New York, New York

Elise needed to go to New York for two weeks of special treatment and physical therapy for her back...so we made it into a family vacation!

I flew with Elise, Nate, Will and Meredith to New York on Sunday evening, while Dave was already in DC for the Bain Partners' meeting (unfortunately I had to miss it this year!).  We stayed at the Algonquin, a great boutique hotel just a block away from Times Square.  We had a suite on the top floor, which the kids loved.  For breakfast, we went every day to the Red Flame Diner next door to the hotel - awesome!  Even though New York is the most expensive city in the US, it's still cheaper than Switzerland...and of course the serving sizes in America are much bigger!  Elise went to the clinic every day, but we met her for an hour for lunch.  In the meantime, the kids and I took some tours of downtown and uptown Manhattan and walked around Times Square and midtown.  We saw the Gazillion Bubbles show, which the kids loved, and we ate at Ellen's Diner where the waiters, all Broadway hopefuls, sing to you!  Elise really loved that.

Ellen's Diner on Broadway

United Nations

Times Square

LDS Temple (even mentioned on the Big Bus Tour!)

Dylan's Candy Shop

Dave arrived on Thursday and we all went to see the show Cinderella on Broadway.  It was excellent!  The actors were so talented, the set and costumes amazing, and the choreography great.  The writing was very clever - definitely not the traditional fairytale, but so much fun for kids and adults alike!

Elise finished at noon on Friday, so we went all together to the 9/11 Memorial and then on a boat tour of the harbor, including the Statue of Liberty.  Saturday we went to the Empire State Building, doing the NY Skyride first (a ride like Star Tours at Disneyland), then taking the elevator up to the 89th floor observation level.  After we came back down, we were taking some photos in the lobby and someone behind me asked if we wanted a photo of our family all together.  I turned around and it was Emmanuelle Bouret!  The Bourets are our friends from Switzerland.  They're french and moved to New Jersey last summer.  We met up with them in Santa Monica last Christmas (while they were there on vacation and we were visiting family), and then we ran into them in New York City!  It was unbelievable!!!  Clara Bouret is Elise's good friend, and they chatted as if they had never been apart.  I could not get over what a coincidence it was - it was so fun to see them and catch up a bit.  The grandparents were visiting from France, so that's what brought them to the Empire State Building.

NY Public Library

That afternoon we went to Central Park and took a carriage ride.  The younger kids went with Dave to FAO Schwartz, and Elise and I went back to Times Square to do some shopping!  The shopping is incredible in New York.  There is anything and everything you could ever want there, and it's all just a few blocks away.  We even got to go to Benihana that evening - which everyone found a lot of fun!

I found it funny that the kids kept saying how friendly the people in New York are.  It's all relative, as people in Switzerland are very reserved and formal, so in comparison I guess it's true.  I do think the fact that I was walking around midtown Manhattan with 3 little kids during the day had something to do with it - it was quite novel for people to see.  I used to go to New York over 15 years ago for work and always thought it was not so nice, dangerous, etc.  But it has really been cleaned up - it's beautiful (and we had nice sunny, although a bit cold, weather).  The city really is nice, much safer than I remember, and friendly.

We took the subway, the bike taxi, and a yellow taxi.  All through the week the boys kept seeing limos and asking if we could ride in one.  Of course we said no.  For our return to the airport (I returned on Sunday night with the 3 younger kids while Elise and Dave stayed for the second week) we reserved a car service from the hotel.  And, guess what pulled up - a limo!  Apparently they weren't sure they could fit all the carseats/ boosters in a standard car, so they sent a limo.  Nate and Will had a great time trying out the soft drinks and playing with all the light, music and window controls...a fun finish to the trip.

Elise and Dave stayed another 4 days and has a nice time in the evenings - they saw Wicked on Broadway (which Elise absolutely loved, and Dave said exceeded his expectations).  They ate out at Morton's and even had some extra time to shop (it's so easy to do in New York!)

Egypt!

For Easter holidays we had a great trip planned to see the tulips in Holland and visit Heidelberg, Bruges and Brussels, Luxembourg and Strasbourg on the way.  But is has been freezing in Europe! So two days before we were scheduled to leave on our trip, we were driving around in the snow, and Elise and I started talking about how we should just cancel our trip and go somewhere warm.  It started off as a joke, but by the time we got home we were really serious...I called the travel agent to see if she could find anything in a warmer climate!  She narrowed it down to a couple of options (Abu Dhabi was the other option), and we went to Egypt!

We flew into Cairo and spent one day just outside the city at the pyramids in Giza, then flew down to Sharm el Sheikh on the Sinai Peninsula.  It was incredible!  What a great vacation.

