Amber Travels Locally

I've apparently become terrible at updating on my travels when internet connection is limited. Sincere apologies to anybody who wanted to hear about my trips in the last 2 years. Due to multiple commitments and restraints at this point, I've been confined to local travel. However, I'm still taking a much needed adventure.

At 9pm tonight, I'm headed North. Where to? I'm not sure yet, but I have a hunch there is some hiking in my future. I'll hopefully be updating with some beautiful pictures by this time tomorrow.

September 25-26: Sharm to Cairo

After rinsing off the salt water - I had to check out, and was trying to leave my bag at the reception when a friend of the hotel guy came over and offered me a ride with his friends on a glass-bottomed boat. It was amazing. Gorgeous corals, beautiful fish, blue water, and a nice breeze.

I had gotten to know the host and his friend pretty well, and I didn't really feel like paying for a ride to the train station, so I agreed to go see old Sharm by night. Also, my train wasn't leaving until 3am, so it worked out. We went and toured the markets, saw some beautiful waterfalls, visited a shisha place, etc. It was nice to get out of the tourist area for a bit. However, there are pros and cons. At the restaurant, they wanted to treat a lady right, so they hosed down (literally) the bathroom so that I could use it. As I was leaving, I noticed the wall only went 3/4 of the way up, and above it, was a gorgeous clear view of the Sinai mountains. :)

The bus was good - comfortable - and of course with some funny experiences. ex: there was an adorable little 2 year old ahead of me who would not stop crying. His parents popped him up over the seat and he stopped crying, and started looking at me googly like I was an alien.... All in all, the bus ride was about 7 or 8 hours... putting me in Cairo about 8 hours before I had planned to be there because I couldn't find a guide and so couldn't climb Sinai. C'est la vie, n'est-ce pas?

I was dropped at the side of the road in Cairo. Those of you who have seen Italy or Morocco with me? Nothing compared to Cairo. Finally, I found a nice couple who spoke some English and could point me in the right direction. Eventually, I found the metro, rode it to my stop... and realized that I needed to call my host, but was in a smaller part of town (think suburb) where public phones are harder to find. One of the controls at the metro came over to help me though, and eventually my ride came to meet me.

In the meantime, I got to people-watch for a while. Everyone is very excited to meet an American... especially one who knows a solid 5 words in Arabic. :) The general mode of transportation here is the microbus which is basically a 15 person taxi that leaves once it is full - or overfull. Sometimes, they have no doors, so you'll see people just standing on the running boards holding on. These cost on average 12 U.S. cents per ride... or maybe 40 cents if you have to go to the other side of town. Also, the people are incredibly friendly. Some have other motives, but for the most part, everyone wants to practice their English, help me, or get to know what's going on. It's been quite overwhelming due to the size of the city, the slight language barrier, the heat (ha), and the very different culture... BUT, it has been wonderful. :)

The thing I'm having the hardest thing getting used to? There aren't many public trash bins, and I can't for the life of me just throw my stuff on the ground (They have people who come and sweep it up and take it away every day) so I may or may not have a bag full of trash that I'm just waiting to find a place for. Silly American.

September 25 - Sharm-El-Sheikh: I'm sweaty.... but lovin' it.

I've landed in Egypt, and boy, is it hot in the middle of the day. It's already 100 degrees (and I just found where I'm going next is going to be about 110).

Getting here was interesting enough. We landed, I bought my visa at the airport (it's a very pretty sticker), and proceeded on to try to find my luggage. Somehow, my sleepsack managed to disappear during the flight. Strange. Everything went fine except that in my hurry to avoid the attention of the border patrol, I forgot to get some cash.

Enter: mini-adventure. :) I asked a security guard where I could get cash, and apparently there is no place once you've left arrivals, but he hooked me up with a taxi driver. The driver SAID he knew where my hotel was, but turns out... he didn't. That just meant I got an awesome tour of Sharm while we looked for a cash machine (One we stopped at - the bank owner told me it was empty and to go elsewhere) and the hotel. Eventually, after 3 or 4 security crossing and a few phone calls, we made it.

As it turns out, I got a really sweeet deal. I payed 18 euro instead of 50, and so I didn't expect a private room with fancy towels, and a gorgeous balcony... with rooftop terrace, private restaurant, catered breakfast - you get the idea. It's pretty cushy here. It's kind of funny though to see goofy old (OLD) British guys walking around in Speedos though... "where can I play crick-ket?"

I was pretty exhausted so I just took a quick walk around to see all of the live music and Sufi dancing before hitting the hay for the night. This morning, I took the opportunity to go wading in the sea. It is so clear that I can see all of the beautiful rainbow fish just swimming around my feet. It was unbelievable! Like, surreal. Nemo's alive! (And so am I!)

Truckin' along...

So, after 7 hours on a bus, 5 hours in Chicago, 1 hour on a train, 3 hours waiting, 8 hours by plane, 1 hour waiting, and finally 1 hour by bus, I'm just now waiting to board my flight to Egypt.

