Intro, Getting Ready to Leave



My visit to France and the Rhone River Cruise with my former teaching colleague Georgia Lange and her group last summer was a lot of fun, and I kept hearing from those who had gone, about how wonderful her Egypt tours have been. So when she sent out an email in the fall that she was planning another Egypt trip in February of 2023, I was curious and interested. The especially reasonable price for our 12-day tour was an added incentive.

Long story short, I decided to join her tour and it is now just a few days away. One of the aspects of the trip that so many raved about was the tour guide, Egyptologist Mayer Magdy. He is, by all accounts, quite an expert on everything we will be seeing, is great at communicating with his group, and has a knack for keeping unwanted enthusiastic vendors away. I looked him up on the internet and found nothing but rave reviews, especially on TripAdvisor.

The itinerary covers quite a bit of ground, which I hope to be able to share with you on a daily or bi-daily basis, depending on wifi availability at our various locations. I have heard that Egyptian wifi is not all that great, so we shall see, and, of course, do the best that we can.

The overview is that my flights on British Airways will take me from Phoenix to London, and then on to Cairo. We will spend several days in Cairo,* as there is much to see and do there, especially the Egyptian Museum and, of course, the Pyramids at Giza. Then we will fly down to Aswan for a few days to see the temples and tombs in that area. For the next three days, we will be on a northbound cruise down the Nile River with temple stops along the way, eventually arriving in Luxor for a 4-day stay. We will be visiting the Valley of the Kings and the temples of Karnak and Luxor and others. After a return flight to Cairo and a final day of sightseeing, I will board my homeward-bound planes back to London and finally Phoenix. Printable details of our itinerary are available on my website.

I will be sharing my daily adventures and hope to include photos, so mark this web address if you're interested in following along. I don't expect to send daily emails or texts when a new post is published, as I don't want to bother those who don't care to follow. Just check every day or two starting probably February 5th or so if you want to keep up. And I'd appreciate any comments you might have.

Public comments from readers on this blog site are allowed, or, if you want to contact me privately, my email is still JayLyons@aol.com. If you'd prefer to text me, I think that my IMessage text app will probably work for IPhone users. I'm also on WhatsApp (JayLyons) and Signal (PAncho) under my phone number.

Thanks for following along. 

Jay

*(City links are to our hotels and cruise ship.)


NEXT: Off to Cairo

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