decided that all we could handle was finding the beer garden - given the gorgeous heat and weather. So we traded our London woollies - ie jeans and sweatshirts for shorts and t shirts and ventured into town. We started with a kebab nearby our hotel - and did you know that the Doner kebab was created by Germans?? There are heaps of turkish food shops in Germany, and we were mighty pleased to discover that food is really reasonably priced in Berlin - made a nice change from Londons atrociously overpriced slops.

It was so nice to relax in the sun at the beer garden, and after a beer and some nice cake (strawberries set in red jelly on top of a shortcake base) we had replenished our energy levels.
The beer garden is situated in 300 acres of park (half my parents farm!) and it was so nice walking through all the established trees - until we happened upon a naked guy showering -(think outdoor shower like at the beach - except no togs) haha yep, one side of the park is dedicated to nudey sun bathing - heterosexual, and the other side is nudey sunbathing homosexual - further up is family bbq section - not to be mixed up!

Any, once our eyes had recovered we carried on to see a few famous Berlin sites, including "Chick on a stick" - or Golden Angel (pictured below),

the Brandeburg gate(pictured below),

a Soviet Memorial (made by the Soviets before the Allies arrived in Berlin at the end of WWII, and the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (pictured below).

We then decided after all that walking it was time to have some dinner, and a good opportunity to try the German sausage - or worst (pictured below left - Bev ordered a supposed meat loaf - which just turned out to be a ham steak!).

SATURDAY

The next morning after sleeping like babies, we went on a Bunker tour, which was located at the underground station closest to our hotel - very handy. It was really interesting to learn the history (as both Bev and I are very unhistoried), and I think the most interesting bit was that this wasn't from the Jewish perspective - the bunkers were made for nazi's to hide in from the bombings. I could talk about this for ages, but it was pretty interesting! Also learning how much the Germans measured - to work out how many people they could fit seated on stools in one room they worked out that the average length of the seated persons bum to knee length is 54cm.

After this we travelled to the Jewish museum -which I found incredibly interesting/moving. It had heaps of stories about Jewish families and random facts about them and their families trials and tribulations, and the most sobering of all - how many out of their family survived.

After this we headed into the centre for some lunch, and found a nice restaurant near to some monuments we wanted to see. From here we decided to try and find a tea house that our guide had pointed out on our bus tour, and successfully found it. This was very relaxing, it was turkish styles - so everyone sat on the floor on cushions and totally veged out for an hour or so.

(see picture evidence below)

The Berliner Dom (Church)

After this refreshing break we went and saw the Berliner Dom(see above) - a really cool Cathedral, then checked out the Reichstag(see below) - very cool parliament building with an awesome glass dome at the top, which you can walk up and get a nice view of the city.

The Reichstag - Parliament building with dome at the top

Overly enthusiastic Pretzel seller - Bev and I totally wet our selves laughing at this guy for ages! (still didn't buy a pretzel from him though - they taste yuck!)

At the top of the dome, you can lie down and look out the hole at the top at the sky - very relaxing especially when you have walked 10km in one day.....zzzzzzzz!

Bev and I at the top of the Reichstag dome

From here we walked back to the Beer garden

The four of us gaining a second wind thinking about the beer garden and a yummy dinner

for a relaxing evening of more German beer, yummy as pizza's made on a kind of naan bread and half a marinated chicken mmmmm! Yum.

Bev and Corey

The two Suzanne's (we hadn't meant to be name, hair colour and clothes colour co-ordinating!)

An attempt at capturing the awesome atmosphere in the beer garden!

On our way back to the hotel from here were saw a movie set that had been set up around the Chick on a stick - they had film crew and big commercial lights all set up - our tour guide said that a lot of movies get filmed in Berlin, because it can look like London, and more modern cities all in the one location. (see picture below)

SUNDAY
On Sunday, our feet were nearly ready to drop off, so it was a perfect time to go on a bike tire of Berlin. This is probably the second most highlight of the Berlin trip (after the beer garden), as again the weather was great, it was so relaxing riding around a flat city - and you can get everywhere so much faster on a bike than you can walking! We worked out that we had walked at least 10km the previous day - so no wonder our legs weren't working anymore!
We had this really cool tour guide on our bike ride - he was a german guy that had spent a few years in America, so he had the whole Californian beach bum thing going on, but was extremely good at relaxing and entertaining. Our favourite bit was his descriptions of what the Soviets decided to do with East Germany. He always gave two options for us to choose from. Option number 1 (this would always be something sensible) and Option number 2 - blow it up and concrete it over.....which one do you think the Soviets chose....Option number 2!

