What started as a whim around a year ago has finally coalesced into a real trip, which I will be leaving on in exactly one month. This of course feels like an auspicious day to start a blog about the trip. But first some introductions are in order: I’m Abby and I live in Chicago with my three lovely roommates. My current job in a school library allows me to have the summers off, so this I year carefully saved up lots of money (well I guess a lot is a relative term, but it did take a lot of work) to make it possible for me to travel this summer.
The Plan:
Starting off with one of my best friends and current roommates, Jess, I will head east across the Atlantic to the city of London. After a few days there, Jess and I will head north, with a quick stop in Oxford (I really want to see the pub that Tolkien hung out in, because I am that big of a nerd), to the Lake District. There we will walk around, maybe do a bit of boating, etc before catching another train to Edinburgh. Our main reason for wanting to get there is so that we can walk around surrounded by people who have Scottish accents. Jess is quite good at accents, so we hope to help her morph her current Willie from the Simpsons accent into something a little more realistic. After Edinburgh we train back down to London where Jess will head home (probably taking a good amount of my stuff with her) and I will fly on to Johannesburg, South Africa.
There I will be meeting up with the H family (good friends from church) who lived in Southern Africa for many years. There we will do some safaris, some hiking, some relaxing and hopefully have lots of fun for 2 weeks.
After we fly back to London, the H family will head home and Zeb (one of my oldest friends and a proud member of the H family) and I will continue onto Egypt. This part of the trip is still somewhat unplanned, but I know that we will be doing the following things: seeing the pyramids, going to the Egyptian Museum, seeing the valley of the kings, snorkeling in the Red Sea, climbing Mt. Sinai and hopefully not dying of heat exhaustion caused by tempuratures of 105-120. Yes that is what we get for going to Egypt in July.
On the last day of July, Zeb and I will head back towards London but we managed to arrange a 7 hour lay-over in Milan Italy. So hopefully there will be some quick gelato eating and maybe some cheese before getting our flight back to London. After arriving back home in the states, several of my friends and I will be flying out to Oregon to see a dear friend from college get married.
Which then of course lands me back in Chicago just in time to savor the last few weeks of summer before school starts up again. Any questions?
2 responses so far ↓
Sasha // June 5, 2007 at 8:36 am |
Hey Abby,
The trip sounds exciting, especially Jo-Burg. I have a friend in London (considerthewind.blogspot.com) who’s fun to hang out with and who you should email. And there’s a new Montreal zine called Ms. Guided (www.msguided.org) that collects stories of women travellers, which seems like a great place to send your stories.
Have a great time!
Zhou Bo // June 19, 2007 at 7:52 am |
Sounds like quite the traveling. No qualms about all that gas? Are you offsetting? Sounds like a fun trip, though. I expect you’ll be able to cook something Egyptian by the time I visit you in Chicago in the fall!