A Birthday Cake and Neu Travels outlined

I recently had my birthday on October 31, and Kristin, with the cooperation of The Mansion on Turtle Creek Pastry Chefs, went out of their way to create an amazing cake for the occasion.  I was very surprised and felt incredibly guilty about sliding a sharp knife through the delicious globe.  The clouds were made out of a cotton candy type substance and the goboogo plane was shaped white chocolate.  The chefs included white chocolate signposts detailing past journeys and future expeditions.  They used a vanilla and chocolate butter cream filling.

Our next foray into the world beyond our own will lead us through Italy and Egypt.  The trip is a Birthday/Valentines Day/Dating Anniversary gift for Kristin.  We will begin the trip in Tuscany, where we will act like young travel cognoscenti speeding through medieval towns on Vespas or  perhaps we will just laze the days away on a hillside in Chianti, imbibing fantastic wines and naming clouds.  Either way, we are really excited about Tuscany.

We will leave Florence and depart for Cairo from Rome.  After a connection in Cairo, we will land in Sharm el-Sheikh on the Sinai peninsula.  In this area, we will be staying in Dahab, which is a very laid back town on the Red Sea across from Saudi Arabia.

After Dahab, we have a 3 night stay on the Giza plateau in southwestern Cairo, right at the doorstep of the Great Pyramids.  While here, we will celebrate Kristin's birthday in the shadows of the world's most epic ancient monument, The Great Pyramid,

From Cairo we fly to Venice, and we will spend Valentine's Day in this old romantic city.   Hopefully it will compensate for the inevitable string of Valentine's disappointments that will most likely follow a zenith of this magnitude.

After a couple days in Rome, we head back to New York, and eventually Dallas.  Naturally, I will keep a log of the entire trip on these pages, so stay tuned.  We leave in early February.