After this we had to quickly make our way back to our hotel to meet our tour group to go to the airport and fly back to London.

So overall what did we think of Berlin?

Berlin was really cool - it is the first city (that I Jam) actually thought - "I could live here" - after talking to my dad about this he wonders that is because my paternal great grandparents were from Germany/Poland and perhaps it is one of those random sensing where your roots are from moments - so am not sure??
We really like the size of Berlin - 3 million people, meant that there weren't the huge London crowds etc. Lots of old monuments mixed with new buildings, and cheap food. Not to mention the weather and the beer garden!!

What random things can we mention about it?
They have these really cool little men as symbols for the pedestrian crossing lights in Berlin
We found the Germans extremely friendly, we were asked if we needed help no less than three times when Germans saw us stumped looking at the map - pretty impressive considering this hasn't happened in any of the other countries we have been to - Egypt, Netherlands and Paris.

We found that the Germans weren't very eager to speak English to us - perhaps even more reluctant than the French, however we also found that a lot of them couldn't speak very much English anyway - a stark contrast to the Dutch who happily flicked between the two languages for us, and the French who are happy to if you try some French first - perhaps the Germans would have like us to try speaking in German first??

The only downside of Berlin is that it is a swamp - it therefore has bad swampy smells that you get a hint of every now and then - but at least it has a natural excuse for bad smells - London just smells!

To keep Berlin free of swamp water, it has heaps of unsightly above ground water pipes - really strange.

The Germans love David Hasslehoff - he is more famous in Germany for his singing than his role in Baywatch haha!

Berlin is basically bankrupt (hence the reasonable price of food) - it is still recovering from the wars, and the inequality that was created between East and West Berlin. And because of the East-West split that Berlin had, there is no real centre to the city as there is two of everything ie two town halls etc.

Anyway thats about all there is to say about that! Now we just have to catch you up on our 2nd Paris trip - watch this space!
Lots of Love
Jam and Bev

Dossing Kiwis

Hey Everyone,
Sorry for being so crap and not writing blogs more often - it's not for the lack of stuff to write about! It is merely just having the time to jot them down!
The few months have been extremely full on (so different from the first few months we spent here).
As we already briefly mentioned before, our Kiwi friends who had been in China came to doss (sleep on our couch - there's a special word for it cos so many kiwis and aussies do it here) at our house. After a week Mark had to head back to NZ to get his visa sorted, so we just had Mess staying. It was so nice having another kiwi friend to do things with - esp when she is your best girlfriend from home! Being the perfect house guest she even had dinner ready for us when we came home from work - what a dream! It was nice watching her be excited about the things that we had been excited about when we first got here, and also help her with the hard bits that we had been through too.

Mark is now back from NZ, and now have a flat all set up. We hope to do heaps more with these guys - it makes such a huge difference to how you enjoy a place when you can share your experiences with good friends.

Land of the Giants

Bev at Schiphol Airport - Amsterdam

On Thursday evening we left London City airport – a small airport only minutes from our workplaces, and stress free compared to Heathrow! We flew into Amsterdam, all excited looking down on the Canals and seeing the beach coastline….and thinking that we were going to land at an airport under sea level! The first thing we noticed was how tall everyone was - yep we'd obviously flown in to the right country :o)

We then noticed that people don’t know how to queue as well compared to the British, as we had to wait for nearly an hour in a disorganised line/mingling groups for our free buses to the hotel. We also noticed on arrival that it stayed light for at least another hour later than London - apparently it doesn't get dark until 11pm in the height of summer - perhaps we should move there!!!

Friday was our first big day out in Amsterdam. The weather was awesome, hot and blue skies. We met with Jam’s good friend from Holland, Naomi, who showed us around and introduced us to some of the most finest bread, cheese and Dutch foods…unlike the Egypt trip, we must of put on 20kg! We checked out Anne Frank’s house (a bit of a sombre experience) and walked down the small canalled streets to enjoy a drink in the sun and tried some yum as Dutch pastries.

