The Great Pyramids of Giza | Egypt Travel Blog: Day 2 (Part 15) 01D19

Giza Pyramids & Sphinx, Sakkara Tombs, TiTi Pyramids, Steps Pyramids

Egypt Travel Blog: 10 DAYS Egypt Explorer - Felucca Cruise & Red Sea

Giza Pyramid Complex

Today’s itinerary is full of activities and sightseeing and at night we will be leaving for Aswan. Let’s start with the Pyramids of Giza.

These are the 3 most famous nearly 4000 year-old pyramids that are the last remaining of the ancient Seven Wonders of the world. The Giza pyramid complex holds the Great Pyramid of Giza, the Pyramid of Khafre, the Pyramid of Menkaure, and the Great Sphinx of Giza.

The desert plateau is surrounded by other small complexes from unfinished or broken tombs, ruins from the temples, and smaller satellite pyramids.

The Great Pyramid was the tallest structure made by humans until the Eiffel Tower was completed in Paris, France in 1889.

Giza Pyramid complex is located in Giza, a bustling suburb of Egypt. This is 13 kilometers from downtown Cairo and 8 kilometers from the Nile. Because my hotel was in Giza, it was not far from my hotel.

I thought the Giza Pyramid complex was located in the middle of the desert, but its location has Giza city on one side and the desert on the other side. The view of Giza city in the background from the pyramids looked very beautiful. It has that ancient feeling.

To enter the Great Pyramid, you need to climb up quiet a few steep stone steps to the middle where the entrance passage is located on pyramids and there was always a line of people waiting to get in. 

Entering was not included with my tour. I didn’t purchase the additional ticket required to get inside. Instead, I took my time to walking around the pyramids with my 2 other female tour mates from Canada and Hungary.

I will talk about the surroundings of the Giza Pyramid Complex in the next post.

UK Government Set To Pay Motorists To Go Green

Electric Cars, Hybrid Cars, And Green Cars

First Published Date : April 11, 2009

Although the United Kingdom has often been pointed out by environmentalists as a country that “could do better” in terms of green initiatives, it does have a not insignificant Green movement, including a party which has tended to poll in fourth place in recent elections behind Britain’s “Big Three” parties. It may be in recognition of the green movement’s efforts that the governing Labour party has hit on its latest initiative – a plan to subsidize motorists who buy electric cars.

Although there have been similar initiatives elsewhere in the world, this is the most eye-catching effort yet by a United Kingdom government to put green issues at the heart of the agenda. Aware that there will always be some sections of society who will continue to ask “Why should I?” even after being shown several reasons why something will help the world, the people behind the latest plan are accepting that sometimes, people need personal incentives to do something good. In addition to this, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has earmarked the initiative as something that may help economic recovery.

With much of the world still struggling to unpick the economic mess in which the credit crunch has left us, there had been some fear that in a rush for expediency the major world governments would forget their green principles and prioritize economic recovery by any means necessary. According to Mr Brown, the situation is not an either/or matter. Economic recovery and environmental protection can go hand in hand, if addressed in the right way. In Mr Brown’s own words, the idea is that this plan can be a “job creator, a quality of life improver and an environment enhancing measure.”

The finer details of the plan are still being worked out and at this stage it remains uncertain how the plan would be put in to practice – whether by offering to pay some of the price of the car at the point of sale, or by offering buyers the chance to apply to the Government for a cash back payment after the car has been bought. The Government’s contribution per motorist would, it seems, be capped at £2,000 (Ca$3,600), which amounts to a quarter of the cost of one of the cheaper electric cars available in the UK at the moment.

As things stand, even with an ambitious and hard-working green movement, the uptake of electric cars in the UK has so far been slow. Along with a general lack of environmental awareness, reasons for this are believed to be an absence of recharge points where the cars can be powered up, and comparatively higher prices when compared to conventionally fuelled vehicles. With the latter hopefully being counteracted somewhat by the government, it remains a question of keeping electric vehicles in the public mindset and making it easier to recharge them – the latter being a point under consideration from London’s Mayor Boris Johnson. The Mayor has this week pledged to deliver 25,000 charging spaces in the nation’s capital in order to get more of the vehicles on the roads.

To streamline and minimize blog maintenance, I will be discontinuing maintaining the Thegreenlivingblog.com website (however, I will still hold the domain). I will gradually move all articles from this site to A Dawn Journal. This article originally published on the above website on Apr 11, 2009.

