desultor (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} desultor) wrote,@ 2009-01-11 15:48:00 |
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My trip report from Egypt
so, this is long. 28 handwritten pages long. almost 14 typed, single spaced, times 12 pt pages. i'd be shocked if you read it all in one sitting. in fact, i might be shocked if you read it all period. :) hopefully some of you will find it interesting, though i'll be honest: i wrote it mostly to help me remember what happened.
i took ~1500 photos. i'm in the process of narrowing them down to a number which i'll post on flickr. no, i don't have a flickr account... yet. i will let you all know when i do.
so, here goes.
Day 1/1.5, December 28/29th, 2008
Flight to JFK on tiny plane. Uneventful, though late getting boarded/out of the gate. Flight to Cairo at second gate over from where we exited – nice b/c of prev. mentioned late flight. Seemed to be a big tour group on the plane – Pilgrim tour. Some (non-tour-affiliated?) lady brought her Pekingese with her on the seat neat to her (in a carrier, but took her out during the flight). Flew over Canada, Dublin, along down the east coast of Italy. People on the right side of the plane could see pyramids. I was on the left. Flight time ~11 hrs, ~6000 miles. Landed in Cairo ~10:23 local time, 3:23 am back home. Quickest customs/immigration line EVER. Got bags quickly. Oh, were met by Alaa before customs/imm. He took our bags outside where we were put into a minivan and driven to the Fairmont Heliopolis. Checked in, rested ~20 min, ate some lunch at the Lebanese place in the hotel. Good hummus, okay falafel/kebbeh. Went to rooms to sleep ~1.5 hrs. Were going to go to Basilica of Notre Dame and Korba (supposedly pretty architecture in that neighborhood) but was getting dark and decided to go on felucca on Nile instead. Mohammed (of course) drove us into the city through old (ancient) (and very poor) Cairo and Islamic Cairo. Saw the City of the Dead (because people live in the cemetery), took pictures from the car of lots of mosques. Saw the Citadel and Mosque of Muhammed Ali. Detoured to a papyrus shop where we stubbornly refused to buy anything (detour wasn’t our idea!). Tried to get driver to just drive us around instead of falucca in the dark, but he said they’d already called the felucca guy. So we went on an early evening (it was dark though) felucca ride on the Nile. It was cool though not too chilly. A nice, pretty, relaxing ride. Pleasant. Of course, the captain’s name was also Mohammed. Drove back through downtown and “New” Cairo – packed, lots of shops, drove by the Khan. Ate buffet (good desserts!), boiled water with which to brush teeth. Overall impressions: air quality is a problem here. It’s also just a visually poorer-looking city than I expected – I expected more modern everywhere. Probably just my ignorance though. People seem friendly so far. I keep having to second-guess whether I should smile or look at people, which is a little unsettling. I am wearing my “wedding” ring though. The whole not-supposed-to-eat-uncooked-veggies/fru
Day 2, December 30th
Long day. Up at 5:30 to get to the airport for a (supposedly) 7:30 flight to Luxor. Didn’t actually leave til around 8:30 probably. Plane ride was interesting – watching the sand just slide away beneath you in these amazing shapes that look like rocks carved out by water. (EDIT: that’s because that’s what it was, not just sand. Duh.) You could tell which way the water would flow by the etched-out areas betting bigger, so you could tell which way the Nile was. Also interesting to see sand sand sand green Nile green sand sand sand. Luxor is a small town, about 400,000 compared to Cairo’s 22 million (Egypt ~80 million I think). Dropped our stuff off at the hotel but the rooms weren’t ready so we just went on our tour. We were met at the airport by Ashraf, the driver was Atef, and we then met up with Nana who took us around Karnak and Luxor. Karnak is amazing. It’s a 60-acre complex of temples built and added onto over I think several hundred to a thousand years (?). There just aren’t words to