Those of you who have read the blog or travelled with me before will understand when I say this trip is off to a good start. To begin, it was pouring on Wednesday night when I went to catch the bus. People had warned me about the people on the megabus (they weren't that bad), but nobody warned me that the emergency latch would break on my window. Keep in mind that essentially all the walls on these buses are window. Every time we'd drive by a semi or anything else that created the slightest bit of a wind tunnel, my window wall would fly open... you know... for easy escape or something. This is when I knew for sure this would be a good trip. :) They couldn't fix it, so about halfway through (in order to keep the kid in front of me from falling from a second story window, I sortof figured out a way to keep it shut most of the time.

We arrived early in Chicago, but thank God for bakeries. I found one that opened its doors at 6, and sat down for a couple hours to wait for the sun to rise and plan a few last details. Then it was off for a nap in the sun at Millenium park before catching the L out to the airport.

The rest went pretty smoothly, until this morning when we landed pretty early in London. I did a little begging and the driver of my transfer bus was nice enough to let me on without paying to change my ticket, so I'm a happy camper. :) England, outside of downtown London, is beauuutiful. Rolling hills, mossy roofs on adorable brick buildings and streams all over the place. I may just have to consider coming back here sometime, but now - Off to Egypt!

Once in a lifetime?

So, life has taken another U-Turn, and I'm about to be on the road (tracks, water, air) again. I'll be leaving on Wednesday, September 22 for a tour of Egypt, Jordan, and Israel for a few weeks. Yes, I am aware that some unpleasant things have been happening in that area since I bought my tickets, but I'll do my best to be safe! I am pretty excited to see the "Holy Land", practice some language, and hopefully make some new friends along the way.

I know that I somehow managed to miss blogging all of Turkey on my last trip, but hopefully I can do better on this one! If any of you have any suggestions, recommendations, warnings, must-sees, etc., PLEASE feel free to share them. There's a lot that I have yet to learn!

The land of Adrenaline: Switzerland May 12 and 13

We took the flight from Nice to Basel, Switzerland and arrived around midnight at the train station. We tried to wander around and find some dinner, but quickly realized that Basel was not exactly full of night life, so we settled on ice cream at mcdonalds. Blech. We had to accept it though because this was going to be our home for the evening. We curled up next to some bums on the benches and tried to get some sleep even though it was pretty stinkin' cold. It was definitely a big change from the temps in the French Riviera.

We took the first train we could catch into Interlaken and tried to get a little more sleep on the train. We arrived at the station and tried our best to follow our directions to the hostel, but it turns out they are absolutely awful and we walked about 3 miles in the wrong direction with our bags. Whoops. Finally, we made it to the hostel (and were greeted by the guard: a huge saint bernard), but along the way, we passed hundreds of punks teens and preteens carrying cases upon cases of beer. We were so confused until we realized there was a HUGE punk rock festival going on the weekend we were there. Luckily, we really had no problems with them the whole time... it was just counter-stereotypical of Switzerland for me.

Even though we had only managed about 4 hours of sleep each, Megan suggested we go canyoning on this first day since we couldn't check into the hostel yet anyways. We were able to sign up and ended up only being in a group with 2 other people. After climbing into 2 layers of wetsuits, wetsuit socks, shoes, and cap (we were going to jump down glacial waterfalls), as well as a helmet and harnass, we were ready to go. We took a van up to the top of this amazing gorge and started our trek. We did everything from jumping off cliffs and waterfalls, wiggling down caves and rock waterslides, and rappelling down mountainsides all while seeing views that very few people will ever get to experience. It was amazing, if not a bit terrifying. They always had one of the guides jump first to make sure we wouldn't be impaled on a rock or something. If they got injured, they would climb back up and try to find a different way to jump so that we would be safe. Really... it was a HUGE rush.

They gave us some munchies and stuff afterwards and Megan and I ditched out to get some famous swiss cheese fondue at a cute local restaurant. Then, it was time to pass out.

In the morning, we found a cheap scooter rental - and even though neither of us had ever ridden - we decided to check them out for 3 hours with intentions to picnic high up in the mountains. Well, we got on and followed a suggested path into a valley that was supposed to be filled with waterfalls, and we got what we expected.... probably a dozen waterfalls over a hundred feet high just feeding into glacial rivers on both sides of the road. It was amazing. Megan and I decided we could wait to eat and instead took a new path up into the mountains and saw the super stereotypical swiss mountain villages with the cute wooden houses at the base of the mountain with fresh water and blue skies all around. We made one final little trek down to the big lakes in hopes to take some cool reflection pics, but there was too much wind so we just got a bit of scenery.

Then, it was back to the hostel for lunch, killing some time walking around the area, and heading back to the train station so we could catch our flight to Turkey. While I think Morocco has some of the best people in the world, I think Switzerland may have taken the trophy for the most beautiful scenery. :o)

Monte who? Monaco: June 11

So we hit up Monte Carlo and here's the quick and dirty of the trip. We missed our train and played cribbage on the ground outside the train station for about an hour waiting for the next one. Not a good way to start the trip.

Monaco has tons of underground tunnels and I never knew where I was going to come out.

There are lots of huge buildings built into the cliffs along the water, and you can pretty much see the entire "country" from the beach.