We then walked all the way to Van Gogh’s museum to decide not to go in because it wasn’t really a must see for us for the price. We then met another of Jam’s friends from her trip to South Africa in 1999 for a catch up and went for a Canal boat ride, along with Naomi.

Us on the Canal boat ride

Cool old houses built really close together seen from canal boat ride - in Amsterdam

Pretty canal in Amsterdam

Naomi and Jam on the canal boat ride

Enjoying the sun, Jam and Naomi relaxing by the canal

We then checked out some tourist shops,

Jam trying out some Clogs for size - think they're a little big!

bought some cheap sunnies, and then checked out the Red light District. We then settled down in the sun to try some white beer (with the must-have 2 fingers of froth), and tried some Amsterdam old cheese with yum as croquets! We later went to dine out at a quirky restaurant that was called and themed “mums”. They had mismatching plates and cutlery and they had pictures of 100’s of mums decorating the walls.

We travelled via a double-decker train to stay the night in Utrecht. They have very interesting flats in Holland. Because of the population size (about 16 million in a country about the size of NZ), they need to make do with the little space they have. We noticed that the stairs were pretty vertical, like climbing a ladder! In the flat we stayed in, the shower was in the kitchen!

Saturday was a big day out to see the country side of Holland. The weather was again fantastic but even hotter. By left-hand drive car (so weird going the opposite way around round-abouts) we made our way to Keukenhof, a massive park and fields of tulips and other flowers. It was so relaxing in the car seeing the country side of water ways, green paddocks with good conditioned cows and spring lambs, windmills, wind turbines, families of white swans and vertical roads that let canal boats thru!(at one point we were stopped at traffic lights while the road/bridge opened up for some boats to go through). It was amazing seeing the array of saturated colours at the tulip fields, but because of the weather and holidays it was chocka with people!

Road opening up to let boats through on the canal

Gorgeous daffidols and tulips at Keukonhof

Naomi and Jam mocking people who take silly photos amongst the flowers

Endless fields of vibrant red tulips

Classic dutch windmill amongst the tulips

Bev having a cheezy photo amongst the tulips

Hanging out at the beach

We then headed to the beach nearby for a quick look; it’s the first sand beach we have seen since being here! We then went back to Naomi's flat in Wageningen - so interesting to see how students live in another country! Wageningen is such a cute little town/city, very like Palmerston North! Naomis flat was just like any student flat in Palmy, except it was a town house, with vertical stairs! Naomis room was the coolest though, because she had suspended a double bed from the ceiling - a bit like staying in a tree hut, enabling her to have a couch positioned under the bed creating a lounge facility in her room to entertain guests :o) Don't get us started on her crocodile collection!

Sunday was another big day out in the awesome sunshine. This time we headed to the Primate zoo. This was an extremely cool primate zoo as there were no real barriers between you and the animals – so it felt like they weren’t caged in any way. The highlight was little squirrel monkeys who you could actually walk amongst, as they zapped to and fro in the surrounding trees, often scampering right in front of you!

After a day at the zoo, Naomi organised for us to borrow some bikes from her friends, and we rode for about 20mins to a memorial, in remebrance of the soldiers lost in World War II (I think, much like ANZAC day). We then rode back to Naomis flat and went out to a friendly student pub for a few drinks, to listen to a live dutch band.

Jam and Bev riding dutch bikes - crazy kiwi drivers!(It doesn't help matters when the seat is too high so you can't touch the ground!)

The memorial service

Naomi and Jam sampling the Dutch version of Fish and Chips - Sausages and Chips - with curry sauce and mayonaise on your chips.

The next day, Monday (another fantastic day of blue skies!) was a day the Dutch celebrated freedom, following on from the memorial the night before. To celebrate at 12 a big festival started - much like the big day out, but for all ages, and all genres of dutch music. This was all held in Wageningen - town centre. Very cool and lots to see! Unfortunately however we were only able to see a bit of this as we had to catch a train back to Amsterdam to fly out - this meant we missed the parade of WWII vehicles amongst other things.