describe looking at the massive stone pillars, walls, obelisks, statues that were built and carved so many thousands of years ago. In some places, you can still see the paint. Imagining the whole complex painted… I can’t imagine how spectacular it must have been. Man was it crowded. All nationalities were represented, as far as I can tell. Nana said it would take 4-5 days to fully explore and explain everything there, and I believe her. Then we went on to Luxor Temple, which really is kind of just one temple instead of a whole complex of them like Karnak. It is a little odd b/c Luxor Temple is just in the middle of town right by the road. It’s weird to just drive by this ancient temple on your way to dinner. Anyway, the temple was nowhere near as impressive as Karnak, though “as impressive” as Karnak is a tall order to fill. There are columns, and even a wall built in low-relief (easier and yet longer lasting than the Egyptian high-relief) by Alexander the Great, who wanted to be accepted as a Pharaoh. Also interestingly, there was an area with Roman paintings in it. So, hundreds/thousands of years ago, Roman armies camped there for long enough to paint the walls with their own art. Also in one corner was a mosque (~1100 yrs old if I understood correctly, but updated since then) that turns out to have been built on top of a Christian church. Also, there used to be an Avenue of the Sphinxes from Karnak to Luxor, and they are in the middle of restoring it. You could see part of it in front of Luxor Temple. I believe that Karnak is in general built to honor the god Amun, and then once a year he traveled down the Nile to Luxor Temple (literally, they would take his gold statue on a boat) to honeymoon with his wife, who I think was represented by 42 names at Luxor temple, one for each of Egypt’s 42 provinces. (Anyone catch the 42 reference there?) After that we were beat (I barely slept at all the previous night) so we went back to the hotel, ate mediocre Italian and slept for a while. Then off to the Mummification Museum. Really, just call it a large room with mummification-related stuff in it, cause calling it a museum sort of overinflates its offerings. It’s cool though. Worth the $10/30 min if you’re around. Then we went to the sound and light show at Karnak. A little cheesy at times, according to the guidebook, but maybe I’m just a sentimentalist at heart because I was kind of moved by the narration of the temple’s history. Pretty lights, hard to capture the shots I wanted with the camera. (BTW, I am shooting with my Dad’s old Nikon D80 with an 18-200 lens. Yes, you’re right. It’s heavy.) After that, we tried to find a restaurant I’d read about on Lonely Planet’s website. First the driver took us to a place that was called the Swiss Inn, not the Mercure Inn. We were like, that’s not it. Then he called our guide Ashraf, who told the driver to do what we said (go back to the Mercure we’d passed). We went there – no restaurant. Then Swiss Inn used to be the Mercure, but now is, clearly, the Swiss Inn. Also, the restaurant may be closed, said Ashraf and some random guy on the street that helped our driver. So we directed the poor frustrated driver back to the Swiss Inn. We went in only to discover that not only was the restaurant closed, it’d been demolished, and we’d walked past its ruins on the way in. You could still see part of an archway with Dawar El Umda on it, except you couldn’t see the “Umda”. So we took a regular cab back to our hotel and ate at the Nubian Restaurant’s buffet. What was there? The very Nubian Greek lamb fricassee (too fennel-heavy for my taste), moussaka (also greek), chicken piccata, chicken cacciatore… are you seeing the pattern here? Anyways, we have to get up at 4:30 tomorrow and stay up til midnight for New Year’s, so I’m going to bed now. Oh, also, I found my jeans that have been missing for 6 months! In the front pocket of my suitcase, which I clearly haven’t checked since I came home from California in June… yay! Also some guy at Karnak was wearing a Yankees hat (I have my Red Sox one and was wearing it at the time). No casualties to report.