Hiked up the many stairs to the palace which turned out to be pretty mediocre, but there were some good views from that high in the city.

The Monte Carlo casino is not nearly as large as I had expected, but super super fancy. No flashing lights and all high roller tables. Plus, you have to pay a fee just to enter so we hit up the slot machines near the entrance just to say we gambled a bit.

We made it back to Nice and chatted with Simo a bit before catching a bus to the airport where I found out my bag has grown to 19.4 kilos... or about 45 pounds. Oops.

Still breathing!

Hey guys, just an update to let you know I am alive. :-D I've just been pretty much without internet since I arrived in Turkey a week ago. I will give a real update on the trip as soon as possible! (Monaco, Switzerland, Istanbul, small village, etc.)

Watch out for the waves! Nice: June 9 and 10

We got up early to try to catch a faster train back to Nice in the morning - it turns out there is no such thing. So - we ended up on the train for about 6 hours again. On the plus side, while we were buying a couple things in Ventimiglia, Italy on the way back, a cute little fruit vendor thought I was French, we chatted a little bit, and he gave me my peach for free. :)

When we finally arrived in Nice, we hadn't booked a hotel. We were wandering up and down the streets checking for availability when a little man asked us what we were looking for. It's super common for people to offer non-legit rooms to people on the streets so I told him we didn't have much money and wouldn't be able to stay in his rooms. As it turned out, he was the manager of a few hotels. He was impressed with my French too - woohoo. Anyway, he brought us to one of the hotels and instructed the concierge to only charge us half price, take care of us, and give us good advice of what to do around town. We checked in, and all was well. :)

We wandered down the streets looking for dinner since it was around 7 pm already, but most of the shops were closing. We ended up ducking into a little sandwich shop and the owners happened to be from where? You guessed it - Morocco! We talked a bit, and Mohammed invited us out to the bars with him. We told him we didn't want to drink, but would meet him later if he wanted. We just wandered around for a while and then the three of us met up to go grab some fresh squeezed orange juice and again hear another perspective on the social problems in France. He walked us back to our neighborhood and sent us on our way.

In the morning, we decided to just hang around Nice and relax. First we had a little picnic lunch in the city. Then, we searched out the Russian church, which was pretty, and ended up really just taking a nap in the grass nearby for a while. Then, we went to go find the chateau. It was on the other side of town, so we ended up walking by the beach for quite a bit. The waves were huge and the colors were amazing. Finally, we made it to the 358 (yes, I counted) stairs up to the chateau in the mountains. We had a great view of the city from up there. Then, it was off to find some dinner, and going to bed eeeearly so we can go to Monaco tomorrow morning. :)

Rio who? Cinque Terre: May 7 and 8

We got up early to catch one of the first trains from Marseille to Nice. No problems there - it only took a couple hours. Then, we had to transfer for a train to the border of Italy: Ventimiglia. That also wasn't so bad... maybe an hour and a half. Great. Then, we had to take the regional train to Cinque Terre.... for 5 hours. I think I'll be content to avoid mass amounts of public transportation for a while after this trip. So anyway, we arrived in Riomaggiore around 5pm, checked into our hostel, and went off in search of dinner since we hadn't eaten all day on the train. We found a cute little restaurant and got some gnocchi with traditional Ligurian pesto. It was DELICIOUS! :)

We spent a couple hours just exploring the city after that.. hiked up a random trail and found some waterfalls, turned down an alleyway to find an old church and apothecary, and came across little old ladies hanging their laundry out to dry in the sea breeze on our way back. Even though we were in an 11 bed room on our trip, we turned in early because we hadn't slept much and knew we would need energy for the next day.

Intermission to the dreams: some of the roommates come in at 3am, loud as ever, after drinking wine on the beach all night. They talked about nothing in particular for a good hour or so before finally passing out. On the bright side, they pointed out the fireflies in our room. That was the first time I'd ever seen them. :)

In the morning, Megan and I woke up pretty early to hike the trails. We started in Riomaggiore and quickly made it along to Manarola where we bought a little bit of Focaccia for breakfast while we started the hike on to Corniglia (including the 380 stairs up to the city). We explored each city a little bit along the way. I had stayed in Corniglia last time I was here, so I knew of a good deli where we bought some salami, bread, and fruit to have a picnic lunch along the way. The hike from Corniglia to Vernazza is my favorite with gorgeous views of the cliffs, plants, and crashing waves. We stopped in a little secluded place to put on more sunscreen ( didn't want to take any chances after Marseille) and eat our lunch. Then, it was onto the beasty hike to Monterosso. There were SO many stairs on this trail... at least a few hundred up and down the side of the mountains. After 12km, and going up and down about 600 feet from sea level at least 4 or 5 times, we made it to the beach in the last city. We drank some water, ditched our stuff on the beach and hopped into the Mediterannean! It was so cold at first, but felt amazing after our long hike.

We finally headed back to Rio to shower, grab some pesto pizza for dinner, and just hang out with some of the roommates for a few hours before going to bed. In the morning, we'd have to get up early again to catch a train back to France.