A couple of random things we noticed/found out about Holland:

Everyone speaks both Dutch and English, and in a matter of seconds can switch between the two in an un-arrogant fashion! We totally loved this because no matter where we were everyone was happy to help us, and could speak our language - unlike in Paris where you have to try speaking (your bad attemps at) French first. However, we did find it hard that when hanging around Dutch people, they all speak in Dutch by default, even though they are around english speakers. It was quite funny that a couple of times people spoke to Jam in Dutch, assuming that she was a local - perhaps it was the blonde hair? Everyone is blonde!

We loved how friendly everyone was - you don't realise how sterile and unfriendly London is, and how used to this you get, until you go somewhere and people that you sit next to on a bus or train start chatting to you! The effect this has on you is astounding - it totally made Jam homesick, and just reminded us what everyone says about kiwis and visiting NZ!

We found it really relaxing spending time surrounded by green, open, flat, paddocks like NZ.

Guys are fined for peeing in the street - so for festivals they have portable (open), urinals!

Their toilets are the same looking ie a seat with a flush box, however on closer inspection they are different as the bottom of the toilet is not all water - when you do your business, it lands on a shelf with no water, and this only moves when you flush into a small area of water at the front of the toilet (not the back u bend we're used to). This means no splash back (yay), but more smelly (bad) and you get a first hand idea at how much you have produced (also bad).

Anyway moving right along.............................

We want to thank Naomi our awesome friend and tourist guide for making our travel easy and fun. The Dutch have the yummiest cheeses ever!

Mmmm dutch cheese

Midget Golf anyone?

Humming along

Hey Everyone,

Unfortunately we have been really busy since we got back from Egypt, but thought we would quickly update you on what we have been doing since arriving back.

We found it really hard getting back into work mode after being in Egypt for 9 days. It was nice to get our stomachs back to normal, and eating food that we knew was safe and hygienic - by western standards to eat! We found it especially hard being back since the week after we arrived back from the soaring 40 degree Egyptian days, it decided to snow in London!!! In April!!! After all those really butt-freezing days we endured in Dec/Jan, it decides to finally snow in April - I give up honestly! But in all honesty, we found this quite cool - especially since it only lasted a couple of hours and then it was all over.

The exciting part about finishing one holiday, is that you come home and immediately start planning the next! I think this has become Bev and my survival strategy for staying over here, instead of buckling and heading home to NZ - well it has at least kept us optimistic and got us through a year of winters. We decided with Mark and Dee that our next big trip should be to Russia and Finland, and we were all very excited to start booking flights etc when Bev's parents finally made up their mind and decided to book a trip over to see us. So unfortunately we have pulled out of the Russia/Finland trip, as we couldn't afford that trip and to do some sightseeing with the inlaws (although we hope to go at another stage), and we really want to show Bev's parents a good time over here. We are quite excited that they have made the plunge and decided to come, and are trying to think of cool places that we can show them in the two weeks that they have.

Whilst we were away in Egypt, our kiwi friends, who had just begun their OE got a handbag stolen and lost all of their passports, money etc. This put a major damper on their travelling (as it would!), so they decided that they would come and set up camp in the UK instead - much to our pleasure! So they booked a flight to London, and have been dossing in our lounge ever since! It is so nice having some kiwi friends from home here, great to go out for dinner and drinks and commiserate about not being in NZ, comparing travelling experiences and how nobody understands our accents etc. They were especially jaded by the non-english speaking countries - having experienced a totally different outcome to that of our small trips.

On the 29th April, a little birdy had a birthday! Bev and I took the day off work - I totally recommend not going to work on your birthday! Bev suprised me with a trip to the London Zoo - it was such a great day (although the weather only just managed to come to the party!). We saw Toucans, Flamingos, Pelicans and Hummingbirds (amongst everything else)-totally amazing. We then went out for dinner with our kiwi friends to an Indian restaurant - a great day. However the fun doesn't stop there, as for my present, Bev bought me a voucher for a test drive in a Ferrari! So cool - I can't wait to use the voucher! Will have to book this for some time soon.

Anyway that's about it for now

Jam and Bev

Blimmin Hec

I chose this title for this blog, because this last week, on 1st May, my grandfather past away, at the age of 80. Friends of my popa called him Hec (his name was Alexander, shortened to Alec, and Hec), and as kids, we joked about him being called "Blimmin Hec".

R.I.P Alexander Kenneth Pearson

20 April 1928 - 1 May 2008

When we decided to go on our OE, both Bevan and I acknowledged that our grandparents could possibly pass away while we did our OE. So in some ways we were prepared for this - well, we had at least thought about it.