First, Cairo is a city of 22 million people - it is absolutely huge!  The one-hour ride from the airport to Giza was quite interesting!  There was every type of vehicle (and sometimes animal) on the road, no seat belts (with children on laps in the front seat), and no real traffic rules.  Every space on the road was filled!  And people were walking across the road (the freeway).  It was quite an adventure for us, but seemed completely normal for the locals!

We stayed at the Le Meridien hotel right across from the pyramids.  As our van pulled into the hotel, it was checked with mirrors underneath the car.  The hotel was nice, but not very full.  The revolution in Egypt has of course significantly impacted the number of tourists coming to visit.  That night we ate in the hotel restaurant, which was very nice, but the electricity went out for about 20 minutes as we were finishing eating.  It's apparently somewhat common there, but it was pretty exciting for the kids.  The staff there was very friendly and accommodating - it's clear that the drop in tourism has significantly impacted their economy, and they need all the business they can get.

One thing that was very interesting was the number of houses/ apartment building that were under construction.  It seemed like they were building everywhere.  We later learned from our tour guide Rasha that as long as the home is still under construction, the person doesn't have to pay taxes.  So they just keep building up!  Some buildings look like no one must live there, because they're still being build, but you'll see satellite dishes on top or on the side (the Egyptians love their football!), so you know someone is living in part of it.

The next morning we got up early and set out on our tour with our guide Rasha and our driver.  We saw the 3 large pyramids and the smaller ones as well.  We went on a camel ride that takes you around behind the pyramids so you get the best view of all of them.  These camels were the biggest we have ever ridden.  Dave and Meredith went together, Elise had her own and Nathan wanted his own too, so William said he did as well.  But once he got on that big camel, he reconsidered and asked me to come on his camel with him!  As I began to climb on, the camel stood up...with William yelling!  I made it on and we set off on our camel journey.  It really was a lot of fun!  The camels took us to the second pyramid where we went inside.  One pyramid is opened each year for visitors to go inside.  It's a small, low tunnel until you get to the center of the pyramid where the tomb once was (all the riches have long been  removed from the tunnels).

We then went to see the Sphinx.  It was amazing that is was right there.  There was a young girl who our tour guide knew who took all these funny photos for us.  The kid learned that the Sphinx's nose was chipped off by the French army under Napoleon's who used it for target practice (William noted that this was not Napoleon dynamite!).  There weren't many people there - again our tour guide said that before the revolution began, this place was absolutely packed - you could hardly squeeze in to get a photo.

Our next stop was at a fragrance shop run by Bedouins.  They were very hospitable, giving us special Egyptian drinks and showing us all their fragrances and oils (many of which are the base for famous perfumes in the West).  We ended up buying a few.  We then went to a gift shop where we got some silver and other souvenirs, then to the papyrus shop where we saw how papyrus is made and got a customized tree of life painting with our names in Egyptian.

We then made our way to the center of Cairo to pick up another tour guide.  Again, the driving was crazy, although we did get to cross the Nile River again...we were near Tahir Square and the guide asked if we wanted to drive through, so of course we did!  We saw the burned out building of former President Mubarak.  It was interesting that throughout our trip we definitely got the sense that the common person in Egypt would prefer to have Mubarak back - that the revolution hadn't gotten them what they had hoped.  And the women were certainly concerned that they would lose some of their current freedoms under the new Muslim Brotherhood ruling party.  It was incredibly interesting to hear about this first-hand.

We finally made it back to the airport and flew on Egypt Air to Sharm el Sheikh.  It's a new city, as Egypt just got this part of the Sinai Peninsula back from Israel in 1967.  We stayed at the Park Hyatt which was absolutely beautiful!  And, again, it wasn't full because tourism is down since the revolution.  The beach was great - and there was a coral reef right in front of our hotel (all the other diving boats came to this reef!).  Dave, Elise and I went on the intro dive.  Even Nathan was old enough to go on a dive with the instructor!  We had a lot of fun at the beach, in the lazy river pool, and on the waterslide!  The breakfast and dinners were also great - our favorite spot for dinner was the "souk" where you received gold coins to purchase your dinner!

We met some fellow Mormon families on the trip (Elise spotted one of the girls wearing a CTR ring on the waterslide).  It turns out they work for the US State Department at the embassy in Cairo.  It was quite interesting to hear about their experience and how life is as an expat in Cairo!

This was an incredible vacation - we're so lucky we got to go.  And it felt like such a bonus since we hadn't planned on it until just a few days before we left!