I headed into Cairo this morning still not exactly sure what to expect. For the most part there is little evidence of the protests that swept the country just weeks ago. The area around Tahrir Square, the center of the protests against Mubarak is still heavily militarized, with tanks and soldiers lining the street near the famous Egypt Museum, and there are army checkpoints in front of most of the more famous tourist sites (although I don’t know if that is new or if if they were put in place after some of terrorist attacks that Egypt experienced several years ago).…
Landed in Cairo about an hour ago. Before you start to wonder if I’ve lost my mind, I did check out all the various travel warnings before booking the flight and it seems with a little common sense travel in Egypt should be fairly safe now. Or at least I hope.
I have a break from French class this week, so I started looking at flights from Geneva, and eventually settled on Egypt.…
Just got back from skiing the Vallée Blanche, one of the world’s classic ski tours. We skied down from the top of the Aiguille du Midi through the Mer du Glace, surrounded by crevasses and seracs.
It’s really frightening to see just how much the glaciers here have melted. The Mer du Glace, one of Europe’s longest glaciers is rapidly shrinking at a rate of about one centimeter and hour. At the end of the Vallée Blanche there are markers showing where the glacier came to in 1980, 1990, 2000, and 2003; the difference between 2003 and now is immense and the difference between 1980 and now is truly shocking.…
Sorry for the brief hiatus; I’ve been dealing with a minor visa fiasco. After about two months and three weeks of traveling through Schengen Zone countries (most of the European Union and Switzerland), I learned that I was only allowed to spend three months in Schengen countries without a visa. Since I am studying in France, I assumed it would be easy for me to get a student visa. However it turned out to not be that simple.…
