Thursday/Friday/Saturday April 14-15-16 Taba and the road home

I have to back up a little to Wednesday night. Our trusty 1980 DC9 had some type of malfunction (luckily not in the air) and they had to find us another plane to fly out of Luxor and back to Taba. This delayed our departure a few hours, but the destination was the Marriott Resort at Taba, situated on the desert shores of the Red Sea in Egypt. Our tour operators wisely chose this site to help us recharge after over two weeks of non-stop amazing experiences. We had two days to sleep in, lay in the sun (ok, we never lay in the sun) snorkel, hang out, and just laze around.

Saturday morning we headed back north, back into Israel and the worlds best security. The border security is amazing, only to be repeated at the Tel Aviv airport. This bus ride took us north again to near the Dead Sea, then up over a significant mountain pass, all in the stark Sinai Desert. we then traveled west to Tel Aviv, and can say we have been to the north, south, east, and west borders of Israel. This bus ride was over 4 hours long, arriving at Tel Aviv at 7:00 PM.
Our flight leaves at midnight, lands at JFK at 0500, a four hour lay-over, then if everything goes as planned, we will land back in SLC at noon. If that is the case, this will be the end of our blog, What a trip ! ! !

Tuesday April 12 Cairo/The Citadel/ Pyramids of Giza

This is the inside of the lobby of our hotel in Cairo, big, modern, over the top!

The Citadel, a Moslem Fortress in Cairo

Inside the mosque built by Mohammed Ali

The view from the Citadel overlooking Cairo

Miltary presence in Tahir Square

The burnt-out Government Offices next to the Cairo Museum. I have no pictures from inside the museum because you cannot photograph anything inside

Guess where this is??

Clyde and Sue getting mobbed by the camel herders

This is the size of one of the blocks the pyramids are made of, the largest has 2,200,000 blocks of stone in it.

When in Egypt . . .

All the old white VW buses have ended up in Cairo

We are jetting around in a 1980 DC 9

Sunset in Luxor

Wednesday April 13 Luxor Egypt

Sunrise on the Nile with Hot Air Balloons rising on the West side

The Valley of the Kings is on the West Side, symbolic of death to the Egyptian. First we jumped a ride on the boats down the Nile, then headed to the Valley of the Kings with amazing tombs of Ramses, Tut, and others. I have no pictures because cameras are banned.

Our friendly security guy, really blended in except for the Uzzi

Some cute little kids at the alabaster shop we stopped at

We visited three different Egyptian Temples, Ramses, Karnak, and Luxor. Too many pictures to post, here are a few to give you an idea.

Mcdonalds and ancient Egyptian Temples

Long barge moving goods down the Nile

At the end of the day we went back to the boats and crossed the Nile to the farming side and met some great little kids with their donkeys and goats.

And then danced like Egyptians back to the bus, on to the airport, and back to Taba