Day 3, Dec 31st
Also Mom’s birthday! Up at 4:30, except Dad thought I said 4:20 so called our room then. My aunt was already up. No box breakfasts b/c hotel said they had to be ordered by 8pm and we asked at like 10. Picked up in the lobby by Yasser of the Sindbad hot air balloon company. Picked up other tourists as well, and then we headed to the dock. We sat on a smallish motorized boat around a table. We were served tea or coffee and a “Dream Cake Slice” which tasted like sort of cheap Nilla Wafers. Oddly, though, kind of tasty. We had to write down our weights on a sheet of paper to give them enough information to be able to balance the balloons. Once across the Nile we were transferred to vans that took us to the balloons. We passed 3 or 4 other balloon places on the way right near ours. It was pretty fun to watch the flat balloons that were laying on the ground inflate because of all the hot air created by the huge jets of flaming gas. Each basket (gondola? What are they called?) had 5 separate areas – 4 for people, one on each corner, and one in the center for the pilot. Guess what our pilot’s name was? Yep. Mohammed. The ride lasted about 45-50 minutes and was muss less chilly and much smoother than I expected. It was lovely to watch the sun rise while floating in a balloon over the west bank. We could see Karnak and Luxor temples on the east bank. I kept trying to get a good shot of the temple of Hatshepsut, but it was dark and far. I think I got some good ones of the whole ride though. We managed to not land on any power lines (though we certainly looked like we were about to drift into them at one point), and were driven to a different location than where we started. We seemed to just land in a random field, though there were no crops growing in that particular one. We were met by our guide, Nana. We mentioned the need for food, and we stopped by the… temple of Habu I think? Medinet Habu?... anyway, by a place right in front of there. We were given menus and three out of four of us ordered chocolate crepes. They had crepes. How odd. They weren’t bad, either. During the wait for our food and then more while we ate, we were looked at piteously by this super cute dog and little marmalade kitten, who also had the somewhat-demanding-yet-still-piteous mew down pat. Nana dropped some bread for them. I really wanted to pet the dog. Such a cutie pie. Anyway, then we went to the Valley of the Nobles and saw the tombs of Rekhmire and Sennofer, both of whom served under Amenhotep II. Rekhmire was, I think Nana said, the #2 guy in Egypt after the Pharaoh, and Sennofer was in charge of all the gardens. Both very wealthy men. The paintings on the walls were well preserved in Rekhmire’s tomb, and some of the detail was amazing. For example, there was a bird painted that was a few inches long, but great care had been taken to show the scaly texture of skin on its legs. Apparently as soon as the men got to those positions, they started building their tombs. That’s apparently the way it worked back then. Sennofer’s tomb was down 44 steps, and was amazingly preserved. Some portions of the wall had cracked off, but not very much, and the paintings were nearly pristine. Just amazing detail and color all over the walls, columns, ceilings. This ceiling was done as grapevines in one room and flowers in the other instead of stars b/c he died before they had time to polish the roof and make it into stars. Well, died and the 70 day mummification period was too short for the typical star ceiling, so. It just blew my mind to imagine people over 3000 years ago painting these scenes that essentially look as if they were painted yesterday. Then we went to the Valley of the Kings. You can guess who was buried here: Kings. One ticket is good for three tombs. 65 tombs, 11 open to the public. We saw Ramses IV first. It had Coptic graffiti on some on the walls, and the figures at person-height were defaced, literally. As in, their faces were scratched off, supposedly by the Coptics or Romans, I don’t remember which. But, the thing that really killed me was I think I saw some Latin graffiti in there too. I mean, LATIN. The ancient Egyptians were coming alive for me, but Latin? Come on now. Next tomb was Ramses I. He only ruled for ~2 years, so his tomb was small but the colors were well preserved. Apparently, for kings’ tombs, the artist and the high priest decided where to put the tomb in the valley (the priests had maps of other tomb locations), and which scenes from the Book of the Dead to put on the walls. Scenes were first drawn in in red and black, then carved, then painted. In contrast, in the Valley of the Nobles, the tombs were only painted, and with scenes from everyday life. Last tomb was that of Tuthmosis III, deep in the mountain. This was interesting because it was unfinished – most everything was still in the red and black ink. In many cases, apparently junior artists would draw with the red paint, and then senior artists would correct their hieroglyphic