After retirement I backpacked 4 years and then moved to Oaxaca Mexico June 2006. Regularly visit sons in Hong Kong, Thailand and Las Vegas. Recently completed a RTW trip ending in Oaxaca in April 2013.
Protests going on from early morning and people will remain in Tahrir Square all night. It’s spread all over the country and other countries. Three dead. It’s after midnight there and twitter, cell phone, TV and all the rest have now gone down but there are some iconic pics that have been coming out of Egypt. And YouTube is full of video. This uprising is a really big deal! Even a friend in Serbia is all but afraid to hope.
My fav post:
Lessons of Tunisia:
To the Arab dictators: u r not invincible.
To the West: u r not needed.
To the Arab people: u r not powerless
An explosion has taken place in the ancient area of Al Hussein-Cairo, Egypt, the number of killed and wounded is still unsettled. How the bomb was exploded is not exactly specified. It's the most glorified and valued area for Egyptian ... [Continue reading this entry]
Have recently finished the acclaimed "The Looming Tower" by Lawrence Wright which is a history of Islamic radical fundamentalism beginning in the 1930's and 40's and ending with the bombing of the World Trade Center. Including the ridiculous and ... [Continue reading this entry]
Israelis Bombed 9/11?
While waiting for the others to come out of the temple at Edfu, and when it became apparent that Bob wasn't going to buy anything, Bob was invited into a seller's ... [Continue reading this entry]
Cafes and Food
You can have what Bob calls "mystery meat," which in Egypt is called kebab-lamb or chicken sliced from a vertical spit-very good in pita bread. Kofta is ground meat peppered with spices, skewered and grilled. ... [Continue reading this entry]
In Aswan, a felluca, an ancient sailboat of the Nile, is a common means of transport up and down the Nile River. It has a broad canvas sail and the boat itself has ... [Continue reading this entry]
On the same day that Arafat finally condemned the terrorism against Israel, his wife, who lives in Paris, granted an interview with an Arabic-language magazine, Al Majalla, wherein she endorsed suicide attacks as legitimate ... [Continue reading this entry]
News in the International Press
Subjects we have been reading about lately have often covered the European Union, deregulation of the labor market, global economic trends, immigration problems, agricultural pollicy and the issues stemming from the World Trade Organization agreements, market ... [Continue reading this entry]
In Luxor we did have a tour guide and it made all the difference. We were able to enjoy the sights without being constantly by the touts. A Coptic Christian, he explained ... [Continue reading this entry]
Drivers have immense patience with each other-each car gives way to the others like a million fish in a school swimming this way and that...narrowly missing one another but gracefully swerving away in time...implicit cooperation you would never see in ... [Continue reading this entry]
As westerners we are not used to the constant demands for "baksheesh" (tipping) that make you want to blow your stack...and then they want you to be happy about it! Salaries and wages are so low that baksheesh becomes ... [Continue reading this entry]
All we have to offer regarding Egypt are images.Very little understanding. We were open; wanted to understand, feeling generous and happy. Smiling. Saying hello to everyone. Thinking we were making friends...now we have only flashes of ambiguous feeling...
When Americans ... [Continue reading this entry]
On April 21, 2002 while waiting for our flight from Athens to Cairo, we visited briefly with a gentleman sitting next to us who was on his way to Alexandria for what we thought ... [Continue reading this entry]