Egypt Pictures

We've spent about 10 days traveling around Egypt. We started in Aswan, then to Luxor, the Sinai Peninsula and onto Cairo where we'll be leaving tomorrow (Saturday). Here are some of the highlights of our time here. Enjoy!

Santorini Island (Greece) Pictures

Here are some pictures from our time on Santorini. We spent 3 days here and enjoyed every minute of it relaxing, renting an atv for a day and spending a day visiting the volcano, hot springs and city of Oia to watch the sunset. The picture of me walking down the sidewalk was taken by Josh and him using his artistic talent on his camera. The time flew by and we hated to leave our hotel but we had to keep on with our travels and took the 8 hour ferry back to Athens.

Egypt

We're here in Cairo, enjoying our last day before we fly out to Mumbai, India. We've been in Egypt for about 10 days now starting in Aswan, then to Luxor and onto Sharm el Sheikh (on the Sinai Peninsula). The temperature in Aswan reached 104 degrees on our first day and remained a few degrees cooler the rest of our time. We've seen so much in the last week it's hard to remember what's what from pictures. There's been so many museums, tombs, temples and sunsets it's been a time we'll never forget. Some highlights of our travels here have been meeting a couple from Sydney, Australia (moving to Denver!) who we spent 3 days with traveling and sightseeing. We hiked Mt. Sinai which was an experience on it's own. The bus picked us up at 11 pm and we started the hike at 2 am, climbing the mountain for 3 hours in the dark (about 4 miles). At the summit we sat in the cold air and waited for the sun to rise. It was beautiful, we're not one's for sunrises but this was worth the night of no sleep. From the Sinai peninsula we flew here to Cairo where we've spent 3 days seeing the Egyptian museum and going to the Giza Pyramids where we got to take a camel ride for only $7. Tomorrow we're flying onto Mumbai, India where we'll stay with a friend for a few days.

Rome Pictures

Rome reminded me a lot of Paris with all it's history, large, ornate buildings and many museums. It was also very expensive to visit the museums and historic sites. The coloseum alone cost us each $18. On Sunday, we did have an opportunity to see the Pope give mass at St. Peter's Basilica but chose not to after seeing thousands of people filing in. That and we figured it would be given in Italian and last about 2 hours with the number of people who'd revieve mass. So we were able to sit outside and watch a short segment on the 'jumbo trons' they had. Most of our time here was spent touring the Coloseum, Pantheon, Vatican Museum and Sistine Chapel. One night we did venture out to the train station and found a bar with fooseball tables which we took advantage of. It was a nice change from the regular routine of playing cards or writing in our journals before heading to bed.

Cinqua Terre Pictures

The hike on the Cinqua Terre wasn't quite what I expected but turned out to be a very enjoyable day. We ended up meeting a guy from Seattle right in the beginning of the hike who joined us for the rest of the day. We made stops in pretty much every fishing village (there's 5 that make up the Cinqua Terre) to swim, have lunch, jump off rocks... It was beautiful at pretty much every point of the hike. The water was cold but felt very refreshing after the climbs in and out of each village. As you can see from some of the pictures, the villages are either right down by the water or perched up on a cliff's edge. We definitely got our workout for the day! Our first night we stayed in Montorosso, left our bags at the b&b and hiked to Riomaggiore where we stayed. The next day we started the hike back but made it to the third village and decided to take the train the rest of the way back to Montorosso.

Venice Pictures

Some of our better times in Venice are in these pictures. The fish market we came across was a big surprise as was the smell but we saw some pretty interesting fish there. The rest of the city was pretty much the same where ever you went. Endless alleyways and canals. We're both glad we went there to see this city they claim is sinking but feel no need to go back.

Greece

I realized all I've been doing is posting pictures but I'm like 2 weeks behind on them. Hopefully I'll get caught up tonight. Right now we're on the island of Santorini staying at a hotel on Perissa beach. We chose to come to this island because of the many things to do here. On Thursday we scheduled an all day boat tour to an island with a volcano, another with a hot springs (that was not hot, only luke warm and dirty) another island where we had lunch and free time to swim around. The boat then dropped us off in Oia, the northermost city on Santorini where we watched the sun go down. Oia is best known for it's picture perfect sunsets and they were right. It's exactly like the postcards look when you think of the Greek islands. Yesterday we rented an ATV and drove around the island. We drove down to the 'red sand' beach which was pretty much the same as Perissa beach ('the black sand beach'). We also rode to the 'white sand' beach but again, it looked the same. Most of the beaches are rocky and really have no sand but it's still beautiful. Today we spent just relaxing by the pool, swimming in the sea and walking the beach. It's been a great day to end our time here. Tomorrow we're leaving early in the morning on a 9 hour ferry back to Athens where we'll then fly to Cairo and then onto Aswan, Egypt.

Austria Pictures

Thanks to my wonderful brother and husband, I am able to upload these pictures WAY faster than before. Here are some pictures from Austria. We only spent one full day in Innsbruck, Austria on our way back to Munich to drop off the rv. But we made the most of it and the views we had were just about as great as Switzerland. All of these pictures are of Innsbruck and the goat is at the zoo. I wish we would've seen one of these on our hikes through the alps!