Italia

Back in Italy for 4 days of client visits.
Monday: Rome
Tuesday: Rome-Venice-Trieste-Rome-Genoa.

Wednesday: Genoa, Livorno/Leghorn
Thursday: Genoa, Monte Carlo, Nice

Tuesday was a bit nuts, but it worked. After a spring-ish day in Rome on Monday, Tuesday was bitter cold with lots of wind. In Trieste the Buro winds off the Alps were blowing up to 70mph. Taking off from the airport in that was ..... "exciting". Today at least we didn't have to fly. A couple of owner visits in Genoa to start. In the square just outside the offices of a couple clients is one of the old Genovese city gates (see attached). If you look at the building to the right you'll see a very small stone/brick house in front. This is where Christopher Columbus was born.















Spent the afternoon driving 2hrs south to Livorno (also known as Leghorn in English) in Tuscany. The autostrada runs between the coast and one of the Apennine mountain chains. These are some very respectable peaks. In the 2nd attached pic you can see that the peaks are snow capped. The white down low is not snow, but rather some of the famous Italian marble quarries.














Got passed by a police car chasing someone on the highway. The police car was a Lambourgini. Only in Italy.

Livorno is a neat old seaport. Lots of old fortresses around the city and an extensive canal system like venice. It was just clear enough to see Elba island on the horizon, but couldn't quite see Corsica out there.

TWG
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Via Blackberry

Oslo

Finished the business day with a touch-and-go visit to Oslo before heading home. Attached is the harbor in downtown. Cold and more snow falling. I like all the traditional sailing vessels, but this was a really quick look today as the wind was blowing in off the fjord. Next time I'm bringing boots.
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Via Blackberry

Too Clever

Bathrooms in Bergen, Norway airport.
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Via Blackberry

Stavanger

Cold, unusually white day in Stavanger, Norway. Being right on the sea it's very unusual to have snow in Stavanger despite the latitude. Usually get a few inches now and then that disappears quickly. There's now better than a foot on the ground and it hasn't been above freezing yet this year. So much for global warming.
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Via Blackberry

Flying Low II

~200 mph on the Eurostar coming back from lunch date in Paris (I know, I know - but you can actually do it). Nothing much to look at, but the speed is incredible, and what a civilized way to go. 2:15hrs door to door. Not sure what format the attachment is, but it's a video.
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Via Blackberry

Wrap Up

Finally on the plane home. Had one more chance to have a look around Cairo yesterday. We had a client move a meeting in the afternoon to a dinner. So we had a couple hours to kill in the city. We went up to the Citadel, which is a fortress from when the Turkish kings were ruling. We had a look in the Mohammed Ali Mosque there. It is Byzantine in style but built in the mid 1800's (see picture). Quite something. It is high above the city and the air was clear enough to see the pyramids many miles away.














From there we paid a very fast visit to the Egyptian Museum, which is mind-boggling. Every square inch is jammed with antiquities. It would take days to do it justice and they only have a fraction of the collection displayed. All you can do is shake your head as you just can't take it all in that this is the real stuff. The facility itself is pretty run down. I don't know where they get the funding to preserve all this - clearly they don't get enough. Saw the royal mummies, the highlight of which is Ramses II, who is excellently preserved. However the ultimate highlight is King Tut's treasures. These are just incredible for not only quality, but massive volume. Of course the best are his golden coffins and mask. I doubt we could reproduce the craftsmanship today.














So Cairo is well worth the visit for the history. Driving on the roads is unreal. I wouldn't make the moves in a video game that people do for real here. I saw a car wrap itself around a tree and a truck smash into a barrier in one day. That doesn't mention fenderbenders. The other negative is the airport. While Egypt Airlines has a beautiful new terminal, the other airlines are relegated to a dump. So your first impression of Egypt is that you've just arrived in the 3rd world - which is actually the case, so maybe a good reminder! Everyone raves about the trip of a couple days in Cairo, then a quick flight upriver to Luxor and a 4 day cruise up the Nile to Aswon - taking in the Valley of the Kings along the way. Most of the passenger boats were built to ABS Class. So there are trade-offs, but I'm sold.

TWG
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Via Blackberry

Originally sent December 11, 2009

Bucket List

Another check mark on the bucket list.














Have finally reached Cairo, the last leg of this week's mideast junket. We finished our last meeting this afternoon a bit early and dinner got pushed back to 8pm. Hmmm, what to do. Discovered that (along with me) our Country Manager for Egypt has never been to the Giza Plateau. Where was our last meeting? Giza! Turns out our Cairo based surveyor, Esmat El Komy, is a real amateur Egyptologist, so how could I say no to his excitement of taking the boss of the boss' boss' boss sightseeing for an hour. So we headed through the slog of Cairo/Giza traffic up to the plateau (it is really surprisingly high above the surrounding area around the Nile) to the pyramids. This is one of those classic places where you see the pyramids from across the Nile and they look big, and just keep getting bigger and bigger as you get closer. Unfortunately, we arrived at 4:15 and the police had the road up to the plateau blocked off as closing time is 4pm (keep in mind sunset here is about 4:30). Damn. However, I once again underestimated the tenacity of ABS surveyors. Esmat was in his own car in front, followed by the Country Manager, Regional VP and myself with our driver in the car behind. While the police were enthusiastically waving us off, Esmat was out of his car talking to one of them. 5 minutes later one of the cops joined Esmat in his car as an escort and they pulled back the barricades and we were off up the hill. Hmmm, interesting.














The beauty of our timing was that we had the entire Giza Plateau to ourselves. I mean we were the ONLY ones. Way beyond cool. This brought us up to the foot of the Great Pyramid of Khufu itself (the one withOUT the remnant of the limestone facing still clinging to the peak - the pyramid of Khafre - perspective is very deceiving up there trying to tell which is the biggest pyramid). You can easily see both the entrance blasted by the Arabs when they first raided the tomb and the higher original entrance of the Egyptians. We were short on time otherwise you can go into the pyramid. We then drove around the Great Pyramid, alongside the pyramid of Khafre and the smallest of the 3 major pyramids, the pyramid of Menkaure, and up to the top of a rise to look back over the 3 main pyramids as the sun was setting. Truly awesome. The most difficult part was trying to keep it in scale as there isn't anything around to indicate just how huge these things are. The Great Pyramid is 450ft tall, compared to 555ft of the Washington Monument, but of vastly, vastly greater volume.



















































From there we drove back down the rise and down between the Great Pyramid and Khafre's pyramid, past the shelter covering the Sun Ships of the Pharaohs that have been excavated alongside the base of the Great Pyramid, and down the hill to the Sphinx. He sits in an alcove in the rock he was carved from looking down the plateau to the city. Watching the sunset behind the sphinx and the second pyramid was staggering. We were all just looking at each other with really ridiculously pleased-with-ourselves glances. 25 brownie points to Esmat.







































The cops were very happy to have given this special out-of-hours tour to Obama's special representative to Egypt.

So that was my whirlwind, 30 minute tour of Giza. We will be coming back here for sure.

TWG

Originally sent December 9, 2009