spelling in black in right next to it. There were many examples of this. Also, this tomb was H-O-T. After this it was like 12:30, but we decided to wait to eat til we got back to the hotel. This was brave of us because we then went to 2 more places. Once, an alabaster “factory”, more like alabaster craft shop. (Other stones too.) Then, the Temple of Queen Hatshepsut. This is the famous temple with three tiers of pillars that look like they are carved into the mountain. Her image was defaced by her stepson/nephew/something else Tuthmosis III who was pissed at her for stopping him from being king for 18 years. Queen Hatshepsut was the only female ruler to rule as a king – she dressed up like a king and everything. For some reason, it was here, at this temple, that I was like, woah, am I really here? Can I really be looking at this? I still don’t fully understand. I just kept looking around in disbelief. Then, back to the hotel, finally. Some lunch in the courtyard, and up here to write this and wait for the 9:30 start time of the New Year’s Eve party/buffet. I am tired and would like to sleep, but I’d rather write all this down while it’s fresh in my mind. I can sleep another time. And shop another time. Tomorrow, in fact, I hope to go to 2 shops that I’d identified. I’ve been assured they are open: “Friday, Sunday, New Year’s day, never a break!” Totally unrelatedly, I am still struck by the poverty I see driving around. Not that I expect every place to look like home but… well, do I? Well, for whatever reason, it surprises me. Oh, so at the alabaster shop I accidentally bargained for and (purposely) bought a small item. It went like this: Me: How much is this? Him: 250 ($1 = 5LE) Me: Oh, never mind, that’s way too much. Him: How much did you want to spend? Me: Uh… I didn’t want to spend more than $10. Him: 35. (he meant dollars here) Me: Oh no, I just wanted to spend $10. Him: How many Egyptian pounds is that? Me: about 55. Him: …. Me: I don’t want to insult you, so thank you. (At this point I walked away b/c my mom had already bought her thing and we were about to leave.) Him, coming after me 10 second later: 100. (here he meant LE) Me, quickly calculating that was just under $10: No, I just wanted to spend $10. (we turned to go.) Him: [something about wanting to make me happy], okay, we give it to you for $10. I borrowed the $10 bill from my Dad, paid, and we left. My First Bargain! (Yes, I took it with me when I left, for you careful readers.) Okay, I just got a call that the hotel (notified by the travel agency) is bringing up a birthday cake for my mom, so time to go. And then sleep, and then shower. Happy New Year! Addendum: sleep and shower, good. Dinner buffet, fair to good. Singers, fair. Belly dancer, good though I’m no judge. Very jiggly. Man dancing in skirt with tambourine-y things – awesome (EDIT: Sufi dancer, otherwise known as Whirling Dervish). Men and women dancers – fair. Indeterminate stroke of New Year’s and overpriced not-that-great sparkling wine (champagne would have been ~$400) – fair. Tomorrow, Dendara and more west bank sites.
Day 4, Jan 1, 2009 (!)
Up at 6:45ish, breakfast buffet. Met by Nana in lobby and off to Dendara at 8-something. It’s about 60km from Luxor, just past the town of Qena. It’s a temple to Hathor, and is magnificent. It still has a roof, which is highly unusual. There was a lot of color still on the stone, and the temple itself is quite intricate. Rather than a large complex like Karnak, this was really all just one temple. There was the now-familiar hypostyle hall, which led into a hallway off of which were several rooms. It continued into a sanctuary where the statue of the goddess was kept. There was a hallway all around the sanctuary even though there was only one entrance to it. There were I think 13 little shrines off that hallway. In one of the areas before the sanctuary, there was a stairway leading up on the right. This stair went up in a square spiral, if I can say that. Oh, also in one of the shrines around the sanctuary there was a staircase to a crypt where the priests would have kept supplies. Even down there, the work was amazingly detailed. So – up the staircase and out onto the roof of the temple. There was a columned area which was a shrine to the New Year (appropriate!). Walking further around, there was also the room with the zodiac, which is the first known depiction of the zodiac in its present (disc?) form (though not all the signs are the same). Then there was a staircase going down, but all in a straight line this time, coming out in the same place the other staircase started, except on the opposite side of the temple. There was also a cool little (like, 4x8 max) room at the top of the shrine directly behind the sanctuary that was reached by climbing a steep metal staircase. It was used for secret rituals, though just which ones weren’t specified (I guess it was secret!). We took a long time at Dendara (but totally worth it!) so we were trying to figure out how