In many ways I am grateful that my grandfather has been released from probably more than ten years of the tightening grip of Alzheimers, which was is an extremely cruel disease.


When someone dies, it brings it closer to home that we are mere mortal human beings. During that same week, a work mate of mine had received a phone, that dreaded phone call - at work, her parents had been holidaying in the Netherlands, and had driven to Brussels for the day, when her father died suddenly(I am still not sure what actually happened). But nobody can ever be prepared for one of those life changing calls.


The circle of life is a strange one, because whilst we mourn the loss of a loved one, I also know three couples that have had babies in the last week

I think the hardest bit for me has been that I haven't really been affected by the whole thing, because when you are on the other side of the world, you don't experience the emotion of your nana becoming a widow first hand, or your mother and uncle losing a much loved father. You don't see all the flowers that people send to the family - what's worse was I sent flowers to my nana, as if I was an onlooker, outside of the family circle.

Not to mention the funeral, you don't see the funeral sheet with a picture of your grandfather on it, with his birth date and date of passing. You don't see the 250 or so people that turned up to pay their respects to a person that has in some way touched their lives.



The weirdest thing of all, is that all of these people went to my grandfathers funeral, when even I didn't get to go. I think that the reality probably won't fully hit me until I go home to NZ again, and suddenly there will be someone missing from our family gatherings, and visits to nanas.

I don't know too much about my grandfathers life, however the thoughts I will carry with me about him will be long walks at the Mt, along the beach and around the Mt. Watching him slick his white hair using hair gel and a comb (my own father doesn't even use gel - I think this further added to the fascination).

As a child, Popa always used to get me to sit on the foot rest (a charming 1970's shade of calf poo yellow footrest I might add!) in front of his lazy-boy chair in the lounge, so that he could plait my hair. Popa was a quiet, conservative man, who provided a solid foundation for my nana. A very sporty man, he was heavily involved in golf, running fundraisers for the golf club, and I believe, back in the day, he was the kicker for the Waikato rugby league team. A mechanic by trade, we enjoyed playing with the tools in popa's garage, and rides in his ford escort van. As the only grandfather I have known (my other grandfather died before I was born), he'll always have a special place in my heart.

Rest in peace Popa
Jam and Bev

Walk like an Egyptian

Hey Everyone - I couldn't resist using walk like an Egyptian as the title, however I am disappointed to say that I did not pull out the Egyptian walk whilst in Egypt! Never mind.

Below you will find a map of where we went - hopefully this will help put things into perspective for you. The border to the left is Libya and the border at the bottom is Sudan.

We had an awesome trip - and have so much to tell - I will divide our 10 days away into day by day accounts, and try and squeeze in the observations we made, along the way.

Day 1 - Good Friday

At 3 am our alarm clock went off, indicating that we had half an hour before our taxi was going to arrive to take us to the airport. Twenty minutes later our taxi rang to say when it was five minutes away, so we quickly did some last minute packing and rushed out the door (we had to get a taxi as the only means of public transport running at that time of morning are night buses - more trouble than it was worth).

We then went to the airport via Mark and Dee's so the four of us travelled together. We met Geraint and Steffy (our other travelling buddies - a relation of Bev's and Dee's) at Heathrow.

We arrived to chaos at Heathrow - any Brits reading this will laugh knowingly at this, as Heathrow is know for this very chaos! What we found out was that the check in staff didn't start until 4.30am, even though our tickets stated we should be at the airport at 4am - British systems I tell you!! Anyway long story short, we ended up jumping the very long queue, as we would never have made our flight in time. You can soon see how Heathrow at Easter or Christmas gets back logged/delays, as they had problems from the word go ie 4.30am Good Friday!!

We left a drizzly London morning, flew via Zurich (Switzerland) landing as the snow fell (extremely pretty I must say - and the Swiss have to be the most efficient people I have ever come across! The Brits could do with some lessons from the Swiss!). It was so nice leaving behind big crowds of people at Heathrow, arriving to an empty airport of very few people. We then transferred to our Cairo flight, arriving in 38 degree Celcius heat! Talk about a day of four seasons!(well three at least). We were met at the airport by a rep from our tour company, and transferred to our hotel by mini bus.

