Pyrenees and the south of France

Pictures of Spain and France!After our visit to Egypt we visited the Pyrenees during a nice trip by car. From the Spanish side we drove over to the south of France and after visiting a number of sites we returned to Spain. Our trip took us past towns like San Sebastian, Pau, Lourdes (yes!), Gavarnie and Bayonne.

The food in France was absolutely delicious. We visited very typical France restaurants with very good food and equally good wine. We saw a lot of nature and made long hikes the the wild, enjoying nature at its best. In Lourdes I got quite a lot of water (you never know) and afterwards we visited the snow. A lot of pictures of this trip can be found in my Spain/France album.

Egypt pictures

Ana riding a camel!Finally online, our pictures of Egypt. A lot of ancient ruins, temples, a lot a lot of hyroglyfs, a few piramids and some pictures of the river Nile including proof that I swam in the Nile.

In the end we did not really select the best pictures but posted almost all pictures we had. Don’t freak out if you suddenly notice we posted around 700 pictures.

Egypt

Egypt proved to be a very impressive place. It is incredible to see the constructions they made 5000 years ago. Huge temples and gigantic pyramids and at the same time precious jewelry with incredibly small details. If make you think twice about the world of ‘progress’ in which we are living.

We started of with a boat cruise over the Nile. A very nice adventure but with a very busy schedule. A lot of days (I was unable to sleep a lot) we got up before sunrise to go on an excursion to visit yet another piece of history. It was nice to see hieroglyphs had been carved in almost all the stones. All around 3000 to 5000 years old, joined here and there by names and dates of about 100 or 200 years old. ‘Piet was here 1843’. I was able to restrain myself and did not add my name to this part of history.

After the cruise we spend a few days in Cairo. The city was very very crowded. There are more people living in Cairo than it the entire Netherlands. In the city center it is always busy. You can clearly notice that the local Muslims don’t really have a positive attitude towards non-Muslims and tourists. Especially girls and woman suffer because of this. They get regular pinches in the ass and get touched at every occasion by the hairy Muslims. As a tourist you should not return the favor with a totally covered Muslima because then they cut of your hands (or so they say).

It was quite an experience! We planned on a lot of excursions from the start, and this was maybe overdoing it a little. A lot of excursions were really very nice, but there were a lot where commerce was clearly on the mind of the Egyptians.

If you get the chance you should definitely visit Egypt. However, if you don’t like chicken and rice be warned because there seems to be little other food available. We made around 700 pictures which I’ll have to look through, so be patient.