Category Archives: holidays + events

Relating to holidays, events, vacations, short trips or maybe just big get-togethers.

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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Check out the PyramidCam

Posted on March 19, 2006 | Leave a comment

So in Cairo they’ve set up a The PyramidCam. You can see the three large pyramids of Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure from a camera set up in a hotel in Giza. Be sure to check out the compare page to see how they differ form other man-made objects in the world.

Remember it’s seven hours later there than it is here, it’s not as impressive when it’s dark.

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Two blogs? Why?!?

Posted on March 19, 2006 | Leave a comment

So I’ve set up another blog called My Trip To Egypt appropriately URLed with http://mytriptoegypt.com/

This new blog is only for posts related to my Egypt trip. Don’t worry, all the Egypt posts will all show up here, I’m just showing them the Egypt category from here (so they don’t see my other posts). When I give them (co-workers/family) a vacation web site I don’t want them getting more than they bargained for…

You may want to poke your head over there, I’ll be showing the local time and weather and who knows what other fun gizmos I’ll find for the margins of the pages (any suggestions?). As of now it’s got the pre-Egypt messages I’ve posted here over the past year but it’ll have more later.

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Egyptian: Pimsleur Quick & Simple

Posted on March 9, 2006 | 1 comment

So I’m listening to the Egyptian Arabic Pimsleur Language CD in preparation for my trip. It’s hard!! I have no aptitude for language but they say it doesn’t matter (I say it does). I’m only on the first lesson. It’s kinda hear what the guy says so I can’t always repeat it, I’ll probably go over that and sounnd like the woman on the tape.

Most of the reviews on Amazon are favorable (except for the person who said there wasn’t enough info on grammer and more in the four hour course) so maybe it’s just me, we’ll see how I feel after a few more hours…

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Egypt and Cairo Maps

Posted on March 5, 2006 | Leave a comment

CairofleximapFleximapegyptSo I’ve got a few maps for my trip to Egypt. I have the Cairo Insight Fleximap and the Egypt Insight FlexiMap. These are regular-type maps that fold out to 26×18 inches but are laminated and contain extra information like: distances, climate, getting around, ten sites you shouldn’t miss and some smaller maps of cities and pyramid diagrams. In addition, the Cairo map has a metro map. These will be really handy during my trip, I think I spend more time in Cairo than anywhere else so these will be great to have.

I got one of these as a gift and the other might have been a gift too or else I bought it with a gift card. A lot of the items I wanted in relation to this trip I added to my wishlist and some have appeared at gift times or I’ve used gift cards that I received. I’ll be talking about them before and during the trip.

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