To-Do Lists, Weather Reports, Packing, and Flights...

We have been diligently ticking off the tasks that need to be done before we head off on our Middle-East adventure. One of these tasks is checking the weather forecasts for our visit. We expect quite a range of temperatures with lows of single digits (C) in Jordan and possible highs approaching the upper 20s or even 30C near Aswan, the southern most point of our itinerary. 

We ordered currency for Jordan and Egypt ahead of time as our local currency exchange office does not routinely keep Jordanian Dinars or Egyptian Pounds in stock. Here are samples of the paper notes of Egypt and Jordan. Egyptian pounds are worth about 8.5 cents each while 1 Jordanian Dinar has a value of about $1.86.



We will acquire our visas for Jordan at the airport in Amman. Our pre-trip research convinced us that the better option for an Egyptian visa was to complete the process on-line and avoid potentially long lines at the Cairo airport.

One of our spare bedrooms has been converted to a staging area for clothes, luggage, and all the other travel necessities. We are checking to make sure our electronics have been updated and charged and we have chargers, cords, adapters, batteries, camera cards, etc.

We will be in the air quite a bit on this journey: two flights to get to Amman (via Frankfurt), Jordan, one from Amman to Cairo, short flights within Egypt to and from Luxor and to visit Abu Simbel, and two more to get home from Cairo (via Heathrow). Plus, we are planning on one more 'flight' in Egypt - in a hot air balloon to see the sunrise over the Valley of the Kings. And we will might even ride a camel, too.


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