Rome Pics

Here are some pictures of my trip to Rome in April 2007. We had 5 days off of work in Egypt so me, James, and Alisha decided to take a quick trip to Rome. We rented an apartment near the Vatican and saw pretty much most of the center of the city while we were there. There was a lot of walking, eating, drinking, shopping, and looking at old stuff. Being Easter it was relatively busy everywhere we went, especially the Vatican on Sunday and Monday.

Here we are the door to the apartment waiting for the lady with the key:
Looking left from the door, towards the Vatican:
Looking out our back window at a wall that connects the Vatican with Castle Saint Angelo:
Went for pizza and Peroni right away:

Piazza Del Popolo:

Rome Pics

Inside Saint Peter's Basilica:
Outside:
They were busy setting up all the chairs for Sunday's services:

Inside again:

Rome Pics

A statue somewhere in Rome:
The Pantheon:

Trevi Fountain:

Rome Pics

Piazza Navona, I bought a painting from this guy:
Piazza Navona:
Foro Romano:

Rome Pics

The view from Palatino:
A fountain in front of our apartment:
Fori Imperalli:
Palatino:
Piazza Venezia:

Rome Pics

Lunch near the Colleseum:

Inside Colosseo:

Gladiators outside Colosseo:

Rome Pics

Italians sunning themselves on Isola Tibernia:

Dayun

I've told my mom, so now I can tell you guys... I went on a trip to Suez a few weeks ago on a motorcycle hunting trip. I enlisted a couple Egyptians that I work with to be my escorts and negotiators because everything in Egypt is cheaper if you're Egyptian. Suez is about a 40 minute drive north of work, so we burned up there in no time. We checked out a couple "motorbike" stores and finally settled on one in run an old shrew'ish dude. There wasn't a lot of choice, and nothing over 150cc's, whish is probably better for my safety sake (reference motorbike incident in Vietnam). After a bit of haggling I picked up the beaut below for a skinny 3800 Egyptian Pounds, or roughly $675US. Not too shabby. I took the boys out for a celebratory seafood dinner (best meal in Egypt so far). Part of the deal was delivery to the resort where we're staying. So we went back to the joint, loaded the bike in a pick-up (after helping change the rear left tire), and then followed the guy back to the Stella Di Mare (home).

After smuggling it through security, it stays neatly parked right outside the main hotel entrance. Security keeps a close eye on it, and in return I let the security guards take it for a burn around the parking lot every once in awhile. This has been a good arrangement so far except for the guy who ran it into a wall on the 3rd day I owned it. Just scratches though, give it character and a story!

I mostly use to get back and forth between my hotel and the golf course... short shopping trips... and to show off to any Czech girls hanging out front of my hotel.

Roma

Has anyone told you I'm going to Rome this weekend? Well, it's true. We get April 5-9th off and a couple that I work with (James & Alisha) thought it would be a good idea to check out Rome. They asked me to tag along, and it was either that or golf for 4 days straight. So off we go. I booked a flight on Egypt Air from Cairo to Rome for $366 USD. Not too shabby... We've also booked an apartment, so the weekend is shaping up. The apartment is in the middle of Rome, right in the heart of the city where most of the cool stuff is.

I'm looking forward to it. It'll be a good break away from work and the monotony of life at the Stella Di Mare.

Any news from anyone out there?

More Random Pics

Here is a Cairo traffic jam:
Anyone for some Grilled Viagra?
Sprite, cool refreshing lemon lime flavour:

Random pics

Here is one of the Egyptians working with me... we ordered lunch from the site cantina. It consisted of 2 heads of lettuce, 2 bowls of beans, 2 bowls of veggies, 2 bowls of cheese, french fries, and bread (pitas). All of this for 6 Egyptian pounds, or roughly $1.20 Canadian:
This is a repeat of golf, but I can't delete it because Blogger sucks:
This is a mosque in Cairo I took while driving by:
This is people gathering outside after work to get into the buses/cars back to our houses...

Sorry sheesha

Sorry about the lack of updates recently, it's been over 2 weeks now! To date nothing terribly exciting has happened though so I haven't felt the need to rush updating the blog. But stuff has happened, so I will get to it shortly!

To tide you over, here's me and a group of people at the Sheesha bar in our hotel. We head up there around once a week to relax, drink Turkish coffee, and smoke some sheesha. In the instance below though I brought the rest of a 40 of Canadian Club I brought over with me...

Do you like our little hats? They're Turkish, not Egyptian:

Mom, this doesn't count against our "no smoking" agreement:

Stuff!

My shipment finally arrived here... almost exactly 3 months since I packed it in Brisbane, and 6 weeks since it was supposed to leave Calgary. Frustrating, but what can ya do. The more you complain to these people the longer it seems to take.

Main thing is my clubs are here. I've already acquanted myself with them, so hopefully I can get back into the low 80's I once was when I was in McMurray.

O & O

March 9, 2007

Another weekend, another 36 holes of golf… I bought a membership at the course here and might get my money’s worth faster than I than I thought. Originally today the plan was to play a round in the morning and then hit the beach but it only got to about 27° today… I didn’t think that was warm enough for the beach so I stayed on the course. Good thing I did too… A couple of the guys at work have a villa near the 16th green so as we finished up there we drove the carts up and hopped the fence where we were greeted with an awesome bbq, “southern” style. Loyd, who doesn’t golf, had spent the day cooking steaks, bbq, chicken, jambalaya, cornbread, and beans. Decidedly the best meal I’ve had since I’ve been here. It was a welcome sight too because I think all the local food I’ve been eating had caught up to me a couple days ago. After too much food, a couple beers, and some ropin’ lessons from Ricky (one of the many benefits of working with Texans) we hopped back over the fence and finished our second round of the day. I shot an 80 and 86 today… Not bad considering I’m still using rental clubs because my shipment hasn’t arrived yet. It’s supposed to be here tomorrow (exactly 3 months since I packed it in Brisbane), but I’ll believe it when I see it.

A few people from work went to do the pyramid tour and such this weekend… I was starting to feel bad about hanging out on the course so much, but I figure the pyramids aren’t going anywhere soon. Besides, I worked 64 hours this week and didn’t feel like battling the masses in Cairo. I think I’ll eventually spend one of my ‘rotations’ touring the Egypt, the Nile, pyramids, etc. I’ll spend the next few months brushing up on my Arabic… hah!

Anyways, hope all is well with everyone… drop me an email and let me know what’s new. Phone calls are tough due to the time change and our weird work sked (Sat-Thurs)…

Later,
Ry

1.5 Days of Sun, Sand, and Divots

Here's a few pics from the weekend (Thursday & Friday)... This one is Calle, Jim, and Andrew. Calle is the golf pro at the course, Jim is one of my bosses, and Andrew is a South African building a boat at the port here, it's a 100 foot super yacht being built for around $60 mil.
Here's a couple of da boys on the course:
The course... a little flat in places, but a challenge nonetheless:
Me teeing off on #1: