Leonard Family Around the World Adventure

Tuesday January 15 th , 2008 I am up early this morning – 5am and work on the blog entries. This morning we must put our luggage outside our doors as we depart. We are to visit the Aswan Dam as well the unfinished oblisk in a quarry before flying back to Cairo. We are taking dinner at the hotel – opting out of the optional belly dancing dinner. It is hard to believe we have been on the road for 41 days. I have not had any news of regarding the house or anything else for that matter – again time is warping it has only been 3 days since the email from Art and Elaine yet it seems to be over a year ago. In Cairo I plan on getting internet access. Another busy day ahead of us and tomorrow is looking large in my mind – Giza, The Sphinx and the Egyptian museum. I am having some difficulty putting all of the detail into the blogs regarding the sites we have visited. I think I will need to go back over the entries I have created and add details – soon hopefully before they are forgotten. Per

Monday January 14 th , 2008 The day starts with a wake-up call at 6 – breakfast ends at 7 as we disembark to take a horse drawn carriage to the temple of Horus. It is a great temple with wonderful reliefs. Pam takes a car back to the ship as the horses gave her a very bad asthma attack. As we are boarding the ship Aria purchases an unfit for the dinner this evening. After we are onboard she realizes there is a piece missing but Hany – one of our guides goes to remedy the situation. We are back onboard by 11 and on our way again. Lunch and afternoon tea. I decide to sign up for the Giza and Egyptian museum portion – they give us a break and only charge for three instead of four. The ship is moving quite slowly with a most other ships passing us. We see a couple of cruisers under sail and the professor tells us they are a very luxurious way to travel the Nile. Aria wants us to return after she graduates high school – just her and I to trek into the desert and camp. I think it is a f

I wake up at 5am -I get to see the sunrise – very beautiful. I do some work and debate paying for internet access – it is very expensive. I downloaded pictures – it seems that we are missing some – I do not see any photos of the Water Palace from Jaipur for example. Nothing I can do about it. I also validated that we had maps loaded in the phone for Egypt – looks like we are good to go. The Marriott we are staying at in Mirage city is very nice. It has a water park with wave pool, great workout facilities, a spa, 5 restaurants and a golf course. The room rate is pretty good but everything else is very pricey. It seems to be NW of Cairo. I wake the girls up at 7am and we start to discuss what we are going to do. Aria takes her malaria pill and becomes ill and I start saving with the razor provided by the hotel but can only finish half of may face before it becomes dull. Ouch – it has been a while since I shaved. I weigh myself 88 kg's – less than 190 lbs – I hope the scale is accura

Sunday January 13, 2008 Some of this morning is in the previous entry. The girls are still asleep and I am getting ready to head downstairs to check on them. My fingers are cold from typing on the deck. This morning we are cruising and it seems a good opportunity for the girls to do some school work and for me to catch up on some work. We are going to pass through a lock later and then stop at a village of Edfu. The cruise on the Nile is very peaceful – I am reminded of the Agatha Christie novel as I walk the decks and meet the 40 other people on the cruise – each with their own story. A couple from L.A – teachers, another teaching couple from Missouri, people from Florida, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, a Professor and wife from NY – they actually give us an unpublished book to read. An Egyptian man married to an America on vacation from Cairo. The girls order cartouches – charms for a necklace with names spelled in hieroglyphics – they are pretty cool. Aria purchases and Ankh from

Saturday January 12, 2008 I am writing this entry (and the previous) Sunday morning sitting on the top of our Nile River Cruise Ship – The King of Thebes. I just watched the sunrise. It was spectacular. We are cruising up the Nile towards Aswan – Upper Egypt. As the Nile runs south to north Northern Egypt is called Lower Egypt and Southern Egypt is Upper. East is Sinai and west is well – desert. We are rabidly closing in on the half way point of the trip. The dates are really blending together – I am glad I am keeping blog's. Each time I make an entry I have to look at the calendar to see what day it is and what day of the week. It is a little chilly on the deck of the ship so I might end up finishing this later. I have so much to write about as we did so much yesterday. It was an exhausting day and a little overwhelming – I am so proud of the kids – they were real trooped being up so early – so much walking and so much to see and learn. Allysha crashed when we got back to