Another Castle

Here is a castle that become flooded when the Latvians built a dam upriver. You can still go to the castle but now when it floods some of it is underwater.

Black Tie Event

Rhonda and I attended our first black tie event in Latvia. It was Burn's Night. He was a Scottish poet who died 250 years ago. The night started out very nice and formal. Then came the Chivas Scotch. You can see how it ended for at least one of us.

Bunker Tour

Over the weekend we were able to tour a Soviet underground bunker here in Latvia. When the Soviets left Latvia in 1991 left left this bunker in tact. They pictures are artifacts left in the bunker. The bunker in large enough to hold 250 high ranking officials in case their was a nuclear attack. It still has all the maps, radio equipment, communication systems, and the RED phone. It was an amazing tour.

Pyramid Touching

Those pyramids always looked so much bigger in the books. Rhonda was actually able to touch the top of this one.

Nile Ride

This was the boat and guide we used to go down the Nile.

Cross Country Skiing Latvian Style

Here we are on the Jurmala Beach cross county skiing.

Bobsled Team

Latvia has an olympic bobsled run which is open to the public. Rhonda and I rode the soft sided bobsled. it still goes down the same track but it is slower. The hard sled went down the mile long track in 48 seconds while the soft sided sled went down in 58 seconds. There are about 3-4 G forces while you go down.

Camel Jockey

We were able to ride a camel or two while in Egypt - this one had particularly nice lashes...at least it had something nice. Getting on and riding the camel isn't hard but getting off is the real challenge. The saddle had a big post in the front and back to hold on with. The camel went down to let Larry dismount, and now he can join the three tenors.

Making Friends

Larry tries to make friends with two Egyptian police officers by telling them he really is Canadian. This photo cost him 5 Egyptian Pounds.

Egyptian Christmas

We went to Egypt for Christmas and New Years. Since Egypt is mainly a Muslim country our US citizenship didn't help us much. In fact most of the time we said we were from Canada. G.W. isn't very well liked and as soon as we said we liked Obama things seemed to go better.