by Ryan Markiewicz | Oct 10, 2025 | Berlin's Wall
The colors in this tomb are over 3,500 years old
This is the ceiling
The hieroglyphics, over 3,000 years old, are truly stunning.
Walking like an Egyptian?
That is the tomb King Tut was buried in.
Like those Russian matrushka dolls, Tutankhamen was buried with three of these, each inside another. He remained safely there until thousands of years later, when he was discovered in 1920.
King Tut! The original. Ruled from the age of 9 til he died at 18. Crazy!
Another tomb. The tomb of King Hatshepsut. These are all in the middle of this arid, rocky desert in “the middle of nowhere”. Incredible.
Scary what you can find down in these ancient tombs.
An Egyptian minivan for a family of 5 😉
by Ryan Markiewicz | Oct 9, 2025 | Berlin's Wall
Luxor is about 400 miles south of Cairo and is the home to many ancient temples and tombs. No pyramids, since the Egyptians stopped building pyramids as the resting place for their rulers, as they found that they were easily robbed. So these tombs were easier to protect.
The Temples, again, have ancient Egyptian influences, but also Greco-Roman, Christian, and Muslim influences easily seen and recognized. I don’t want to bore y’all with lots of details, but if you Google Temples of Luxor, or Valley of the Kings, and Valley of the Queens, where they are buried, I am sure it will explain a lot better than I could anyway.
Again, incredible to witness such buildings from humanity’s ancient past.
View of the Valley of the Tombs from our boat
These hieroglyphics, over 4,000 years old, are still pretty clear and crazy detailed
This is a bas relief carving on the wall of Alexander the Great
Sunrise over the Valley of the Kings
We also took a hot air balloon ride this morning. That was also very cool. Hallie was a little nervous to get onboard. (I was not. The first 2 hot air balloon rides I took ended up in kind of crash landings–not truly crash, like the balloon exploding and falling for the sky, but one landed too fast and too hard and the basket tipped over and we got dragged through the rocks and sand. The other time we landed in a tree and got tore up a bit by the branches. Nothing serious. But I figured this 3rd time HAD TO be a charm 😉)
And it was. Flew for about 45 minutes without incident. 👍
Crazy that the basket held 28 of us. You wouldn’t think a balloon could lift that many people, but I guess some are even bigger than that.
A memorable experience for sure.
From our hot air balloon
Heading down the Nile now (though “down the Nile” means heading North/not south. One of the few rivers that flows northward. It is also the longest river on earth and helped shape the history of mankind for sure.
Cruising the Nile
PS – if anyone has questions they’d like to ask, please just email me and I’ll be happy to reply one-on-one.
Onward!
by Ryan Markiewicz | Oct 7, 2025 | Berlin's Wall
All,
Today we hopped on a bus and made our way to the pyramids. Even cooler than you can imagine. There are a few of them here, and even though they’re all about 5,000 years old, some are “newer” and better built as the Egyptians learned along the way. Amazing that these things got built at all — and amazing they were tombs. (Also amazing that the Taj Mahal — MUCH newer but still pretty old — is also a tomb. I guess royalty has always liked to be buried in style 🤣).
Here’s one thing that’s always struck me, but even more so now:
When you think about building these monuments — the Great Pyramid alone is made of 2.3 million blocks, each weighing between 2.5 and 15 tons, quarried and hauled from Aswan hundreds of miles away — let that sink in for a minute:
1. First you’ve got to imagine it.
2. Then you’ve got to design it.
3. You need to calculate, find, order, ship, and deliver everything (ah…logistics 😊).
4. Someone has to track it all and make sure you got what you ordered.
5. You need to build it — with no electricity, forklifts, or cranes.
6. And all this happened before humankind knew the Earth orbits the sun or understood gravity — discoveries that came thousands of years later.
Crazy.
So to me, not that much — beyond technology and science — has really changed. Those have advanced in unimaginable ways. But the buildings and monuments they built have stood for 5,000 years and remain breathtaking. I’m honestly not sure we can say the same for most of our modern buildings. Time will tell, I suppose.
And think about it: even back then, there were architects and draftsmen, quarrymen and haulers, loaders and drivers, foremen and accountants — and lawyers, doctors, judges, priests, and politicians too. Life wasn’t all that different in some ways.
Weird… and humbling.
Tomorrow: Luxor.
Onward!
The pyramids!
We actually got to go down into one of the tombs
The Great Sphinx protects the pharaoh’s tombs
Hallie got to take a camel ride
Sporting both the Bills and LP 😉
by Ryan Markiewicz | Oct 7, 2025 | News
The Logistics Plus (LP) Ireland team managed the successful import and devanning of brand-new XMCG excavators arriving from China. From vessel discharge at port through to secure devanning and onward transportation, the LP Ireland team coordinated every step of the project to ensure a smooth and efficient process.
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by Ryan Markiewicz | Oct 7, 2025 | Berlin's Wall
All,
In Cairo. Incredible city and to many, the cradle of human civilization from the written age. Influenced by the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Coptic Christians, Europeans, Jews, Muslims, and Ottomans, it provides such a unique history.
Cairo
Sunset over the Nile
We spent the first day here at a couple of museums that have artifacts over 5,000 years old. Incredible!
4,000 year old 24k gold jewelry. Even “back in the day” I guess they liked their bling 😆
Hard to believe, but this statue is 5,000 years old. Look at its details and the condition it’s in. It’s hard/humbling to think that human beings could do something like this 5,000 years ago. I guess EVERY era of human civilization thinks it is (and IT IS) the high point of humanity and evolution (Until it isn’t, of course).
Then out on the town to one of the local markets. I grew up in NYC, known as the city that never sleeps, but this place makes Times Square look calm and tame hahahahaha.
This is the old market in Cairo. Thing is, this is 10pm on a Monday night. CRAZY!
Also, the driving here is something else. No lanes, not many traffic lights, no rules. Just a million cars each making their own way to wherever they are going. And crossing the street is a life and death situation. You kind of wade out into this fast-moving sea of lanes of cars that are going in both directions (kind of like Chris Dennis in Las Vegas hahaha), and you kind of “part the sea” (inshallah) and get to the other side. Something you have to see to believe. And, no car insurance, so as our guide says, whenever there is an accident, the drivers get out and argue, “Your fault”. “No, your fault” and argue for a while and then just shake hands, agree that today was a bad day, and are on their way 😆
This bus snaked through these narrow streets (and all the people in them), rubbing up against both sides of the road.
Tomorrow we will visit the famous pyramids of Giza, the oldest surviving structures built by humans.
Onward!
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