to do everything we wanted. I did not want to eat at the hotel again, so we were going to shoot for Restaurant Mohammed on the West Bank, which was on the way to our afternoon sites. Since we were running late, Nana suggested taking a motorized felucca across the river, since the restaurant was on the other side, on the river. That didn’t sound quite right to me, but we went with it. Turns out, they (whoever had incorrectly informed her) were talking about some super sketchy-looking place (from a GI perspective). So we improvised and stopped at Restaurant Francais, run by a French guy who had lived in Orange County for 10 years and was wearing a Reef (I think) shirt and looked like a surfer. We got what were essentially grilled cheese sandwiches (cheese on toast), which took forever, and ate them in the car on the way to Deir El Medina, which was the city and tombs of the men who worked on the royal tombs. I can’t remember the names of the tombs we saw, but the colors were perfectly preserved and looked amazing. Next, to the temple of Medinet Habu. This was also a large temple, though most of the roofs were gone. There were some amazing colors left on the walls and columns, and the roofs that were there, though. It was built by Ramses III who was killed by his second wife, Titi, because she wanted her son to be king. There were many scenes of Ramses III defeating his enemies in battle. Apparently not only did they cut off the hands of their captives, but they also cut off their penises (penes, to be grammatically correct). There was, to illustrate this, a carving of a pile of penes. Yep. Anyway, this temple went on for a ways, and deserved far more than the 30-45 min we gave it. We then went to the Valley of the Queens, somewhat inaccurately named because others were buried there as well. For the life of me, I can’t remember the first tomb we saw, and this was just over two hours ago! The second was that of the murdering queen Titi. More well-preserved colors. I can’t hope to get the name of the third tomb right, but there is some question about who was in there – ad adult or a child, because the skeleton of a fetus was found inside the coffin. However, the paintings show a child being led by his father, though a competing explanation is that he was an adult for…. I can’t remember what reason, sorry. Again, great preservation of color here, and amazing detail, and again, everything was both carved and painted (though the paint went into far more detail than the carving, which makes sense). Finally, we were done for the day and are now back at the hotel awaiting our 7:45pm pickup for our reservations at Sofra, apparently an excellent Egyptian restaurant. Finally! I’m so tired of hotel food. Then tomorrow morning we have to be up at 5ish for our 6am pickup for our flight to Aswan. More on dinner afterwards…. Yep, Frommer’s was right. The veal tagine with spring onions, etc… to die for. So good. Unfortunately I got the pigeon stuffed with rice, which was good but not as good as the veal. The veal was oh-my-god-I’m-going-to-eat-this-every-ni
Day 5, Jan 2nd
Not as good a day as the others. Ate breakfast and were transferred to the airport just fine. Very nice airport at Luxor, looks brand new. Took one Xanax and was okay for the 25 minute flight, though I still couldn’t look during takeoff or any turns in the air. I was wrong before about sand that looks like carved out mountains/rocks. It isn’t sand, it really is carved-out rock. (Carved by water). Couldn’t find our guy that was supposed to meet us at Aswan for 20 min, which was okay though a little stressful. Turned out we were going to start touring right away, not even dropping our luggage off at the hotel. Our guy was named Asaad, and our guide was Yvonne (Egyptian/Syrian, though I don’t know why the French name). Asaad left us almost immediately and we went with Yvonne and the driver (I’m just going to guess Mohammed though I don’t know if we were ever told) to Aswan high dam. The guide books were right, it’s not that cool. Pyramid-shaped in cross section, with not-particularly stunning views on either side. Apparently soon Lake Nasser will be the second-, instead of the first-, largest manmade lake, because China is apparently building some huge dam that will beat out Lake Nasser. We drove over the old dam and took a felucca to Philae. It used to be on another island, but would have been submerged by Lake Nasser, so it was moved to an island in between the two damns. It was crowded inside. The grounds had a lot of people on them but inside the temple was packed, kind of like Karnak (though almost nothing is “inside” there since there is no roof). Yvonne was not particularly good at explaining what was going on with the temple, but she did let us walk around a bit on our own so at least I got to see bits she wouldn’t have shown us. So, originally the temple was along a straight line, but when they moved it, there was something particular to the island they moved it to that made them