“Traveling – it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller,”  Ibn Battuta.

Will you ever forget grade school geography books with glossy vivid color photos of the pyramids? Stimulating dreams of exotic societies, pondering feats of impressive engineering and the mysteries surrounding the ancient people who built them for the Egyptian pharaohs who expected to become gods in the afterlife.

I sat transfixed one chilly morning on the bow of our boat motoring from Aswan to Luxor – the photos appear to be from Biblical times. At this point in my travel life, I am besotted by raw culture, ancient civilizations which haven’t seemed to have changed in hundreds of years.  And of course, the entrée – the history, the pyramids and the sphinx, and the ancient burial tombs in the midst of twenty first century life. 

Egypt is safe for Americans, I was welcomed by everyone and invited to pose in photos with locals – tall blondes are infrequent! The food is delectable and very healthy; I will never again eat pita bread in the U.S., equivalent to cardboard after snacking on hot from an oven pita bread used to scoop up an abundant assortment of garden-fresh mezzes.

Farmers piloting donkey carts overloaded with the most beautiful enormous vegetables and fruit come to the cities at dawn, in the mix of traffic, it’s a stunning fusion of moving vehicles, flowing and weaving.

The Journey of Egypt will never be forgotten!