July 11th starts a new journey for me and my significant other Alissa. We will be partaking in a journey starting in Knoxville ending in Ireland……with a few side stops in Amsterdam, Munich, Rhine Valley, Lucerne, Venice, and Paris.

We’ll im finally in the USA! And currently waiting for customs to pass us and then im the 8th group off.

Morocco was an awesome trip, and I believe it was my favorite country experience. My friends and I decided to take a SAS trip for Morocco, Berber Villages of the High Atlas Mountains Trek.

Day 1: Customs takes a little while for the boat to clear. This is also the first port since embarkation that we have to use the deck 5 exit vs the normal deck 2 exit. For this trip we would be having a box lunch and catching a train to Marrakech. The box lunch included a hard boiled egg, which I think is great for a nice toasty day in Africa. The train ride from Casablanca to Marrakech was quite enjoyable, we had air conditioned compartments and we mostly talked and slept during the 3.5 hour train ride. From the train station we made our way to our nice little hotel. SAS had about 3-4 trips staying at this one hotel, so pretty much SAS took over the whole hotel. We had a little bit of free time before our Moroccan dinner and belly dancer show. So we made our way to the grand square of shopping, where we saw some glorious and interesting sites. Such as snake charmers and monkey men trying to make money with tourists. Shopping in Morocco is a lot like shopping in Turkey, but they shop owners arent as aggressive. WE explored the grand plethora of shops and we got our trinkets and such and made our way back to the hotel to meet up for our dinner and show.

Dinner was quite good, had some Moroccan bread and dips, then a main chicken, and finally a crispy flaky cream dessert. It was quite hot in the restaurant, but it was a good time. Next the belly dancers came out, and many people were dragged out to dance with them.. I was one of them, and proceeded to show off my belly dancing skills. After dinner and the show we made our way back to the hotel and grab some drinks and hung out by the pool for a while then called it a night.

Day 2: We started off this day with breakfast at the hotel and then got in 3 vans and made the 1.5hr ride into the foothills of the High Atlas Mountains. On our way to the mountains we stopped at a little village and grab supplies for our trek. We arrived in the foothills and unloaded the vans and packed up 7 donkeys and 3 mules for our trek.

We started off our trek and walked 2-3hrs through rolling hills of grassland, and then we stopped in an orchard and made lunch. Lunch was rice, bread, and raw vegetables, which was very very delicious. After lunch we hiked for another handful of hours and finally arrived at our first Gite (Moroccan house). We settled in and then explored the village. Getting to know and play with the local kids was a very heart warming and inspirational experience. The kids were quite good at Frisbee. Morocco is the first country where I really got to experience a local family experience. Dinner was a 3ish hour event; first we had bread, then soup, then meat and vegetables. Again the food was very delicious. For our sleeping arrangements we decided to sleep on the roof under the stars. The starts were the clearest Ive ever seen. There were so many shooting stars to be seen.

Day 3: Today started off with a wake up call by a little bit of rain, which quickly woke us up on the roof of the Gite. We squirreled our way down inside and proceeded to have breakfast. Bread, toppings, and hot chocolate were my breakfast. Today is going to be the long day of the trek. We loaded up the donkeys and mules and then made our way into the mountains. We trekked through a handful of villages and made our way up to the tree line and stopped for a snack of Moroccan trail mix (which was quite delicious). After the snack we continued our trek for another couple of hours to our lunch location. Lunch was about the same as the first day, but included cheese, and again lunch hit the spot. After lunch we made our way up past the tree line, into another valley and then back up to another village in the mountains. The second Gite we stopped at was just as a good experience as the first Gite. Twenty minutes after we arrived at the Gite it started pouring rain, at this point in time we played the song Africa by Toto (it seemed very fitting). We then explored the village and played with the kids. Dinner was just as good tonight as it was the previous night. After dinner we played a spoon game; the game involved attaching a spoon on rope to your belt loop and swinging the spoon to put out a candle. This was harder than it looked and took a little bit of patience to put out the candle. After playing the game we hung out for a while and slept in the Gite.

Day 4: Today was sadly our last day in Morocco. We woke up early, had breakfast, and packed our animals up. We started our journey walking along a valley and made our way to a river and crossed it, and then climbed back up to the other side of the valley where some Land Cruisers were waiting to take us back to Marrakech. All in all the hike to the Toyotas took around 2 hours and then the ride back to Marrakech was 1.5hrs.

