As the year is about to end, I thought I’d take a look back at 2023 and remember the highlights and lowlights of the year. This was one of the busiest travel years I’ve ever had. I spent a total of 85 days away from home, and I visited five countries, all of them for the…
I’m getting ready for another Mexican road trip. You may recall my last road trip, to see the Pueblos Mágicos in Zacatecas and Aguascalientes. This time I’ll be hitting the states of Querétaro, San Luis Potosí, and Guanajuato, and there are twenty Pueblos Mágicos on the itinerary. And Luis and Taco will both be along…
Luis and I took advantage of a long holiday weekend (Día de la Revolución Mexicana) to visit the Pueblo Mágico of Pátzcuaro, in the state of Michoacán. We booked an Airbnb just two blocks from the Plaza Vasco de Quiroga, the center of the town, and we brought Taco with us too. We all had…
Are you going to Europe for the first time? Or maybe thinking about your first independent trip after a few tours? If so, here are some great European travel tips based on the Twenty Top Topics I’ve seen people ask about on travel forums, plus stuff I’ve learned based on personal experience. Maybe you’re going…
My original plan to visit Petra was as part of an OAT tour that was primarily in Israel. When war broke out last week, I was in Egypt on another OAT tour. I had to scramble to make alternative plans, and I ended up booking two nights at the Esperanza Hotel in Wadi Musa. Instead…
I flew from Cairo to Amman on Tuesday, arriving around 3:30 pm, found my driver, and made the three-and-a-half hour trip to Wadi Rum. I arrived after dark, just in time for dinner at 8pm. And after a little gathering around a fire and a cup of tea, it was time for bed.
The highlight of our visit to Aswan was our visit to Philae Temple. There were other things I have to write about, especially the hotel where we stayed. And I have some back story to share.
I planned to write about Abu Simbel last night. But all the planning I did for this trip turned into a big snafu yesterday, as war broke out in Israel, and I spent the evening reworking all my plans. I’ll write about that later. For now, I’m trying to stay positive, so I will focus on…
We started the day today in Daraw, a small village with a busy market. The rest of the day we just sailed to our final destination, Aswan. We’re still on the boat tonight; tomorrow we return to dry land. We didn’t see any sights today. Other than the market at Daraw, and a visit with some…
We started the day yesterday visiting a craftsman in Fares before continuing upriver to Kom Ombo. The temple there offered some new things to see as well as enhancing our understanding about the images carved in temple walls. Then in the evening Mo gave us a great talk and Q&A about Islam.
Yesterday we started the day with a visit to Besaw Island for what OAT calls “A Day in the Life.” Then we continued south to Gebel el-Silsila, the site of an ancient sandstone quarry. It was a low-key day in terms of seeing sights, and that was okay with all of us, I think. It’s…
Yesterday was a light day activity-wise, but there was one big highlight: our visit to the Temple of Edfu. This wasn’t the most visually-stunning temple we’ve seen, but it is the most intact temple ever discovered in Egypt. So it did not fail to impress. In fact, the story of the Temple of Edfu is…