decide to change it. Bizarre. Oddly, despite the reason I wanted to go to Philae in the first place (The Mummy Returns – you can laugh at me I don’t care), my favorite thing about Philae wasn’t any particular ancient feature, but carved in to one side of an entryway was the phrase “B. Mare stultus est” in block roman style letters. How hilarious is that?! Unfortunately there was no date, so I don’t know if it was from an expedition in the 1800’s like most of the “graffiti” I’ve seen, or from actual Romans. From Philae we went to a gold shop where my aunt bought me a gorgeous Ankh necklace that I love. We then went to a perfume place where we bought a bunch of essential oils, and I finally smelled frankincense and myrrh for the first time that I was aware that that was what I was smelling. We got lotus and papyrus oils, which supposedly can’t be exported, and some orange blossom and something called Scent of the Desert or something like that. When I saw we, I mean my aunt and my mom, though I think I’ll try to steal some lotus and papyrus. Then it was off to the Nubian Museum (what’s a Nubian?) which was also rather poorly explained by Yvonne. I am not sure if it was because we were in a hurry, because she didn’t know, or if she just didn’t care. Then we needed to eat, so the driver took our bags to the hotel while we took a felucca to the Nubian Restaurant. It was packed and we had to wait for a table. We ordered before we were seated. Service was not very good, and they didn’t even switch the dirty tablecloth from the previous diners. The food was good though I wouldn’t say it was stellar. Me, my mom, and Yvonne had fried Nile perch with rice, and my aunt and Dad had chicken. They also gave us a bunch of little plates of things like tzatziki (don’t know what it’s called here), red cabbage, and tomato and cucumber salad. Too bad we could only eat the tahini. The brown bread was good though. Also they gave us a dish of cooked vegetables so we could eat those. The check was a long time in coming, and my dad was convinced that Yvonne scammed us by going up to take care of it herself and then having us pay her, even though we saw the check. But, of course, we can’t read Arabic and couldn’t hear or understand their conversation, so… that, coupled with her telling my dad to tip the driver 50LE (~$10), which was way more than we were told or tipped in Luxor, made us not too happy with her. Then we went to Elephantine Island by felucca, which took a while even though it was close by because the felucca was not motored, just powered via sail. There was a sad little museum there, which Yvonne walked us through, not really explaining what the significance of anything was, just saying what things were, which was already obvious from the labels. Ditto once we walked outside to see the ruins of the temple of Khnoum, though she said I think maybe one paragraph of explanation that I don’t recall because honestly all the explanation of ancient history are starting to run together. Hence my writing each day :). By this point it was I think almost 4, and we’d been told that our flight tomorrow back from Abu Simbel -> Aswan was fine but the flight from Aswan -> Cairo was at 10pm instead of a continuation of the Abu Simbel->Aswan flight in the afternoon. And, as I said, we weren’t that pleased with Yvonne. We were still supposed to go to the Botanical Garden, but we said that if we were going to have all this time tomorrow in Aswan again, that we’d just do it tomorrow afternoon. So we went to the hotel where my dad expressed his (our, really) displeasure with the flight situation only to find that the flight was at midnight (!) instead. So, as I write this, he is on the phone with Nadia from our travel company, and we will see what happens. I think we’ll just end up eating in the hotel so we don’t have to take a ferry over and back to the mainland tonight. In the morning our flight to Abu Simbel is at 9 am, and supposedly we will arrive back in Aswan anywhere from 1:30-2:30, depending on whether we get a reasonable flight out of here and can stay at the airport, or have to come back to the hotel. So, more later if anything changes.
Day 6, Jan 3rd 2009
Nadia was told that the plane we were supposed to be on had engine trouble and so they had to switch to smaller planes. Weird, but okay, so we couldn’t do anything. Up at 6, ate breakfast. If I eat sausage and eggs one more time I’ll cry. It’s just, that’s what’s at the breakfast buffets that we can eat. No porridge with milk, no fresh fruit except bananas, no cereal with milk, no nice desserts with cream in them (unfortunately I do not know how a napoleon is made – if I knew they were safe I’d be scarfing them down by the handful), no uncooked veggies…. When I get back to the States I’m going to eat a fruit salad and drink tap water, just to counteract the angst of this time here. Anyway. Picked up, to airport, on plane to Abu Simbel. ~25 min flight, still couldn’t watch takeoff. Lake Nasser = big. And we got to