After Cairo, Athens has been an oasis for us.  It is clean and the air is clear, it's not ridiculously crowded, the people are friendly and generally stay out of your face, and the food is delicious.  We have enjoyed seeing the antiquities, especially the Acropolis, which we can see from our deck and from the windows in the hotel restaurant.  The new Acropolis Museum is amazing in its architecture, especially the third floor, which mimics the Parthenon with modern steel columns and original and replicas of the scenes from the building.  We had dinner at two delicious restaurants, the first thanks to the recommendation of our cab driver, John--from Jersey!  Today, we took a lengthy bus tour to Delphi, where we saw the remains of the oracle and surrounding temples and agora, plus another museum.  The kids have tolerated the many museums so far, but were happy this evening at dinner when I promised them a museum-free week.  Early tomorrow, we leave for the island of Kea for two days, followed by three days on Santorini.  Other than the transitions, this week promises to be a low-key and relaxing one, so I truly hope to get caught up on some stories on the blog, and especially on posting some photos.  They number in the thousands already, so it takes some effort to ferret out the blog-worthy ones, but Sierra is on the job.  Check back soon!

We're in Luxor now, waiting at a hotel before we leave to return to Cairo this evening.  We have had lots of fun adventures here in Egypt so far.  Two days remain before we head on to Greece.  Internet is spotty, so I will just share one story from earlier this week.  Hopefully in the next few days, I can return to post some more stories and photos.  For now, here's what happened to us on the way back from our desert safari.   We're driving back through the Egyptian desert after an overnight camping trip.  The sun is rising and the temperature is climbing.  At 10:30, it is already 85 degrees.  The odometer on our car reads 446,000 km, but since it hasn't flipped one km in the 7+ hours we've already spent in this car,  I'm pretty sure it has been disconnected.  Our driver is the Egyptian equivalent of a surfer dude.  We already stopped once on our way out to the desert to fix a flat tire, and the driver was fiddling mysteriously with the lug nuts this morning.  We're not wearing seat belts because, well, the car doesn't have seatbelts, and it seems that Egyptians only use seat belts when approaching a government checkpoint anyway.  We are barreling down the highway on our way back to the oasis, still 70 miles away.  The Egyptian music plays loudly on the stereo and our driver is singing and clapping his hands.  Or dancing.  Or undulating.  Suddenly,  we hear an explosive thump.  We all sit in stunned silence as the car screeches and grinds to a halt, while the left rear tire careens across the desert like a giant rubber tumbleweed, followed in quick succession by the hub cap and the brake drum.  Not a word is spoken as our driver hops out to extract the jack and begin elevating the rear of the car and our guide sets out across the desert to retrieve the abdicating tire.  We drag ourselves out of the car, certain that we will be here baking in the desert sun for hours.  Much to our surprise, only 10 minutes pass before our rescue vehicle appears.  He is the "big boss" of the desert camping experience and, apparently, he suspected we may run into a bit of transportation trouble, so, unbeknownst to us, he drove 10 minutes behind, just in case.  Our guide says "OK, we will go in this car" so we jump in while our first driver and a growing horde of his buddies continue staring at the broken vehicle, shaking their heads and yelling at each other in Arabic.  As we get into the rescue vehicle, I can't resist taking a glance at its odometer.  460,500 km.  Hmm.

We're back in Geneva today, watching the snow fall and preparing for the next chapter in our journey.  In a few hours, we head to Egypt, and try to adjust to temperatures 80-90 degrees higher than those we've become accustomed to in the last week.  We had a great time in Kandersteg, where we all experienced a number of things for the very first time in our lives:

• a tour of a genuine Swiss cheese cellar and tasting of rare and yummy mountain cheese
• two rounds of curling (which we won!)
• a four-mile downhill hike (or, for some of us, roll) in near zero-degree weather 
• riding a sledge down an almost half-mile toboggan run

We've loved our snowy adventures and look forward to what lies ahead.  We'd love to share the photos, but we seem to be experiencing some technical difficulties in that regard (seems to be a Blogger-based problem--hopefully they will fix it soon).  We'll be back soon for some more reporting!

