I am in Istanbul, after eighteen wonderful days in Egypt. What an experience. I have thousands of photos and hundreds of stories about that, especially the magnificent tombs.
Just three short days in Istanbul have resulted in lots more photos and stories. That is the Topkapi dagger up above. For now though, I’ll leave off the sights, historical and architectural monuments, art, jewels and treasures, and move to a lighter topic – shopping!
READ MOREI knew before I came to Egypt, that the big, new, state of the art Egyptian Museum was not yet open. I didn’t know until I got here that another new museum had opened in 2021 – the Egyptian Museum of Civilisation.
I visited it with a less than brilliant guide – he just kept reading the signs to me. But that was okay, because I took my time and didn’t really need a guide anyway. I booked this tour at the last minute for my last full day in Cairo. Even though the tour price is higher for a solo traveler, the guides don’t like doing single person trips because they get less in tips and have to talk more.
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I had arranged to be taken to the post office. I had 13 postcards to stamp and mail. Abul, my guide on the day I made this request, complied with good humour. But I have no doubt he was thinking loudly to himself “For this I got a degree in Egyptology?” I figured we go in, we buy 13 international stamps, stick them on and off we go.
Not quite.
Abdul took a number. Next thing I knew, he was standing at the counter – without me. I hadn’t heard a number called. He had suggested that I stay in the car too, which I didn’t. I think he thought things would proceed more smoothly without me. He might have been right.
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Weeks ago, I booked a tour for Saturday to see the Giza pyramids and the Sphinx. Once again, the housesit dictated my plans. I had specified my pick up location for 6 October City, where the housesit was located. When that fell through, I sent messages right away to all the tour operators asking them to confirm my new pickup location at my Airbnb. This was also weeks ago. I had no responses. I sent more messages just before I left.
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I came to Egypt because I was accepted for a housesit in Cairo. Due to my uncertainty about whether I’d even be able to get out of Ecuador, I suggested to the homeowner that he try to find someone else while here was still time. I didn’t want to leave him with no one if my Ecuadorian residency visa and passport issue didn’t get sorted out, and I never arrived. He did get someone else, and even though my issues also got sorted out at the last minute, it was the right choice for me to back away and ensure he would not be left in the lurch.
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Montpellier is in some respects an outlier among cities in the south of France. Unlike Toulouse, Nimes, Avignon and others, it has no Roman or Greek roots. It is a newer city (by the standards of Europe), having been established about 1000 A.D. when the local lords, the Guilhems, combined a couple of villages, built a castle and surrounded the whole thing with a wall.
In Europe there is almost always an interesting thing or two to know about even the smallest and least famous town or village.
The first recorded interesting thing about Pezenas is that in 980, the Vicomte de Beziers gave the town to his daughter Garsinde as a dowry, on her marriage to the Count of Carcassonne.
This is my second visit to Tourbes, a tiny village in the south of France. I housesat Cassie and Nousha here in March of 2016 and the homeowners kindly invited me for a return engagement.
We resume our walking tour of ‘s-Hertogenbosch in the Markt at the Stadhuis (City Hall basically).
Some of my happiest experiences abroad have been walking around small cities or towns, admiring hidden gardens, or exploring narrow streets that sometime give on to beautiful vistas, or spotting little architectural details, like this glowing blue tile on a shopfront in ‘s-Hertogenbosch.
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