see Abu Simbel from our side of the plane before landing. Plane->shuttle->ticket->approached by English speaking guide (included in cost of entrance ticket). He talked a little about the temple of Ramses II, how the sun shines into the sanctuary on Feb 22nd and Oct 22nd each year. Used to be the 21sts, but when it was moved to save it from being submerged by Lake Nasser, the height made a one-day difference. I found it a little odd that he’d build this huge temple with a bunch of statues of him, but have it dedicated to a god – it kind of seemed dedicated to him, at least in my mind. All over the walls were scenes of him making offerings to various gods. Maybe the statues of himself are just so that they know he was the one who built it. At any rate, this was also a similar experience to the Temple of Hatshepsut, the “I can’t believe I am here looking at this” thing. Then we went on to the temple of Nefertari, Ramses II’s favorite wife. 6 statues outside, 4 gods, 2 her. Much smaller than the first temple. Our guide says that Nefertari was a Nubian. Inside were statues of Hathor (the temple was dedicated to her), and scenes showing Nefertari making offerings to the gods, Nefertari at her coronation between Hathor and Isis, and Ramses II and Nefertari together. After that temple I went back out in front of Ramses II’s temple to just stare. Though I thought it’d be a bit bigger (it was definitely really big but somehow I imagined it even larger), it was still breathtaking. Temple->shuttle->plane->Aswan. The flight we were on back to Aswan was the one we were supposed to be on to Cairo, and it was definitely continuing there. The nice big plane. Remember, the one that was supposed to have had engine trouble? Yeah. So someone clearly a) forgot to make our reservation in the first place and b) then lied to someone about it. Irritating, but again, there was nothing we could do – we even checked at the ticket desk. So we came back to the hotel to eat lunch before meeting Yvonne and going to the botanical garden at 3:15. We didn’t get to the restaurant at the hotel til 2:50 though. Oops. We tried to get a message to them – it wasn’t clear if we were successful. At any rate, we met Yvonne and Asaad (not sure why he was there) in the lobby and went to the botanical garden. It was decent – it’s winter so not really many flowers out except poinsettias. Some cool palm trees though. On the felucca back, our boat crew (of 2, standard) showed us the baby crocodile they kept under the floorboards in the boat. Poor thing. It was probably 8-9 inches long. Then, back to the hotel to rest and shower before our 9:45pm pickup for our 12:20 flight. Ow. If that is really the flight we are on, we won’t get into Cairo and to the hotel until 2 something. Supposedly I will meet up withebenezer either late tonight or early tomorrow morning for breakfast, as he is also in Cairo, though he leaves tomorrow. Assuming dinner and the flight to Cairo go smoothly (which is not necessarily a safe assumption), that’s all I have for tonight.
Day 7, January 4, 2009
Dinner happened, we did not get an earlier flight, and we landed in Cairo around 1:30 am. Not without incident, however. I decided to be half-brave and take ½ a Xanax. I’d contemplated not taking any, but thought no, I’d rather take it. True story. Anyway, everything was fine, we boarded, strapped in, taxied for takeoff, turned onto the runway, spun up the engines, started to take off… and then braked, hard, and aborted the takeoff. Yeah. Loved that. Apparently the runway lights had not been on. Way to go, Aswan air traffic control. The second try went fine, but that meant that for the rest of the flight, I was exhausted, half drugged, and terrified anyway. Woo. Got to the Cairo Marriott okay, but they seemed to have trouble checking us in. Possibly because no one confirmed with them that we were going to get in so late…? Who knows. At any rate, we made it, and I textedebenezer. We met up in the lobby and caught up for a while before I pleaded exhaustion and went to bed. It was 4am at this point. We had agreed to have breakfast at 7 since he had to leave at 8 for a 10:10 flight, so I was getting up in 2:45. Which I did, and we had a nice little buffet breakfast. Well, it was only okay, but it did not involve me eating sausage (shut up) so I consider that a good breakfast. Went back to the room and to sleep until we had to meet our tour guide Amira at 10. She spent 6 months in Bloomington Indiana – why, I don’t know. We went right to the Egyptian Museum. Definitely super crowded and not particularly well documented or explained. Just mostly a collection of artifacts with labels. Good thing we had a guide to explain some of it, but we sort of had to rush through. At the end we had the choice of paying 100LE to see the royal mummies or wandering around. My family wandered, I paid to see the mummies. Queen Hatshepsut’s was there (obese and diabetic) as well as Ramses II. Definitely weird to think that this was a well-preserved