Category Archives: Egypt 2006

Information about my trip to Egypt. I’m keeping a separate site but with some extra Egypt stuff/widgets. It’s at http://MyTripToEgypt.com/

Egypt facts

Posted on April 12, 2006 | 1 comment

Egypt map from wikipediaIt’s about four times the size of Michigan with about eight times the number of people. Although I think Michigan is about 40% water and Egypt is less than 1%. Click the map for a detailed view of the country (I’ll be traveling from Cairo to Aswan and spots in-between).
Total area: 1,001,450 sq km = 386,559.7 sq miles
Land only: 995,450 sq km = 383,857.7 sq miles
Water only: 6,000 sq km = 2,316 sq miles
Border countries: Gaza Strip, Israel, Libya and Sudan
Population: 78,887,00

More info at the CIA World Factbook Egypt page and at Wikipedia.

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I got my new camera

Posted on April 9, 2006 | 2 comments

So I got my Canon Digital Rebel XT 8MP Digital SLR Camera (with an 18-55mm Lens) and I really like it! I’ve wanted it for a while but it’s the upcomming Egypt trip that inspired me to finally purchase it. (This was also one of the items on my 101 in 1001 items list so you can read a little more about the purchase itself in it’s completed entry over there.) So I got it with the 2GB card (and a spare 512MB) and the last few days I picked up a mini memory reader, a case, a filter (mostly to protect the lens) and one of those things with the rubber band around the lens to hang onto the lens cap so you don’t leave it anywhere.

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Jet Lag Calculator

Posted on April 8, 2006 | 1 comment

So on my local news tonight they were talking about this Jet Lag Calculator (needs pop-ups turned off). It asks you a half-dozen questions and gives you recommendations on when you should expose yourself to light (bright lights help) and when to avoid it (dark sunglasses help to avoid light). Kinda interesting, I may give it a try…

For more tips go to the British Airways Jet Lag information pages.

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Couldn’t fix it…

Posted on April 5, 2006 | Leave a comment

So I’ve complained before about my long route to JFK airport in NY from Detroit (via Atlanta). So today I took a trip out to the airport (DTW) to see what Delta could do for me. Janine was very helpful, I find they are way more helpful in person than on the phone (plus they print you out your ticketing information, which I like). We had pretty much narrowed my best options down to going to NY the day before and spending the night (which is an option I would have considered). So we canceled the tickets and then realized that my tickets were bought in a way that she couldn’t substitute them (actually I think she could have but it would have been only $12 credit). But then she had a problem rebooking the original flight. So we (she) called somewhere else, three somewhere else’s actually, but she finally got someone to answer and they fixed me right up! I failed that mission but it was worth a drive on a nice day (and $5 for parking). I’ll bug the travel group once more (maybe twice) and see if I can get someone there to fly me in the day before.

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Another Podcast Test – The long way to JFK

Posted on March 23, 2006 | 2 comments

So I’ve got this podcast with the enhanced images working!

Two kinds of podcasts:
this is the “better” enhanced AAC podcast (for iTunes, iPods and Quicktime).
this is the mp3 podcast (for everything else).

The enhanced file is a AAC/MP4 (m4a) file so you probably need an iPod or iTunes (or Quicktime) to see the images. The MP3 will just be on it’s own for any software/hardware player.

I now have both a Enhanced RSS Feed and a MP3 RSS Feed set up.

(If you get goofy characters you’ll need to save it to the computer first, sorry. This should be fixed, but you never know…)

I apologize to those using feed software, this (and the feed from the next podcast or two) will be goofy as revise and work out the bugs…

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The Crummy First Day of My Trip

Posted on March 22, 2006 | 1 comment

Dtw atl jfk flightSo while I don’t have the tickets I now have my flight arrangements. To put it mildly the first day of my trip is going to suck. I’ve got a direct flight from New York to Egypt (5800 miles) but I have to get to New York (JFK) from Detroit (just under 500 miles). Here’s the sucky part, to get to JFK from Detroit they are flying me via Atlanta, GA so I’m going 1350+ miles instead of 500 miles, plus it’s probably an extra half traveling to do all the connections. Now I’m not a travel expert (or a geography expert) but it just seems odd (see the picture) that there isn’t some better way to route me less than 750 miles out of the way. Next time I’m make that part of the reservations myself and pay the extra for two different airlines one way or something.

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My Tickets!

Posted on March 20, 2006 | Leave a comment

So I got an envelope from the travel agency today. This is the one that’s supposed to have the tickets for my flights in it. Did you see that, I said supposed to? Yes, there were no tickets in my envelope. Nor was there a receipt for an eTicket of any sort in there either. How annoying was that?!? And of course I didn’t see it until after they closed for the day. I see this as being one of those crisises that make me crazy until a few days before the trip leaves.

Of course they’ll tell me this is normal that they don’t have them yet, but the confusion is easy enough to solve: just don’t include the memo that says they are in the envelope! At least include my flight info (I see that’s on-line, but that’s another story). I didn’t see a name badge in there either which is listed as mailed (but it might have been mixed in with the luggage tags, although they weren’t pre-printed, I’d assume the name badge would be).

And in the envelope there was this carrying case for your ticket (but no ticket) that just screamed “I’m a tourist”, I don’t know if I’ll actually use it. They sent me some other little gift thing like that before (I want to say some kind of wallet). Send me something useful, like a plastic power adaptor and a list of WiFi hot spots!

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My Travel Company

Posted on March 20, 2006 | Leave a comment

So I’m traveling with Overseas Adventure Travel (OAT) on the EG3 Egypt tour. There a part of Grand Circle Tours. We will go to Cairo, Luxor, Aswan and a Nile Cruise.

(I hadn’t mentioned those specifics before).

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