Amsterdam

Amsterdam is another cool place to spend a few days. This must be one of the most liberal cities in the world where marijuana, prostitution and homosexual marriage are all legal. You can walk into a “coffee shop” to buy and smoke a joint and pick a prostitute out of a display window in the red light district. The city is pretty with numerous canals and charming canal homes and the people here are very friendly.

We’ve enjoyed our time in Amsterdam. Our itinerary has not been very ambitious, which has been nice. TJ and I checked out a few museums and the Anne Frank House where Anne Frank and her family hid before they were tipped off and sent to concentration camps. It was interesting to see the space where they lived for a couple of years and from where Anne wrote in her journal that was later published by her father. Other than that we’ve just spent our time wandering around the city and dining at the restaurants and bars that seem to be on every corner.

Tonight is our last night of vacation and we head home early tomorrow morning via Paris. We’ve had a great time on our trip but we are excited to get back to see the progress that has been made on our house while we’ve been away. It should be done in a few weeks!

New Years in Prague

We arrived in the Czech Republic’s capital city of Prague on New Year’s eve! The streets were decorated with lights, there was champagne for sale on every corner and the atmosphere was very festive. We checked into our hotel, which was centrally located in the heart of all of the activity, bundled up and wandered around. There were bands and dance floors, vendors selling hot wine and hot chocolate, stalls selling food and souvenirs and lots of fireworks. At midnight everyone corked their champagne and let their fireworks fly. It was unorganized and perhaps a bit dangerous but very exciting. I am sure the party went strong all night and morning!

Prague is a really beautiful city with stunning architecture, charming town squares and quaint cobblestone streets. There aren’t a ton of sites to see in Prague but it is a very enjoyable and lovely place to spend a few days. We strolled across the Charles Bridge, wandered around the Castle, visited the Christmas market, saw the astronomical clock, tasted local beers at a Pub and checked out the city. One of TJ’s highlights of Prague was seeing the Codex. The Codex is an exact copy of the bible written in perfect Latin penmanship and it is the largest existing ancient medieval document. There are different beliefs as to who created the Codex and how. One legend is that it was written by a priest in a single night, with the help of the devil. This would explain the large drawing of the devil occupying an entire page towards the end of the Codex. Another theory is that the book was written over 20 years by a scribe.

Unfortunately, Carrie was sick the entire time we were in Prague and spent part of the time in 2 different hospitals. To make a very long story short, they tested her for everything and we still don’t know what is wrong with her. I will think twice about complaining about any of our hospitals or health care system in the US after seeing what Carrie experienced in the Czech Republic. She is feeling a little better now but it is still a mystery why she got so sick.

Istanbul, Turkey

Istanbul was a refreshing change of pace! Traffic was relatively calm, people didn’t demand tips for every little service and we could walk around with little or no interruption from the local people. The people were very friendly and helpful, which we greatly appreciated!

Carrie arrived 4 hours before us and waited at one of Istanbul’s 58 Starbucks coffee shops. We met up and took a taxi to our hostel which was ideally located in the middle of Istanbul’s main attractions on a quaint cobblestone street. The neighborhood couldn’t have been more picturesque!

On our first day in Istanbul we checked out the Sultanahmet area where we were staying and the Arasta Bazaar. On our second day we headed to the Blue Mosque and then Aya Sofya, which was originally a church before it was converted to a mosque and later a museum. My travel book says Aya Sofia is “Istanbul’s most famous monument” and “one of the world’s truly great buildings.” We thought its size was impressive but other than that we were far from speechless. We know, we have been fortunate/spoiled and are now tougher than the average Joe to please. Our next stop was the Grand Bazaar – the oldest and largest covered marketplace in the world and home to more than 4000 shops. We enjoyed the market but surprisingly didn’t find more than a couple of things that we couldn’t live without.

The following day we visited Topkapi Palace which was not nearly as impressive as I thought it would be, but was a nice place for morning walk. Carrie and I were both really sick so we took a taxi to a clinic in the afternoon. Carrie had complications from having strep throat a month ago and I had a nose and throat infection. We were very lucky that there was a dentist who spoke very good English and could translate for us. We got our prescriptions from the pharmacy and went back to the hostel to rest before catching an evening performance of whirling dervishes.

Taxi to the DR = $5
Appointment with the doctor = $22
4 prescriptions from the DR = $31

How much would this visit have cost in the U.S.??

The dervishes are men who dress in long white robes and cone hats and twirl to communicate with God. I would have puked if I attempted to twirl for a tiny fraction of the time they spent twirling. The musical accompaniment was good and the show was interesting but I was glad for the dancers that it was a relatively short show.

