Egyptian Travels
A few quick disclaimers: we saw so many things and tried so soak in as


The Egyptian travels have been completed officially! Rachel and I flew out of AZ the same day that Candice and Joy were going home for good, so we had a good last night in AZ with them. We had a long lay over in
e English and say some crazy stuff which makes it fun. We hit a FREAKIN CHILI’S and I ate myself sick. I couldn’t move for about 5 hours-it was both miserable and horrible.
Tom, his friend Jackie, and his parents got to the hotel about 3am from spend all day there. We were hot and hungry so we went to Johnny Carino’s and got one of every appetizer and milkshakes for a late lunch. We then with and saw the famous Dina belly dance with an Egyptian band at the Intercontinental Hotel. We had dinner there before the show and it was basically the same as a fancy Azeri dinner with the additions of cocktail shrimp, pita bread and tons of humus. I would like to make a side note here that I am against the chickpea in every aspect FYI. I just don’t get the attraction to it what so ever.
Dinner started at 10:30 and Dina came on around 12:30 after a horrible lip syncing bad performed. We had stage side seats (me up front obviously) and the place was pretty empty. Dina put on a really good dance show for about an hour with 4 costume
changes, so tribal dancers, some local flute type instrument player, a good singer/MC, and a really good band (this one drum guy made the most intense faces at Dina the entire time which was hilarious). The highlight of the show was sadly not when I got up and danced with her-it was never offered. To pay me back for that she danced up right in front of me and put her hands on the outsides of her breasts and shook them right at me. Picture a huge smiling Ashley at this moment.
The next morning we got up and toured the Giza Pyramids. These things were massive. We went inside one of them. It actually wasn’t that special besides the difficult climb up and down, and the fact that you were inside a pyramid with over 2,000,000 bricks over your head. We had a hilarious tour guide that spoke kinda like Yoda and who’s tag lines were “are you happy”, “welcome back”, and “look, look”. He made the hot and odd trip well worth it. We walked around the outsides of the other pyramids (3 big ones and 9 smaller ones for the Pharaohs’ kids as well as small graveyards for the workers who built them). We went over and checked out the Sphinx after that which was re
ally cool. It is a weird feeling being around things of that size, age and historical significance. After those were finished we showered up at the hotel, rented a van to haul all 9 of us and our luggage to
rse on the way out of
We got to good to complete it and the sunrise was gorgeous. There is a little Greek Orthodox Church at the top that had a little service going on that was really cool. After the long hike up we all decided to take the easier camel path back down. We then went to St. Catherine’s Monastery and walked around. There we got to see the Burning Bush that God spoke to Mose
s from. It was hanging off the building which surprised me. For some reason I had always had it in my head that it was a little bush on the ground. From
night. We got a hotel room for a day and spent a relaxing day on the beach, in the pool and hitting a couple of local bars (Madga, one was a pirate themed bar but lacking in actual pirates sadly).
We all loaded up and took the turbo ferry across the Red Sea and then had to hook onto a bus convoy to get to around. It was less than 150 miles away from where we hit land, but we had to stop 4 times to pick up more buses for the convoy. I’m not sure if they do this actually for needed security or just to “make you feel safe”. That afternoon we toured
’t enjoy that part too much. They had some amazing statues they had excavated around
We finally gave in and got a tour guide to take us to the Valley of the Kings, Valley of the
0 freaking sons (another 100 daughters), but they can only find tombs for 50 of them so far. I mean, take that Wilt Chamberlin and Shawn Kemp. We then headed over to Valley of the Queens which is much smaller, contains Nefertari’s tomb (off limits), and is much smaller/less complex that the
r long camel ride around the west bank at sunset and a delicious Italian dinner at our hotel. The kids finished the night off with some beers at an Irish Pub and some dancing.
The Kniolas and Jackie took off the next morning to head back to I could have walked around their the entire day if it wasn’t so hot (it wasn’t even that bad actually, the sun just beats you down after a while). We had a low key night with McDonald’s and horrible American movies on TV.
We decided to join another bus convoy and set off to visit
Our last day in Egypt consisted of me, Tom and Ron having a Father’s Day round of golf next to the Pyramids of Giza (very cool to do but a crappy golf course), lots of pool time, and SPORTS CENTER followed by early Sunday U.S. Open golf-that was sooo good to watch even though I was dead tired and kept nodding off. We all flew out after mid-night and headed back our separate ways. Ali joined me, Tom and Rachel going back to AZ while mom and dad headed back home to
This trip was incredible if you couldn’t tell by the blog. We all had a blast and it was so cool to see such amazing architecture, carvings and history. It’s not every day you get to see one of the original wonders of the world. Thank you so much to Mom and Dad and Mike and Terry Kniola for putting up with all of us and for helping us fun such an amazing trip-we REALLY appreciate it and I am very grateful. Jackie and Ali, I’m glad you guys could catch a glimpse into me, Tom and Rachel’s world as PC Volunteers and hope you ladies had fun tagging around with three idiots such as ourselves. You can also check out Jackie's pictures on Snapfish at
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