When we arrived back to Marrakech we had a little bit of free time to grab some food for our long journey back to America. Then we made our way to the train station where we grabbed a box lunch and boarded our train to Casablanca. The train ride wasnt as pleasant as it was the first day, it was extremely hot. The temperatures were hovering around 120F outside and our air conditioned cabins couldnt keep up. After 3.5hrs of fun sweating we jumped on a bus and proceeded to the ship. The first thing we all did when we boarded the ship was to shower, and boy it was the best shower of this whole trip.

Morocco was a great time and I would like to come back some day. Africa is an amazing continent and I am really intrigued to see more of it in my lifetime. SAS has opened my ideas to the world, and has got me addicted to travel around the world. I am not sure what my next step is going to be, but I have some notions and leads that it might land me in Australia or New Zealand.

Id like to thank everyone who has helped me on this adventure, especially my parents for their support of this Journey.

Oh how Egypt was a great time, it was both a battle and an adventure. We got to see a ton of sites and see the land (the adventure part), but It was a battle to keep hydrated. When 7 dollar PowerAde is worth it you know its hot. All of my travel in Egypt will be with SAS; I took a five day trip traveling from Alexandria to Cairo to Luxor to Aswan to Abu Simbel (3 bus rides and 4 flights). Justin, Amanda, and Julie were also on this trip, but many friends were made during the trip.

Day 1: It took a while for the ship to pass customs, every passport had to be stamped and receive a quick trip visa. After we passed customs we made our way to the buses. There were three bus leaders one really good one, another good one, and a horrible one; so we had to make sure we got on the good bus (which we did).

We took a bus from Alexandria to Cairo to see the pyramids; its about a 3hour bus ride from Alexandria. We first at lunch an ex palace which is now a 5 star hotel, this is the start to the same meal I will have everyday. The foods at Egyptian hotels are pretty much all the same, and I got very burnt out on it and buffets in general. The best meals I had was some zucchini soup and a waffle I had for breakfast. This hotel was right across from the pyramids in Giza.

We made our way next to the Pyramids and Sphinx; first we had the opportunity to ride camels around the pyramids. Of course I opted to ride a big harry smelly animal around the desert. After this brief ride around we next had the option to go into the middle pyramid of the pyramids, I again opted for this adventure. Inside the pyramid it was a small shaft you had to climb down to get to the middle, then another small climb to get to where the tomb in the pyramid. We next got some free time to explore around the pyramid; there were a lot of tourist type sellers trying to peddle their goods. It was a little annoying, but this would happen a lot more during this trip. It definitely doesnt help that the economy of Egypt mainly depends on the Suez Canal and tourism. We also got to see the Sphinx, it was a little bit smaller than I was expecting.

We next made our way to the hotel we would be spending the night and preparation for our flight to Luxor in the morning. I believe the hotel we were staying at was a Marriott, which was also a 5 star hotel. We settled in and then met back up at the bus to go see the pyramid light show. The light show was pretty interesting to me, but the best sites were when the pyramids were lit up in wonderful colors. Once the light show was done we made our way back to the Marriott for dinner and then sleepy time. The dinner at the Marriott was pretty much just like lunch, some rice, pasta, beef, chicken and a fish dish.

It was time to go to bed; we had a very early start the next morning.

Day 2: The wake up call today was 3:30am, which was wayyyyyy tooooo early. We knew when we signed onto this trip that it was going to be a lot of long days with not so much sleep, the bus rides around were a great place and time to sleep.

We got to the airport and got our tickets to fly to Luxor, went through two different securities and then boarded the plain for the hour flight. I personally slept during the whole flight, only waking up for the beverage cart to go by. Once we landed in Luxor we made our way to the Valley of the Kings, which was awesome. We got to see the valley, where unfortunately no cameras were allowed. With our ticket we were allowed to enter 3 tombs, but we could opt to go into a 4th. I opted for 4 and went and saw King Ramses 1, 3, 6, and 9. Ramses the 6ths tomb was the best one; it was in amazing condition and had lots of hieroglyphs on the walls.

