James' flip off the Ledge

James jumping off the ledge at Wadi Mujib, Jordan. James was a flipping machine. This is only one of his great acrobat moves.

Egypt

This is at Luxor the Luxor temple. Jannica and I visited it at night and the lighting made the place look really amazing. It was a lot cooler at night than during the day when it was just blisteringly hot.














We thought this sign was pretty funny. Imagine, a no honking sign in Egypt. What a joke!









This is Jannica riding the bike that we rented, I am on my bike taking the picture. We rented bikes two days and rode around the Valley of the Queens and Valley of the Kings looking at tombs. That was a great idea even if it was hot. We rode up to the Valley of the Kings, about 10-15 km up hill! It took us a while getting up but it was a great ride coming back. At one of the tombs we had to leave our cameras outside with a guy who was going to "watch" them. Jannica teased him that she wanted her camera to be there when we got out. He just grinned and started chuckling while placing her camera in his robe. He was so funny!


Behold the pyramids at Giza. There are actually nine pyramids here. The larger three, the medium size three in front, and then there are three smaller ones along the right that you might be able to see if you enlarge the picture. What was great about our Giza trip was horseback riding tour we took. We spent about four hours there looking at things and riding around. Very fun.






This is the Bent Pyramid. It is not at Giza but further south. I don't remember the name of the place. It is called the Bent Pyramid because the egyptians began consructing it at too steep an angle and had to change it on the way up. This pyramid is one of about three or four that we say down south and much older than the Giza pyramids. As represented by the Bent Pyramids, the Egryptians were still perfecting the fine science of pyramid construction.



Here we are back at Giza with the Sphinx. We were a little rushed at this point and we only had about a minute (literally) to get up close to the sphinx.












This is the police officer coming to chase us out of the area. The area closes really early in the day-something like four in the afternoon. We had no idea and did not get to Giza until later in the day and that is why we were rushed.











This is one of the tombs that we visited. There are the stairs leading up to the casket area. Behind that on the wall is the false door. Understandably it is called a false door because you cannot go through it (no really a door at all). But, it is said it is the passage way (to heaven, I guess) for the dead. At some point, the dead raises and walks through the door. If anyone has anymore detail about it I would be interested to know.

Roman Amphitheater Report

So, here are some pictures of the Roman "Amphitheater" that we went to while in Amman, Jordan. And here is a link to a news report that Heidi just sent me. Notice the similarity of the trees in the front of the left picture and the trees in the picture from the MSNBC news report!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14666741/

Wow!