Walk like an Egyptian

The day after my 36th birthday, I was contemplating another year of life as I boarded a plane headed to Egypt with my beautiful wife, Kathleen. (What better way to contemplate such important matters.)

Our first stop was Cairo. We explored the Pyramids of the Giza Plateau, wiggled our way inside the Great Pyramid, shimmying our way deep inside, up into the death chamber. It's an incredibly special place to find yourself—another great place for further contemplating life. We also explored the Citadel and the Khan al-Khalili market—the oriental bazaar of fable, where gold, silver, brass and copper glitter enticingly in cave-like interiors, and sacks overflowing with exotic spices fill the air with their pungent scents. And let's not forget the Egyptian museum. As we stood gazing at one of King Tut's masks, we felt intoxicated by its appearance. It looked, well, exactly like you would imagine, but only way better. Hyper-real. Mythical. Magical. Strolling further through the museum, I had to laugh when our guide pointed out the boy king's wooden carved toys. There they sat beneath glass—monkey, cheetah, sparrow. Why did I laugh? I pictured the boy-king being interrupted during some rather imaginative play time with monkey, cheetah, sparrow, to sentence someone to death for some minor offense, such as taking a break from pyramid building.

Then we threw caution to the wind and headed for Sharm El-Sheik, on the southern most tip of the Sinai peninsula for relaxation, diving and a brush with the biblical past. It was extremely beautiful there. Dusty desert mountains melting into turquoise seas filled with a dizzying array of fish, painted with colors usually only revealed in dreams. In other words, these fish were mindblowing. What about the caution, you ask? Well, there were bombings 2 weeks prior to our arrival in Dahab, only 20 minutes from where we were staying, and other bombings, just a short stroll away from our hotel the year before. However, with a little research we discovered that all the bombings coincided with holidays and there were no holidays during the time we were going, so we felt o.k. Plus, security was at a maximum, but very unobtrusive. It was nice, and everything was peaceful.

The diving blew us away, but the highlight had to be coming face to face with a sea turtle. We're talking centimeters. I could have kissed the turtle. He swam along with us for 15 minutes.

We also hired a jeep to take us out into the desert to St. Katherine's Cathedral at the foot of Mt. Sinai. Yes, the place where Moses brought down the 10 commandments. In fact, the Burning Bush still sits at St. Katherine's. The jeep also brought us out to view a real oasis. There it was among the miles and miles of sand—a plot of palm trees and grass.

Well, these are just some of the highlights. Egypt is the kind of trip that will change your life. It changed ours, and for the better!

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Dublin: Home to Writers, Pubs and People with a Great Sense of Humor

Although we've enhanced our cultural experiences by living overseas, some things never change. Yep, that's Todd, peering down the chest of Molly Malone in Dublin, Ireland. We found out later that our intuition about this woman was right. She's known locally as "The Tart with the Cart." She's featured here with her famous wheelbarrow of cockles and mussels. The other statues here which the Irish have also humanized with irreverent nicknames are: James Joyce or "The Prick with the Stick"; Oscar Wilde or "The Fag on the Crag"'; the Spire or the "Rod up to God". We enjoyed our quick trip to Dublin and would highly recommend checking out the tourist website maintained by the city for anyone planning a visit. Here's a link: http://www.visitdublin.com. We took advantage of their free iPod downloads for walking tours of the city. Very cool! Todd was also able to score us tickets to the play, "Waiting for Godot", at the Gate Theatre. Which was a good balance to what we saw the night before, "Saturday Night Fever". By the end of the weekend, we were able to get our fill of high and low brow culture, historical touring and a few pints of Guinness. Cheers!