With the Valley of the Kings behind us we made our way to Queen Hatshepsuts temple, which happens to be the only women pharaoh. This was a very nice site, after seeing her temple we made our way to see the statues of Amenophis III. When done at the statues we made our way to our hotel to check in and have some lunch (again, pretty much the same dishes all over again). We had a little break at the hotel for a nap, and then we made our way to Karnak Temple. The Karnak Temple was my favorite place we visited we visited during this trip. It was so big and made you fee like you were back in the olden time. The amount of the temple left standing is sparse to the actual size of the original temple. The only downside to the Karnak temple was the temperature, it was 130 degrees out, and it was hot as hell.

Our next step for the night was the Luxor Temple, which was very nice and since the temperature was down below the 100s it was a lot more comfortable to visit. The very interesting thing between the Luxor and Karnak temple is that there used to be a 2 mile long road connecting the two temples. This road was lined with sphinxes, on the Luxor side it was human headed sphinxes and on the Karnak side it was ram headed sphinxes. The road was tore up a long time ago, but it is being reinstalled between the two temples.

After the two temples we went back to the hotel and had an enjoyable dinner and time to relax before our next early morning adventure.

Day 3: We got up around 630 this morning, which sounded awesome compared to our 330 am wake up time. Today we were going to be busing our way from Luxor to Aswan. We first made our way to the Temple of Philae, which was pretty cool. This is where I first started considering Egyptian engineers as bad engineers. On the river Nile there are two dams, a high and low dam. These dams were put in place to control the flow of The Nile through Egypt and to create electricity. The temple of Philae was pretty close to the low damn on an island, but when the low damn was created the temple was flooded. To save the temple the Egyptian government had to pile drive pylons into the ground and create a barrier and pump out all the water around the temple. Then they had to move the temple piece by piece to a new island. This isnt the only temple they had to move due to being flooded. To get to the temple we took a rickety boat to the temple on The Nile, this was our first hand experience with The Nile, which is quite nasty water. After the temple we made our way to see the high dam of The Nile, this was a pretty cool site to see. After this we made our way to a pretty swank hotel in Aswan. The hotel is actually on an island in the middle of The Nile. Our next adventure was to take a little cruise on The Nile in a felucca (which is a canvas covered sail boat). Just one word about the felucca on The Nile, they are very slow due to there was absolutely no wind.

After the felucca ride we rested up before dinner and soaked our feet in the awesome pool at the hotel. The pool was about 5ft deep at the deepest but had a very large 2ft deep wading area where the deep end usually goes. After dinner we took a boat from the hotel to the city and decided to check out the local market.

The market was quite an adventure; the bargaining we saw in Turkey was quite different from what we saw in Egypt. This was the first real time we experienced negative hostility towards Americans. We said we were from Canada when people asked. A little saying all the Egyptians would say was Canada Dry, Canada Cool, which is referring to Canada Dry Ginger Ale. We bought some items and during our bartering we were offered drugs. We made our way back to the hotel for some sleep in preparation for our 4th day in Egypt.

Day 4: We woke up early this morning to catch the bus to go to the airport to go see Abu Simbel, today we would be catching two flights. We flew to Abu Simbel to see the rock temples of Abu Simbel, which are considered the most famed monuments of their kind in Egypt. This temple was also not in the original location, after creation of the high dam this and many other temples were flooded. More support to incompetence of Egyptian Engineers. It seems like no one did the calculations for how much water would back up after these two dams were created. Seems like an easily avoidable situation.

After enjoying the temple of Abu Simbel we made our way back to the airport for our flight back to Aswan. After lunch we had some free time and then had the option to visit a Nubian Village. We all opted for this adventure. We started off on a motorboat in The Nile and headed up river to the village. The trip up to the village was pretty interesting when we were going up some rapid areas. We first stopped a sandy beach for people to take a dip in The Nile if they wanted to. After this brief stop we made our way to the village. The Nubian people have their own language from Arabic and were displaced when the high dam was constructed and their lands flooded. The Nubian people are also known for keeping crocodiles in their houses. We visited a traditional Nubian house and got to hold crocodiles if we wanted. I did and proceeded to get peed on by the little beast. We then visited a school were both young and old Nubians learn how to read and write; we also had a little lesson on the Arabic and Nubian languages. After this we made our way back to the hotel for dinner and relaxation time.

Day 5: We woke up early again to go to the Aswan airport to catch a flight back to Cairo to see the National Archaeological Museum. After landing we made our way to the museum, which isnt air conditioned. Lots of Egyptians want artifacts kept around the world returned back to Egypt so they can house them in their museums. I dont believe this should be done, even though I thoroughly enjoyed the National Archaeological Museum it didnt gain my confidence that they could really properly care for all of their artifacts.