We were immediately immersed in a bustling, loud city full of cars, beeping horns (Egyptians don't use indicators, they just toot to say they are coming up on the inside lane), near car crashes - on a two lane road they have three lanes of cars - and every now and then one breaks down, donkey drawn carts you name it, it's going on! It is just like those email jokes that people send around! They use a lot of run down old vehicles - we saw about one broken down old car for every half an hour we spent on the motorway! All of the buses were jammed packed with locals, and driving round with the doors wide open - naturally air conditioned. It wasn't unusual to see a whole family - mum dad and the kids on a motorbike, wearing jandals and no helmets flying down the motorway - suck that Otara! Petrol is really cheap in Egypt - about 1/10th of the price we pay, therefore making driving more affordable to the average egyptian (everyone is called muhammed or some shortening of it). The motorway is a prime example of the lack of Health and safety Egpyt has - of which we saw plent more of!

The buildings and traffic in Cairo

OSH Health and Safety at its finest - spot the guy on the motorbike with no helmet and jandals, also spot the broken down taxi being pushed - a typical day on the Cairo motorway!

There were quite a few parks in the area that our hotel was in, which were quite nice - check out all of the satelite dishes on the buildings!

Bev and I at the Citadel Mosque with Cairo behind us - the sky is a mixture of smog and sand in the air from the desert.

Within about two minutes of Egypt I realised I was something of an excitement to the egyptian men - it sucks to be blonde and white in egypt.

Along the course of our trip I was "x-ray scanned" by so many egyptian men's eyes - ugh they are so disgusting! However I have to say I did find it amusing that the souvenir sellers came up with all sorts of terms of endearments to try and get my attention to come into their shop - such as hebebe (arabic for "my love"), spicey girl - (which I think they meant saucy girl rather than the spice girls), sweet heart etc and Bev got told he was a lucky man about a million times (haha). But it is really demeaning that they stare at you all of the time, and it is certainly not flattering or appreciated. It really degrades you, and you lose a lot of confidence as you are just an object.

At one of the temples were went to, there was a group of local 12-13 year old girls. They were standing in front of Bev, Mark and I, and were pointing and laughing at our legs (I'm guessing my lily whites and Marks hairy whites or our funny western shoes), so Mark got them back, by pointing at their feet and made me crack up - it was so mean but funny, because the girl's faces just immediately dropped when they realised we thought they were also strange, suddenly we weren't so interesting any more and they walked away :o)

Another difficult thing with Egypt is that everyone is always in your face, if they are not oggling you they are trying to take your money off you somehow! We were buying water at a market, when one shop guy tried to take my money out of my wallet for me, and I got angry with him and told him to bugger off and wait. He then very quickly told us all that the price of the water had gone up in price - so we said nah, we don't want it anyway, and walked away! How rude! However on a lighter note, in the same vain as the terms of endearment, to get you into their stalls at the market they call out to you. One guy called out to us - "I don't know what you want, but I have it" and another clever clogs yelled out "I have 75 ways to take you money" and "how can I take your money" - with some of them you wondered if they actually understood what they were saying in English - but I think they did to be funny and get your attention, haha you have to give them full points for honesty!

For dinner that first night we decided to ask the Hotel check in guy what he recommended, and he said - "We have a restaurant here" and then we said "but we want to go out", so he reluctantly recommended us a restaurant just around the corner from our hotel. This would be the last time that most of us ate meat on the trip, as after that both Bevan and Mark had stomach aches! Hmmmm! It was interesting to note that the Egyptian standards of cleanliness were a lot different to that of our own - for example we had to keep shuffling through the plates at the restaurants to find a clean plate!

Day 2 - Saturday

This day was an extremely full-on day, and quite hard on our bodies since they were not used to the extreme heat (esp Bev and I after a year of winters - however I found it heaven - overdosing on Vitamin D!!).

We were met early by our guide, who was with us for the rest of the trip. Emad (or Ed for our purposes) was a well educated black african egyptian man(of the nubian tribe), in his 30's. He was extremely punctual, patient and easy going - exactly what we needed in a tour guide - I don't think we would have enjoyed the trip as much as we did if we had had another guide. He was happy to answer any questions we had, and was very open to cultural and religious questions we had about the egyptian way of life - and his own life for that matter.

