A Few Notes on “The Plan”

Mark says that I’m one of few people to get an entire year’s worth of enjoyment out of a three week vacation — months beforehand collecting guidebooks, sticking pins into maps, writing down all the information that I find; months afterward putting the website together, researching the photo notes, and wrapping up the travelogue.

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And…we’re off!

Four years. Well, we intended to go someplace much sooner, but life just seems to be running at a frantic pace lately. But the travel bug is back, and we are immersed in planning our next trip – this time to Egypt

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Let the planning begin!

Unlike our previous trip, most of the places we want to visit in Egypt are standard ‘tourist’ sites. There is simply so much in Egypt that we want to see. In Scotland, we hired a car and drove ourselves around with no itinerary, no reservations, and no real plan. While this is entirely possible in […]

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Costs

Not For the Squeamish… The most common question I received about my previous site on Scotland was “How much did it cost?” To be entirely honest, we didn’t really keep track when we were there. It was our anniversary, and we had saved for quite awhile. It’s bit different this time. Since we’re doing the […]

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Getting Around

The various options to get around (note: driving yourself really shouldn’t be one of them, given that traffic rules are just, well, guidelines). Public transport, taxis, and trains.

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Hieroglyphic wRiting

Hieroglyphics it’s easy to see how some of the hieroglyphs are read — the picture of a cow meant ‘cow’ and that of a bee means ‘bee’. But this is far too simplistic a way of expressing things, and doesn’t cover the intangible things, like emotions and time and action. Hieroglyphs are a surprisingly complex […]

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Architecture

Architecture Most people come to egypt to see the Pyramids and ancient monuments, so it’s worthwhile knowing at least a bit about the styles of architecture and teh different buildings. Mastabas Early kings and nobles were buried in these block-like, above-ground tombs, intially of mudbrick and then of stone. They contain many storerooms and were […]

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Naming Pharaohs

Naming Perhaps the most common thing that people want to know when they travel is how the pharaohs are named and how to recognize their names on the walls. Most of us are used to seeing the names of pharaohs in the oval, called a “cartouche”. Cartouche is not an egyptian word, it is French, […]

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