Well, hello again.

Just in from NYC. We had a great time- wished you were all there with us. The train was lovely- a nice way to travel, a nice enough way to commit suicide. We spent nearly 24 hours (23 1/2 hours, I think) on the way home. The reasons being that a man jumped in front of a freight train on the way home (not our train) and the line became a crime scene, so we got delayed quite some time. Then, the engineer had to stop driving the train because the Union rules state that he couldn't drive the train for more than 12 hours, so we had to wait for another delay while we waited for a replacement to come. But that was ok with me- on the way home I actually got some sleep. :-)

We stayed 3 blocks from the Empire State Building and a block away from Madison Square Garden. We saw a lot there- highlights include the United Nations, the Empire State Building, Strawberry Fields in Central Park, Times Square, the Capitol Steps and Les Mis, and of course, the Metropolitin Museum of Art. I loved it all. The Egyptian Wing is huge. Unbelievably big. The entire temple of Dendur is inside just one room (of almost 30) of the Egyptian galleries. Oh! Better than a candy store by far! But I still couldn't take it all in- not nearly. I could have spend the entire week there and hardly noticed.

I learned a lot about my friends, though. Very useful things, trips. :-)

thebes // cairo