Yesterday was a fantastic day out on the winterwanderweg (winter hiking trail).  They have a mind-boggling system of cross-country skiing, winter hiking, and sledging trails in this town, all machine cut, marked, and beautifully maintained.  Yesterday, we walked up one of these trails to the gondelbahn (love these words!), where we rode up to the top of the mountain and hiked down to Lake Oeschinensee.  It felt a little odd walking through the downhill ski runs on our way out to the lake, but that's how the wanderweg took us, and we soon realized that we were not the only ones.  As we descended to the lake, it got colder and colder, to the point that our fingers, toes, noses, and hair were all frozen.  At the bottom, it was about -20 degrees.  (Sounds so much more dramatic in Celcius, doesn't it?).  Once we began the climb back up from the lake, our extremities began to thaw and I no longer worried about returning home without a big toe on my left foot.

The sights and scenery on our walk back up to the ski lift were magnificent.  At one point, we heard a cracking sound and looked up to witness a large and powerful avalanche on the mountain above us (fortunately, not directly above).  The photo doesn't quite do it justice, but the fact that it stopped every hiker, skier, and sledger in their tracks attested to its magnitude.
It will be hard to top the beauty we witnessed on this hike, possibly my favorite day of the trip so far.

 

 

Correction to yesterday's post:  the pasta was not awesome, it was "insane"

Today we successfully made our first transition, from Chamonix to Kandersteg, Switzerland.  With at least 150 pounds of luggage (yes, we know Rick Steeves would not approve, but, hey, we're out here for 5 months!), several inches of new snow on all the streets we trudged through, and 4 train changes, we weren't sure how it would go, but it was surprisingly smooth sailing.  Nary a complaint was heard.
Kandersteg is a beautiful little town in the Swiss Alps, and we were happy to find our apartment to be warm and cozy despite the very cold and snowy surroundings.

Some reflections on our time in Chamonix?

• Favorite meal:  Jonah--the "awesome" pasta with butter at the restaurant on our first day; Sierra, the lunch that appeared in the photo in our last post; Lauren, the fondue at Le Monchu; and Tom, the tartiflette at the Grand Montets ski slopes.
• Funniest moment:  When we walked out behind our apartment looking for the trash cans, only to discover that they were in exactly the spot where we had been dropped off by the Alpy Bus driver on our arrival (and from where we hiked several blocks through the snow trying to find the apartment)
• Most surprising thing:  That there is no noise ordinance whatsoever in Chamonix and it is, in fact, quite common (at least outside our apartment) to walk through the streets every night of the week yelling and screaming, until at least 4 a.m..  Yes, I know this has been mentioned previously, but we still can't quite believe it.
• Cheese.  Lots of cheese.

Today we ascended over 12,600 feet via one of the world's highest cable cars to L'Aiguille du Midi, where we marveled at the panoramic views of the French, Italian, and Swiss Alps.  The scenery was well worth the effort of dragging ourselves out of bed this morning (yes, those partiers are still howling every night, from 10 until 3, at least) and the frozen fingers and toes when we got to the top.  The photos can hardly do it justice, but we've included a few so you can get some sense of the beauty.

After we returned to Chamonix village, we hopped aboard the Montenveres train to the Mer de Glace--"Sea of Ice"--the largest glacier in France.  Before descending into the glacier itself, we stopped for lunch at the Hotel, where Sierra enjoyed this delicious French lunch.  After lunch, we boarded the telecabin for the short ride to the 334 steps down into the glacier.  It was incredible to look across the valley and see the blue ice glowing in the distance, and right before our eyes as we made our way down the stairs.  At the bottom, we entered the tunnel and made our way into the magical blue world of the glacier, complete with unusual human touches including different colored lights and full rooms carved into the ice.  While those things caught our eyes briefly, we were most struck by the natural beauty and enormity of the ice.  As we made our way back up to the telecabin, it was disturbing to see the signs indicating the previous reach of the glacier and to note how dramatically it has receded in only 20 years.  The photo here shows the glacier meandering through the valley, moving at the incredible rate of 1 cm per  hour.  Tomorrow, I hope to post more photos from our visit to the glacier.