We started by going to Sakkara - the first pyramid, and the world's oldest stone structure.

We then went to Memphis - the capital of the ancient kingdom

The Great Pyramids and the Sphinx.

Two of the Giza Pyramids - See the comparison between the size of the people and the pyramid - they were pretty huge.

Bev's shadow on the Camel

Giza pyramids and the Sphinx

At the Pyramids we went for a camel ride which was really fun! They are certainly amazing animals putting up with that heat.

Bev on a camel

There are quite a few off shoots of the nile, many of which can probably termed canals - but the water is really disgusting, as it is stagnant - people just drop their rubbish/household waste in it, a few dead cows float in it, further down we saw some people doing their washing in it etc - a little like the River Ganges! And everywhere we traveled, there were wild cats and dogs roaaming around.

We were supposed to have transferred from Cairo that night to Aswan by sleeper train, however for some reason the tour company left it too late to book our trip, so there were no spaces left.


They therefore had to upgrade us to a flight from Cairo to Aswan the following morning (Day 3), and pay for us to stay an extra night at our Cairo hotel - because this cost was now on them, we were suddenly all down graded to sleeping in the same room (an apartment style room with three beds in one room and a king in the other). With a lot of fuss we were able to get a fourth mattress for our room, so that everyone had a bed!





Day 3 -Easter Sunday

Another 3am start - we left the hotel and travelled back to the airport, and flew to Aswan. Unfortunately our tour company was too cheap to upgrade our tour guide to fly with us, so we had to wait for him (a 12 hour journey) to arrive in Aswan! However we didn't complain, as we got to lounge around by the pool and have a swim whilst we waited for our rooms to be ready - this was especially nice as the temperature was now soaring around 42 degrees celcius!!

We found Aswan and Luxor to be quite different from Cairo, as they were much smaller, more back-water cities.

Check out the hand coloured in/handwritten Mobil sign, and the extremely flash Vodafone shop!

Once our guide arrived, we travelled to the Unfinished Obelisk, Aswan Dam and Philae Temple - Philae temple was probably the highlight of our trip for me or at least on par with the Pyramids.

Philae Temple

Day 4 - Easter Monday


Another 3am morning - yep you can gather we were a little over 3am starts by this time! We had to travel in convoy (about 100 tourist buses) lead by the police- we asked how come, but never really got a straight answer about this....! However the convoy turned out to be bit of a farce, as everyone went hell for leather, and travelled around 140 km/hr through the desert!

But I must say it was all worth it, as we arrived at our destination - Abu Simbel at around 6.30am, still in the cool of the morning, and it was an extremely beautiful location, on the edge of the dam.

Abu Simbel

On arriving back at the hotel, we all arranged our bags ready for the Felucca (sail boat) trip. We then boarded our felucca just outside our hotel(the hotel overlooked the nile - an extremely gorgeous location - it was so pretty it almost seemed like the landscape had been painted), and lazily sailed down the Nile (sailing with the current means you head North - towards Cairo - which is what we did). We really enjoyed lazying on the Felucca, it was nice to escape the information overload and pyramid/temple overload that we had started to become overwhelmed by. And it was nice to get away from the plain sandy desert colour to the lively green surrounding the Nile. However, there were a few less comfortable bits to the Felucca - firstly, there was no toilet - so if you really needed to go, then you had to pull over to land and find a tree! Also combine this with our dodgy Egyptian-food tummies....go figure!

Us on the Felucca

However, to ease us into this, on the first night, we stopped at a place that was hired by our tour company to provide toilets and showers (of reasonable cleanliness - something you couldn't take for granted!). The two options of sailing on the Nile consist of the Felucca - as we did, or travelling by big ocean liners - as all the rich ponsy people did (or those that value their toiletting in private!)

It was illegal to sail your Felucca at night, as on these big ocean liners would quite easily run you down. So on this first night we docked at the place with the showers/toilets, and slept on the boat - quite soothing, however there were a few too many hungry mosquitos ready to nibble ones hot, exposed feet, even though we had a mosquito net over the boat!

Day 5 - Tuesday

Our Felucca trip got all the more exciting(or less pleasant depending on how you view it) on this second day, as we found out we wouldn't be docking at a toilet/shower overnight - just farmland with a few trees.......I was gutted to find out that I have lost my ability to hold on as I did when I was little........! However, we were pleased that the temperature significantly dropped this second night, making sleep a little easier, and there were no mosquitos. However, sleeping on the Felucca seemed significantly harder the second night!