At the museum we saw a lot of King Tuts possessions and items found in his tomb. The mummies at the museum were in such great condition, it was amazing what we saw in the mummy rooms. The Egyptians knew how to preserve a body.

With the museum behind us we made our way back to the first hotel we had lunch at and then back on the bus to Alexandria to get on the boat.

All in all Egypt was a very good time, and without the SAS trip I wouldnt have really gotten to see as much as I did. I pretty much saw the whole Nile, and was within like 30 miles for Sudan. Im really looking forward to my Morocco trip in the coming days.

TURKEY!!!!!!! Turkey was great old time, from being in Asia to a Turkish Bath we got to see it all!!

Day 1: We docked early morning in Istanbul. Amanda Casey and I got off the ship to find an ATM, most people this morning had a SAS trip (which all of them I heard werent that great). I then met up with Julie and we semi explored the city and made our way to the Bosphorus and to the spice bazaar. We then had lunch, which is a lot like Greece food, but not quite as good. We then wandered our way back to the ship and met up with Amanda and then went to the Grand Bazaar (4,000 shops and employees 30,000 people). Amanda, Justin, Julie and I all have a Cappadocia trip the next morning, so I didnt stay out too late (just went to a local hookah bar).

Day 2: With an early morning wake up call we made our way to the union on the ship and had some continental breakfast where we got ready for our trip to Cappadocia. We then transferred via bus to the Istanbul Airport where we had a flight to Cappadocia. We landed in Keyseri and made our way to the underground city of Kaymakli (city where Christians hid during the time of persecution), and then we saw the views of the Uchisar citadel. After this we made our way back to the hotel and got ready to watch a performance of Whirling Dervishes. We watched the Dervishes perform their ceremony and then called it a night.

Day 3: Woke up around 8am and made my way to the breakfast buffet at the hotel, was a really good and interesting breakfast. We then made our way to the Goreme Valley and explored ancient rock-carved churches, monasteries and homes within the valley. Next we say the fairy chimneys at Pasabag and visited the town and villages of Avanos, Ortahisar, and Sinassos. After en enjoyable day of exploring we made our way to the airport for a return flight home to Istanbul.

Day 4: Today was our day to see the city of Istanbul, in the morning we made our way to the tram station to Hagia Sofia and made our way to all the sites of Istanbul. We first checked out the Royal Palace, which was huge and amazing for just one man to call his home (besides all the servants). Next we made our way to the Hagia Sofia and then made our way to check out the Grand Bazaar again. In the Grand Bazaar Justin and I got separated from our group so we split up and decided to see the Blue Mosque on our own and then head back to the boat to meet up with people to go out for our friends birthday. We went to Taksim square and hung out at a bar for the duration for the night.

Day 5: Met Alison, Julie, Amanda, Sarah to go to a Turkish bath this morning. We made our way to the tram and got of visit The Historical Bath, which is over 400 yrs old. We decided to go all out and got the luxury bath. I went to my locker room and changed into the towel and flip flops they gave us, and after that I made my way to the steam room. In the steam room I was directed to lay down on a big hot slab of marble. It was so hot and humid in the steam room. Then I got to meet the man who would be giving me a Turkish Bath, or Hamam. He was around 55 skinny, bald, and had a mustache. Then he washed me down and scrubbed off all the old skin on my body and gave me a massage. After this cleansing massage I made my way to get a normal massage. This experience was so relaxing and amazing that Id recommend anyone and everyone to get one at some point in their life. After this amazing experience we grabbed some lunch and made our way to the Grand and Spice Bazaar for some more shopping. When Julie, and Amanda got done shopping at the Spice Bazaar we split up and I stayed around and went looking for a suit. I found a small little suit shop and proceeded to try to communicate with the shop owner. He didnt speak a word of English and we some how worked out a deal on a jacket and pants combo. The shop owner also thought I was from Amsterdam, so I went along with it. After this I started looking for a currency exchange place to convert my last 20 or so Lira, but couldnt find one that was open. I found myself in front of a grocery store with 20 lira to spend, so I got some coke and Nutella and cookies to go with it.

With Turkey over we are finally back to classes for 2 days (not a good thing), which classes are over with for today and I find myself in the library finishing this blog and working on a couple of midterms.

I cant wait for Egypt, going to be on the biggest SAS trip you can sign up for!!!