Europe Trip Days 5-9: Giza Pyramids, Pompeii, and life at Sea

This post will be shorter and without pictures as I'm blogging from
the iPhone on the cruise ship, and the Internet is $0.75/minute!

Day 5: Pyramids!
On Tuesday we took a guided tour of the pyramids booked through the
hotel. All I can say is "wow". I was very impressed by the size of
these structures as well as the still mysterious history. Thankfully
we lucked out and ended up with a very knowledgable guide, only one
academic degree away from being an egyptologist. We were able to get
some fantastic pictures as well which I'll post when we get to a
mainland Internet cafe. After the sphynx and Ri's camel ride (yes, I
have pictures of that too), we relaxed at the hotel the rest of the
evening and enjoyed some live Egyptian music over dinner.

Day 6: Back to Rome, the Spanish Steps, and the Trevi fountain
We got a nice early start on Wednesday as we headed back to the
airport to fly back to Rome. The flight offered a good nap. Back in
Rome and checked into our Hostel (lucked out and got a private room),
we set out to do some exploring of nearby sites since it was too late
to go to the Vatican. First stop was the Spanish Steps, which offered
a great view of Rome from the top. From there we headed to the
fountain which was far more impressive than I imagined. If you
haven't seen or heard of it be sure to check out the pictures I'll be
posting later. After a nice dinner at an Italian cafe we headed for
bed in preparation of our 5:41am train to Naples in the morning.

Day 7: Pompeii!
the story of Pompeii always intrigued me when I was younger, so I was
very excited to see it in person. After a long train ride to Naples,
we figured out how to transfer to the right light rail to get to
Pompeii. In this process I realized that 3 years in the NYC area is
excellent preparation for figuring out foriegn transportation systems.

After another hour, we had finally made it out there. We spent the
next 4 hours hiking all over the site and took way too many pictures.
I was most impressed by the ampitheatre, as it was the first that we
know of so far. I was also surprised as how well many things were
preserved inside the buildings. Walking through the streets as the
residents once did really gives a humanistic aspect to the story.
However, I learned that they were all a bunch of upper class elites
with slaves, so that ruined the nostalgic side of it... :-) After
touring on the sun and heat we were exhausted so we stopped and got
pizza and fresh lemonade at a nearby cafe. I was blown away by our
pizza, by far the best I've ever had! We decided not to try
Herculaneum and headed back to Rome to get some sleep as we had to
make our way out to the port to catch our cruise in the morning...

Day 8: Setting sail on the Holland America Noordam
We were able to get moving and catch the right train to Civitivechia
on Friday morning. We decided to dave a few Euro and walked down to
the port from the train station. We then caught a shuttle bus out to
the ship. This being my first cruise, I was surprised by the size of
the ship up close. It really is like a floating city! Check in was a
breeze and we were quickly on the 9th deck eating. We toured the ship
and amenities while our room was being prepared, and then we crashed
for a little while in the room. Everythig on the ship is very nice
and clean, they do a fantastic job with maintanence. Riannan ended up
liking the bed so much she stayed in it for a nice long nap, while I
decided to check out the deparure party ok the pool deck. They had
live music and were charcoal grilling fresh steaks! So there I sat
enjoying my steak, salad, and mojito watching the land sink away into
the horizon. That night we dined on the casual option and then
proceeded to check out the bars, lounges, casino, and night club.
While a little cheesy, our favoritebso far is the Piano Bar where you
can gran a drink and sing along! We also got to enjoy some nice
clasical music by the on board string quartette.

Day 9: Life at sea...
Saturday was an "at sea" day as well as the first formal night on the
ship. They offer so far a lot of good programming which filled up our
day. We slept in and got a late breakfast after working out in the
gym. We then went to an art auction, had a nice lunch, hung out in
the wonderful "crows nest" to do some reading and journaling, dressed
up in our formal attire, enjoyed a nice four course meal for dinner,
got free champagne at the captain's toast, listened and danced to the
acoustic guitarist in the crows nest bar, sang along to Sinatra tunes
in the piano bar, danced out all our remaining energy in the night
club, and then crashed, hard.... :-)

While very different from how we usually travel, I'm greatly enjoying
the cruise experience so far, as long as I can ignore the typical
annoyingly ignorant cruise crowd... :-P

More to come!

Eurotrip Day 4: Islamic Cairo and Belly Dancing on the Nile River

We got a late start trying to sift through all the touring options the friendly concierge gave us. At around lunch time, we decided that we would save the pyramids for tomorrow, and go ahead and check out the Khan El-Khalili market, tour a mosque, and enjoy a dinner cruise on the Nile.