Top Ten Best Countries to Retire in

The Best Countries to Retire in 2014

First Published Date: February 19, 2014 ADawnJournal.com

Overseas retirement magazine InternationalLiving.com recently published its Annual Global Retirement Index 2014 featuring the best countries on earth to retire. The editors look at various criteria, such as cost of living, climate, real estate, health care, etc to compile their list of world’s best places to retire. Here are the top ten countries for 2014:

1. Panama

2. Ecuador

3. Malaysia

4. Costa Rica

5. Spain

6. Colombia

7. Mexico

8. Malta

9. Uruguay

10. Thailand

The full list has many countries in South America. However, personally I would be reluctant to live in countries like Colombia or Mexico. Asian hot spots like the Philippines and Thailand are not on top of the list. The reason South American countries are dominant is because data are collected from Canadian and American expat retirees, and distance played a significant role, as South American countries are lot closer to them than Asian countries. To view the full list, click The World’s Best Retirement havens .

European Greens Perform Above Expectations

Positive News For The Green Movement

First Published Date: June 26, 2009 ADawnJournal.com

The elections for the European Parliament at the beginning of June have presented some very positive news for the Green movement, against a backdrop of seeming apathy towards politics in general outside of economic protest votes. From a greatly reduced pie (736 parliamentary seats, down from 2004’s total of 785), the continent’s Green parties demonstrated a real rise in popularity, picking up an additional eleven seats, which took them from 43 in 2004 to a hugely impressive 54 seats. France and Germany were the epicentre of the improvement in the Green vote, each bestowing 14 seats on their respective Green parties, while most other countries voting for the parliament also delivered at least one seat.

This comes against the backdrop of what has been considered to be the “recession election”, which had threatened to become a procession of punishment for the governing parties in favour of some of the more cynical, populist parties. In the United Kingdom, where the unpopular Labour government has been the subject of scandal after scandal and is due to lose its place as the governing party at next year’s general election, the Greens increased their share of the vote by 2.5% – better than any of the established parties and considerably better than the highly publicized far-right British National Party. Due to the vagaries of the voting system, however, the Greens and the BNP ended up with two seats each, with much of the publicity going to the more headline-friendly far-right organization.

In France, however, the story was better yet, with the Greens taking third place behind the ruling centre-right coalition and the opposition Socialists. The interesting aspect to this story is that there has been a Europe-wide trend in the media pointing up issues such as immigration, national and cultural identity and issues that are euphemistically referred to as “family values”. The success and increase of the vote for the Green parties – even on a reduced turnout against the backdrop of voter apathy – does seem to point to a recognition among voters that the environment is important, and that Green politicians are well-placed to understand the challenges that we face as a world, and the issues that Europe as a continent is currently facing.

Among all the other matters that Green politics cover, there seems to be an increasing recognition that concern for the environment and for the economy are not mutually exclusive. Clean energy can be cheap energy, renewable energy can be affordable energy, and this can be a way of solving problems using joined-up thinking. Among the many initiatives supported by the pan-European Green parties are moves towards the improvement of public transport initiatives – reducing emissions and at the same time providing the public with a better choice – as well as issues of personal and individual freedoms. This Europe-wide endorsement of the Green message is one that can be taken as a positive sign that people are taking notice of the planet we share and will give to our children. Long may it continue.

To streamline and minimize blog maintenance, I will be discontinuing maintaining the Thegreenlivingblog.com website (however, I will still hold the domain). I will gradually move all articles from this site to A Dawn Journal. This article originally published on the above website on June 26, 2009.

Top Cities in The World

Mercer’s 2014 Top Highest Living Quality Cities in The World

First Published Date: March 9, 2014 ADawnJournal.com

International consulting company Mercer recently published its 2014 best cities in the world ranking and like any other rankings of this type, Canadian cities dominate the list. Let’s look at the world’s top best five cities for quality for life.

1. Vienna – Austria

2. Zurich – Switzerland

3. Auckland – New Zealand

4. Munich – Germany

5. Vancouver – Canada

Here are some highlights from the report:

– Vienna is the highest ranking and Baghdad is the lowest ranking city on earth.

– Vancouver is the top North American city.

– Singapore is the top Asian city.

– Dubai is the top Middle East and African city.

– Top five North American cities are Vancouver, Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal, and San Francisco.

– Bottom five North American cities are Mexico City, Detroit, St. Louis, Houston, and Miami.

– Political instability, crime rates, air pollution are some of the factors determining rankings.

Mercer publishes its Quality of Living Raking to help multinational corporations evaluate and compare the standard of living between their own countries and host foreign countries. View the full report here: Quality of Living City Rankings