The Middle East wasn’t originally on our list of places to visit on this trip. The oversight was due to a combination of things:
1. It’s not an area we’d heard a lot about from a tourism point of view and what we had heard tended to focus on wars, bombs and fighting;
2. If we were skipping Egypt because we trusted what was being said on the news – which at several points in the trip we believed we would be – it wouldn’t make sense to ignore the news and head into a “war zone” (see point #1)
But when our perspective on Egypt changed we couldn’t help but think that chances were high CNN was getting it wrong in the Middle East too. Plus we kept looking at each other and saying “It’s right there! How can we not go?” and so we made plans to head over and see for ourselves.
And guess what? It was incredible.
Take a look at the photos from Sharm el Sheikh, Amman, Petra and the Dead Sea for a taste of what was an incredible few days in the region.
We only barely touched it and I’m looking forward to a return trip to dig even deeper.
No scary places, remember? ;)
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Hi Heather, I just came across your blog, mainly because of the word globetrotting, and I find it to be a breath of fresh air in a polluted blogsphere.
I used to live in Israel and my fiance is from Egypt and the reasons you pointed out at the start of this post are common deterrents for visiting the middle east, even among those of us who used to live in those areas. Since I moved to Canada (and I’ve been here for 13 years now), I became scared of the middle east. I last revisited it 5 months ago, and felt ashamed of being so fearful.
Cheers,
Anna.