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“We need HOW many shots?” Six immunizations, a signed yellow fever card and two prescriptions later we left the doctor’s office. It was going to be worth it, we just knew it! Five years and a few extra booster shots later and we were right. Our time on the African continent yields some of my...
Here's a curious trivia tidbit from U.S. history: In 1786, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams took leave from their Europe-based diplomatic duties and traveled to Stratford-upon-Avon to visit the home of William Shakespeare. Not much was recorded of the occasion, but one fact of their pilgrimage to the Bard's birthplace stands out: At some point...
Cairo, Egypt “Spirit,” wrote the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber , “is not in the I but between I and you.” He wrote this in a 1923 essay translated into English as I and Thou . Here’s another line from the essay: “Egos appear by setting themselves apart from other egos. Persons appear by entering into...
Bethlehem, Palestine On Sunday, CBS's 60 Minutes aired film footage of San Francisco in 1906 . The footage, taken by a camera attached to a cable car going down Market Street, is less than 12 minutes long, and it is mesmerizing in a way a still photo cannot be. We see bodies moving, faces moving,...
Cairo, Egypt When I returned to the United States this past weekend after spending six weeks in the Middle East, I didn’t have all that much in my backpack. One thing I had almost packed but didn’t was a chunk of rock. It was one of thousands thrown outside my Cairo hostel, by Tahrir Square,...
Cairo, Egypt “Right now Egypt is like having a fast pass at Disney. People should come over.” These are the words of Rick Zeolla, the general manager of the Cairo Marriott, quoted last week in a New York Times article titled " Tahrir Square, Egypt's New Tourist Draw ." In that same article, the general...
Cairo, Egypt This past Friday, I was on a hostel roof talking with a Hungarian journalist when a tremendous roar, straight out of the lungs of tens of thousands of Egyptians, swept through the streets and over Cairo’s Tahrir Square . We stood and ran to a better vantage point to see if the sound...
Cairo, Egypt The train rattling down the track as you lay awake in a sleeper car; the call to prayer sounding from a mosque as tropical birds outside your window also welcome the dawn; your name, so uneventfully and mono-syllabically said back home, suddenly turned into a two-syllable masterpiece by a cheerful lady at Lake...
Somewhere in Egypt The Patriarch of Constantinople may have spent some time at Al-Kharga Oasis , but I had to give it a miss. And I really, really hated to do that. Nestorius (c.386-c.451), to simplify a complex issue, was the loser in one of the great theological controversies in Christian history, and so he...
Aswan, Egypt One of the best things to happen to me earlier this month began in the toilet. I was staying in a super cheap hotel in Aswan, Egypt, and the shared toilet was -- well, imagine 40 people who neither aim well nor, because the flusher is broken, flush. Then imagine a front desk...
Cairo, Egypt It may seem incongruent to have a bar song come to mind while walking through the medieval mosques and alleys of Islamic Cairo. But so it goes. The bar song I'm thinking of is the theme to the old television show "Cheers." Here are the lyrics (and the one-minute youtube video , in...
[Note: Each Saturday this month, Vagablogging is featuring self-published travel books reviewed by self-published travel authors. This week, Grant Lingel reviews Planet Backpacker .] Review by Grant Lingel On the back of Robert Downes’ book, Planet Backpacker , there is a caution to readers: "WARNING: Reading this book could cause your feet to wander." There...
[Note: Each Saturday this month, Vagablogging will feature self-published travel books reviewed by self-published travel authors. We start with Robert Downes's review of Two Laps Around the World .] Review by Robert Downes A book of ideas as well as adventure, Two Laps Around the World by Bob Riel offers the sort of insights that...