Exploring Egypt and Germany!

7 May 2008.
Toronto, Canada to Frankfurt, Germany.
17 May 2008.
Frankfurt, Germany to Cairo, Egypt.
8 June 2008.
Cairo, Egypt back to Frankfurt, Germany.
12 June 2008.
Frankfurt, Germany back to Toronto, Canada.

Yes, I am a travel junkie. This obsession (or love of mine) actually started about two and a half years ago. I got offered an internship at a consulting company in Boston (yes, the great city of Bah-ston!). Having never set foot off of Canadian soil before, I was really excited and scared.

My time in Boston was amazing. I loved the city, all the old fashioned houses, the easy going attidudes, the delicious food, the people and culture, and I loved taking weekend trips up to NYC. I loved NYC. Broadway Musicals. You can't get any better than Broadway.

I also went on an academic exchange last year (Jan - April 2007) to Singapore and did a bit of traveling around South east Asia.

I met some pretty awesome fellow travelers and we had a lot of fun exploring the cities and national rainforest of Malaysia (Kuala Lampur and Taman Negara), the beaches and limestone cliffs of Thailand (Railey beach), some ancient ruins and beautiful diving spots of my parents' homelands, Cambodia and Vietnam - just to name the highlights.

Traveling gives me such a high. It's the combination of sights, sounds, taste and smell of a new place. It's like I'm stepping into a story book, or a picture. People can be so different, but at the same time, be the same.

Seeing ancient ruins is probably one of my favourite things right now. This revelation stems from my time spent at the Angkor Wat Temples in Cambodia. It's truly amazing stepping onto the same staircases, doorways, or corridors where people who lived centuries before me once walked.

This is are a couple of my favourite pictures from Cambodia.


Fast forward to now. I have been debating a grad trip SOMEWHERE for a while now. I haven't been to too many places, so I'm just excited to step out off this Torontonian soil and see the world. Cities, castles, ruins, landscape, mountains - you name it.

For the past couple weeks, I've been toying with the idea of a trip to Central America or South America, as mentioned in my first post. After doing some research, my friend, B. and I realized it will be wet season in May, and not a good time for the trip. Sigh. But no fear, B.'s friend had asked her if she wanted to join on a trip to Egypt, and B asked me if I wanted to do that instead.

Egypt! I was super psyched! So we started to look into flights and whether we wanted to book tours or not, stops along the way, etc etc. I also have a high school friend who is teaching there, so we even have a local contact! Major plus ;).

Anyway, I'll stop goofing around on Blogger now and do some actual research. These pictures of Egypt count as research, too, right?

Egypt Villager with his Donkey

Temple of Kom Ombo.

Of course, the Gizo Pyramids.

White Dessert.

Marketplace.

Faleccu's along the Nile River

Photo Sources: John Wardell, Hiro008*, Gari Baldi, MBell1975