Day 6 - Wednesday

We docked early, and were met by a mini bus, ready to take us to four temples. We were pleased to arrive at the first location to use their toilet! It is funny how suddenly your trip becomes more about when your next clean toilet stop is, and not what sites you are visiting.


On that note, toiletting was an interesting experience in Egypt. It is hard to find clean toilets, you don't flush your toilet paper - it goes in a rubbish bin beside the toilet, and they don't have toilet paper in the toilets - there is an attendant that gives you toilet paper (not enough to wipe anything mind you), and on your way out, you tip the attendant! It is quite a wealthy occupation!

We firstly went to Kom-Ombu temple, and then to Edfu - the most well-preserved temple in all of Egypt.


We then transferred to Luxor, checked into our hotel and had some lunch. We then carried on to see Luxor Temple and Karnak Temple. Karnak Temple was especially pretty as it was just on dusk as we saw it, so the lights were all turned on, lighting up the big pillars.



Day 7 - Thursday


We were so tired by this point, we were able to convince our guide that we didn't want to start until 9am so that we could have a decent sleep. We awoke quite refreshed, and visited the valley of the Kings, and the temple of Queen Hatshepsut (said hat-cheap-suit or hot chicken soup for the comics). We also took a couple of minutes to take photos of Colossi of Memnon and stop at an alabaster shop - where they had heaps of beautiful vases and bowls made from the local stone. I tried my hand at bargining for one really pretty bowl, but was disappointingly unsuccessful - normally they don't let you out of the door without renegotiating the price, but this one let me go - I had obviously gone too far below what they were prepared to accept - bugger! I probably should have buckled.

That afternoon we arrived back at our hotel, had a swim and dinner and then sat in the hotel lobby waiting to go to the train station to be transferred to the train station to catch the sleeper train back to Cairo at 11.30pm. The sleeper train was an interesting experience. And waiting for the 1st class train we got to see what 2nd class and cattle class looked like - Otara and OSH eat your heart out!



Day 8 - Friday

This was probably the least exciting day of our whole trip - as we were so tired! (However, pretty to cool to have been to a church that Jesus himself is said to have been to!

However, we did enjoy looking out of the train window as we came into Cairo, as there were heaps of crops - such as sugar cane and other veges being grown, quite nice and green.

For the first time in our trip, we were able to check into our rooms immediately on arrival in Cairo, so we all quickly rushed off to have a shower, before our days sightseeing. We were then mini-bused Christian Old Cairo, where the Romans constructed the fortress of Babylon. Built over the fuins of the two towers of this fortress, the Church of St Mary known as the Hanging Church. We then had lunch at a Egyptian restaurant - they eat a lot of naan bread (called something different though), and hummus, kebabs, filafels etc however by this stage we were over eating anything with meat, so went vegetarian.


Day 9 - Saturday

This was a really great day of absolutely unashamedly nothing. We woke late, went to breakfast, lay around in our rooms, had a two hour afternoon nap, played cards, read etc. A great day just to blobby. We were so tired that we didn't get woken up by the prayers that morning - every sunset and sunrise, prayers are belted out through loud speakers at the top of the mosques, which sound like air-raid sirens!


Day 10 - Sunday

Yesterday, we awoke at 9am, had breakfast - our last Egyptian breakfast, of which we were not mourning. They mainly consisted of egg (omelette, scrambled or hard boiled)- which is fine, and one type of cereal (their attempt at keeping us westerners happy), but also cold meats, salad, (both of which we were avoiding, meat for obvious reasons, and salad because they use local tap water to wash the veges) and lots of sweet bread, and cheese. We found that breakfast conversations would always start with someone asking who had the runs today!

We then piddled around for the morning, and checked out of our rooms at 12noon. We were then transferred to the airport to catch our plane at 3pm. We did a quick squizz of souvenir shopping (I bought a smaller replica of the bowl I should have bought at the alabaster shop), and then we flew back to Zurich, and then from Zurich to London - arriving in London at 9.30pm.

And that was our Egypt trip :o) - I definitely recommend everyone put Egypt on their "must see before I die list".