Egypt

Itinerary

• 2 days, including Christmas day, in Cairo visiting pyramids, markets and the Egyptian museum.
• Flight down to Aswan and visit to Abu Simbel.
• 2 days relaxing on the Nile on the Felucca.
• Road trip to Luxor and it's incredible history.
• Relaxation in Dahab.

Senses & memories

Smells

• Amonia in the centre of the 5000 year old Step pyramid
• Freshly baked aish / pita bread

Sounds

• Wheelers and dealers on cheap mobile phones
• Blond girls being heckled
• Wailing prayer call broadcast across Cairo's neighbourhoods
• Nile wash from cruise boats gently lapping the felucca
• Novelty of white tourists: "Hello"
• Jest of street vendors
• "Bakesh", nothing is for free
• Relentless tooting of car horns

Visions

• Rubbish dumped along canals
• Dusty cars being fixed in the middle of the road
• Shisha, moustaches, thick coffee, street corners
• Unfinished buildings
• White shark sails of the feluccas
• Dusty weathered sandals
• Staring white eyes
• Predictable blue sky
• Rainbows of colour metres off shore at the Blue Hole
• Sunset glow over craggy ranges in Sinai
• Calloused prayer foreheads

Memories

• Real life being played out on the street
• Token transport checks
• Mr Falafel's dinner for 40p
• One price for Egyptians, any price for tourists
• Smart, prepared salesman: respect
• Hard labour
• Genuine smiles

Feel

• Warm sand, warm sun
• Crunchy aish bread
• Testosterone fuelled drivers: fear.
• Just being pretty bloody lucky.
  

Cairo

Aswan & Abu Simbel


Felucca trip

Luxor & around

Dahab, Mt Sinai & the Red sea

Gabrielle's christmas goodies

Turning thirty!

Marseille

Highlights: One of the most fluent All black test wins I've seen; the number of friends we bumped into on the walk back from the ground; numerous hilltop villages in the Provence countryside; 15 degree temperatures in November.

Regrets: Missing out on bouillobaisse fish soup!

Les Baux de Provence

St Remy de Provence

View from our apartment on Rue de Rome, Marseille

Luberon

Gordes

Roussillon

Cassis

Ice rink at the Natural History Museum

ATP Tour Finals at the O2

We managed to be ringside for three big matches at the O2 Dome in North Grenwich:

Federer def. Verdasco

Davydenko def. Nadal

Del Potro def Federer

Berlin

Some selected pics from our long weekend in Berlin. It was still warm enough to enjoy a few walking tours loaded with history.

The Victory Column overlooking Tiergarten:



Holocaust memorial:

Brandenburg gate:

Currywurst!

Ze Berlin Wall:

Autumn on Bolingbroke Grove

Arsenal 3, Birmingham 1.

World Cup qualifiers

A night in the Bobby Moore Club at Wembley care of GLG to see England thump Belarus 3 - 0.

Bearded Beckham, who's Man of the Match award after being subbed on in the 60th minute caused a bit of a stir, but it wouldn't be football without a stir now would it.

Oxford

So the story goes that way back when, the Saxon's used Oxen to ford the river Thames, giving the name Oxen-ford to the settlement. Not long after loads of smart people must have shown up there and started telling everyone about it.

Over our weekend there , we took a stroll through Magdalen College where cricket loving Lord Denning sharpened his fountain pen. After much speculation we finally figured out that undergraduates are taught in tutorials at the Colleges and this teaching is then supplemented by the University's classes and lectures.






And of course we went punting. In "rivers" that are narrow enough to provide a challenge, the passenger sits with his back to the direction of travel. My main memory of the trip was as we drifted slowly and inevitably toward a group of overhanging trees and Gabrielle saying to me "Watch your head" closely followed by "Oh shit, what I am going to do?"



Backgammon at the Old Parsonage hotel while we waited for our room to be made up.