Off to the market we went, and 90 minutes later we hit a tourist shopper's dream. Unfortunately they wanted tourist prices, but after the typical haggling, we were able to find some items that we liked and could fit in our luggage. The market was about the same as other markets we've seen in India, Central America, and the Philipines, so it wasn't all that new to us. What was new though were all of the amazing mosques around the market as it was in the middle of islamic Cairo. We stood out as westerners like a sore thumb, and were treated accordingly.

After the market we set out to the Al-Ahzar mosque, one of the oldest in Cario. A friendly patron met us at the entrance and showed us around as well as took us up in one of the towers. He asked for a generous 85LE (~$18) once we were out of site of everyone else, but it was well worth it. It was great to finally see the inside of a mosque, and it was more inviting than I would have thought. Beautiful architecture and history, and the view of egypt from the top of one of the towers was amazing! (Notice the air quality I mentioned)



After the long journey back to the hotel we hit the gym, took a shower, and got ready for our next adventure: the Nile Maxim dinner cruise with live entertainment that included belly dancing! To our surprise, the food was excellent, and we got to see very talented musicians along with a twirling dervish!

So after a late, late dinner where I ate too much, I had to go walk on the treadmill at the gym for a little bit to help get my food moving. That, of course, left me wide awake which gave me the time to write these blog posts. Tomorrow will be the pyramids, and you'll hear more from me the next chance I get to post!

(Sorry I can't be all tech savy and twitter my udpates, but we ended up phoneless due to some technicalities with AT&T's roaming policies.)

Eurotrip Day 3: il Colosseo! and flight to Cairo

After a good nights sleep at "Hostel Beautiful 2", we got up early to beat the crowds at the Colosseum. Thankfully, we were able to find an internet cafe and purchase the tickets online in order to save some line waiting. We grabbed the subway to get there which was only 2 stops and stepped out to a simply amazing site. With hardly any wait in line, we toured these amazing ruins. It's simply amazing how they built this structure, as well as the story behind how got to it's point today. This is a must see for anyone passing through Italy.

After the Colosseum, we went back to grab our luggage and head to the airport again to catch our flight to Cairo on EgyptAir. We took the train again back to the airport and everything went perfectly. We were a little worried about transportation to the hotel in Cairo so I opted for the hotel car service to pick us up which ended up being a great choice as we found out our hotel, the Sheraton Dreamland, was a ways out of town out west of the pyramids. We simply kept going, and going, and going before we got to the hotel. The good part though, we got a lovely driving tour through downtown Cairo. First impressions? Well, I thought New Dehli and Manila had a smog problem. Besides the visible lead in the air and risk of leaving in an athsmatic state, there is very interesting landscape and architecture all around, as well as the beautiful Nile river cutting right through town.

The hotel is beautiful, and we decided to hang out and enjoy the ammentities for the rest of the night. After a late dinner by the pool and fighting the jet lag, we went to bed looking forward to the adventures of day 4!

Eurotrip Day 2: Arrival in Roma!

Day 2 started off much better than the first day, since we both have very good flights with plenty of food and service and our flights were on time. I did have to wait in the airport for Riannan for 5 hours since her flight went through Munich and got in later. Thankfully I managed to find her even though we forgot to figure out how/where to meet each other in our departure scramble.

Since we were staying in a hostel near "Termini", the main train terminal in Rome, we decided to go ahead and take the express airport train into town. As many tourists were fumbling with the self service ticket machines, we were able to easily get our tickets and catch the departing train to Rome thanks to NYC for giving us the necessary experience in urban commuting.

We made it into the Termini area, found our hostel and checked in, then proceeded to check out the area we were in and to find food. This part of Rome is rather stereotypical with the mixed age buildings and small restaurants lining the cobble stone and brick streets. The hostel was surprisingly clean, everyone is very friendly, and the food incredible!

Here is a shot from the Termini area (I have more shots on the iPhone, but can't seem to access the pics from this computer, will post them from the phone):

Down the main street in front of Termini

Final notes on our second day in Rome: the hostel crowd is great, unique middle class young adults just like us, a great deal more english speakers than we expected, and the smell is about the same as NYC... :-)

Eurotrip Day 1: Hectic Flight Preparation and Departure

To end a simply amazing week, I woke up on Friday morning with a 100.5 fever and killer sinus congestion. Not the kind of morning you want to have on the same day of an evening flight to Rome. Good news is that Riannan jumped in to help by nursing me back to a lower fever, and I was able to get into the doctor and get some anitbiotics. However, this made us run a bit late on everything, and we ended up packing in about 20 minutes. We did manage to get just about everything we needed though, didn't forget anything too important.

We flew to Rome on separate flights, and both went into the dark night skies of the Atlantic to wake up in the skies of Europe.