2020 –

Guadalajara, Mexico (February 2020)

The new decade started with a long weekend trip to Guadalajara to visit my friend Joel Sanchez’ home and family. Joel is an excellent tour guide and it was fun seeing where he grew up and to meet most of his ten brothers and sisters and his parents. We also went to the Sunday market in Tonala which is now just a suburb of Guadalajara – not quite as exotic as the time before.

Israel and Egypt (March 2020)

My friend, David Tan, asked me if I’d like to go to Egypt with him. I agreed but my Israeli friend, Yoav, suggested that I come and visit him on the same trip. So I left a week earlier than David and got a wonderful tour of Israel with Yoav. Yoav lives in Tel Aviv which now is like a mini New York City. I toured Jaffa. Then we drove to Jerusalem and saw the wonderful Holocast museum there as well as the Old City. We also walked around the Ultra Orthodox section of the city on Friday night.

On the day we visited the old city we went on a tour of the foundations of the wailing wall. (This was new since I was there 50 years prior). One of the high lights was visiting the BYU Education Center which over looks the Old City and the Dome of the Rock.

After Jerusalem we went to the dead sea and visited the hill town of Masada. Back to Tel Aviv, meeting with Yoav’s family (wife and three sons and one girl friend -soon to be wife). Then we went up to Caesaria and over to the Arab town of Nazareth. Returning to Tel Aviv for me to take a flight to Athens to get to Cairo.

Landing in Cairo I stayed at the Marriott Hotel that is conveniently connected to the airport. There I met up with David and our tour guide for our organized tour of Egypt. We visited the pyramids, the Egyptian museum and was impressed with the vast size of Cairo. Then we took a cruise down the Nile River and say many many temple sites that I had never heard before.

Our group was fairly small and our guides were wonderful. I did manage to catch a cold on the cruise which worried me because at this time the Covid-19 pandemic was starting and countries were starting to close their borders. Thankfully I recovered and made it back on a largely empty flight two days before the borders were officially closed.