We started our next day in Istanbul with a visit to the Hippodrome. This was the center of Byzantium and Ottoman life back in the day and hosted its fair share of chariot races and political dramas. We also visited the Basilica Cistern, which is a series of underground reservoirs built to store water for the Palace and its surrounding buildings. It was more interesting than it sounds and a bit eerie too. I think the strategic lighting and music added to the ambiance. After visiting the Cistern, Carrie and I headed back to the market for a second round of shopping while TJ went to a coffee shop for some time online.

We spent our last day in Istanbul on a ferry on the Bosphorus straight, which runs from the Sea of Marmara all the way to the Black Sea. The shores of the Bosphorus are home to mansions that were once owned by Sultans, the Ottoman aristocracy and foreign ambassadors. The mansions may have different owners now but their size and grandeur is still very impressive.

We saw all of the sites that were on our “to do” list in Istanbul but because Carrie and I were sick we didn’t get to do as much exploring as we’d hoped. There are a couple of popular nightlife areas in Istanbul that we wanted to check out, but didn’t because we were too sick. It is frustrating to be sick while travelling! It is very disappointing to be in bed instead of being out seeing and doing things. However, I believe things happen for a reason. In the 2 weeks prior to our arrival in Istanbul 60 firebombs exploded in the city and two days before we arrived a guy was arrested with 7 pounds of explosives in his backpack. I think it is possible that Carrie and I were meant to be sick so that we were safe inside instead of on the streets of Istanbul. While we got to see Istanbul, I wish we had the chance to experience the city more.

Merry Christmas!

We arrived at Cairo early on Christmas day and our first stop was the Egyptian Museum. I am sure this would be a fascinating museum for anyone, but it was especially interesting to us as we’d already been to a few of the tombs where many of the relics on display in the museum were excavated from. We’d seen King Tutankhamen’s tomb and mummy at the Valley of Kings and now we were able to see the 3000 artifacts that were discovered in his tomb in 1922. There are more than 120,000 relics and antiquities on display at the museum. We spent a few hours wandering around admiring them and paid a few extra bucks for admission to the “Royal Mummy Room.” Here we learned about the mummification process and saw the mummified bodies of pharaohs and rulers of ancient Egypt. NEAT!

After the museum we checked out the Citadel, which was home to Egypt’s rulers for 700 years, and Mohammed Ali’s mosque before returning to our hotel. For the 3rd night in a row we wouldn’t be getting any sleep because we had to leave for the airport at 1am so our goal was to have an early Christmas dinner then snooze for a few hours. The food in Egypt is terrible so TJ and Carrie decided our best bet would be Christmas dinner at McDonald’s.

We walked back to our hotel, took a nap then headed to the airport for our flights to Istanbul.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

Mt Sinai & St Katherine's Monastery

We were picked up at our hotel around 10pm. It took a couple of hours to collect other hikers from their hotels and then we set off for the mountain. We stopped a few times along the way for bathroom breaks and so those who didn’t expect the freezing temperatures could purchase hats, gloves, scarves, etc. We also had to stop at several police check points to show our passports. We were the only U.S. passport holders in our group with the rest being from Russia. At 3am we finally arrived at the base of the mountain. Half of our group mounted onto camels and the rest of us got ready to hike.

There are 2 routes up the mountain – one consists of 3750 man made stairs (all the steps were laid by one monk as a form of penance). This route is the most direct and the most difficult. Our guide would not allow us to take this route so we stuck with the group and begin our ascent on the camel trail. The camel trail is carved into the mountain and zig-zags back and forth at with an incline a bit steeper than we expected. I am not sure if we saw more stars or piles of camel droppings. We walked under the moonlight with stops every now and then at little huts selling tea and snickers bars. The 2 trails merged near the summit and ended with a painful 750 steps. The summit of Mt Sinai is said to be the spot where God delivered his Ten Commandments to Moses so it was kind of cool to be there on Christmas Eve.

We made it to the top just before 6am to see the sun rise. I almost didn’t want to stick around to see the sun rise because as soon as I stopped my sweat absorbed clothes started to freeze. Carrie couldn’t feel her toes at this point. We waited for the sun to do its thing and watched the sky turn colorful shades of red and orange. We then took off down the mountain and even after making a few short stops to admire the camels we were at the base in half the time it took us to climb up.

St Katherine’s Monastery is a Unesco World Heritage site and sits at the base of the mountain. St Katherine’s is one of the oldest functioning monasteries in the world and is home to approximately 70 monks. The skulls of the deceased monks are on display at the Monastery and the burning bush from which God spoke to Moses grows inside the Monastery’s walls. The Monastery was a nice, peaceful place to visit but by this time we were hungry and tired since we’d climbed up and down a mountain instead of sleeping that night.

We arrived at our hotel late in the afternoon, snoozed for an hour or so then headed to town for Christmas Eve dinner. For lack of better options, we wound up at T.G.I. Fridays. What we really needed was a good night sleep but that was not possible as we had to get up at 4am to get to the airport for a flight back to Cairo. While the sunrise is nice, I sure hope I don’t have to see it 2 days in a row for quite some time!