human body that was born ~3000 years ago that I was looking at. I don’t regret paying the 100LE though – I’m in Egypt. I should see mummies. Duh. Of course the highlight of the museum was the entire second floor, devoted to everything that was found in the tomb of Tutankhamun. The reason he’s so famous isn’t so much that he was a boy king, but that his tomb was the only one found in the Valley of the Kings that wasn’t robbed, so it still had everything in it. Lots of gold, alabaster, semiprecious inlay… the famous mask of gold inlaid with lapis lazuli (among other things). One of the coffins was made entirely of gold… really it was just a spectacular collection. It made me think of 2 things: 1: Man, these guys were RICH, and 2: Can you imagine if tomb robbers hadn’t emptied out all the other tombs? Imagine how much stuff we’d have found by now… 65 tombs in the Valley of the Kinds, Tut’s was just one. And then there’s the Valley of the Queens and Nobles. Then it was off to the Citadel and the Mosque of Muhammed Ali. As the Citadel itself is mostly in ruins, all that’s really left is a wall. It’s the mosque that people to go see. Built largely of alabaster, now instead of being shining white it’s kind of brown and dirty, which is a shame. Amira said that they don’t clean it because they tried and it started falling apart…? Apparently, alabaster amplifies the voice well, which is why they used it, so the sheikh could call Muslims to prayer back in the day when there were not loudspeakers. It was nice, but not as impressive as I expected. No mosaics or anything. Also Amira mentioned that there were no other mosques on the itinerary, but I was pretty sure that we’re supposed to go to El Azhar park and Mosque. We’ll see. There was a (very distant) view of the pyramids from the mosque, as well as a good view of old / Islamic Cairo. Then we were off to lunch, only we got stuck in traffic that was literally all stop and no go for a while. We made it to lunch minus my dad who had a headache and went back to the hotel. Lunch was on a boat permanently moored right in front of the Marriott (which is on the Nile) and was an Arabian buffet, supposedly. Nothing really stood out except the curried chicken and the dessert pastries. Now we are at the hotel switching rooms because my mom’s room had gnats in it. Tonight we don’t have anything planned, so more later.
Day 8, Jan 5th
My aunt came into our room last night saying my dad’s temperature was 106 and that he wouldn’t call the hotel doctor. I immediately went over there only to learn that it was really 101.6. Phew. As I said to my aunt before I walked out of our room, 106 was “kind of impossible”. We had walked around the hotel shops and gotten some sandwiches, and I was like man, he sure got real sick real fast. But fortunately he was okay this morning. I think I slept for 11 hours. We all needed it – this trip has been very bad for resting. Off we went at 9:30 to see the pyramids. Yet again another surreal experience. Another case where you’ve seen them so often in pictures/tv/movies that when you are actually looking at them, you just assume you must be looking at a picture or something. Oh – Cairo’s air quality is terrible, and from one pyramid, the next was a little fuzzy, even though they are fairly close together. Even just in front of one, it’s not totally clear. Terrible smog. They only sell a limited number of tickets to go inside the first pyramid so we bought tickets to go inside the second. It wasn’t particularly interesting – in and down, in and straight, in and up, and then a room. It was not painted or anything, and there was only the stone sarcophagus in there. Having seen so many spectacular tombs, this wasn’t. But it was kind of neat to think that when I looked up, there were millions of tons of pyramid above me. Then we went on a camel ride, all 4 of us. Smelly, mean, ugly animals. Somewhat picturesque, very smelly. We went a little ways where you could get a good shot of all the 9 pyramids (I think one was in ruins but counted as a pyramid anyway). Yes I have pictures of me on a camel. And “holding” the top of the great pyramid of Khufu. In my Red Sox hat! This pleases me. I think it never really sunk in that I was there, cause even when we were getting back in the van it didn’t seem real. Then off to the right-next-door Sphinx. The Sphinx has the head of Khafre and the body of a lion. Khafre was Khufu’s son, and the other large (though not as large) pyramid is Khafre’s son. Family tradition. So, Khafre head lion’s body – the head was carved out of one stone, but the body was constructed out of smaller stones. There is also a temple right next to it, though I have no idea of its significance. Same surreal feeling. I feel a little bad that I’m going to come back from Egypt and not really believe that I saw all the cool things I saw. I will have to refer to my ~1,200 pictures to convince me. After the Sphinx we went to lunch at Andrea’s, which was a place on my list. They serve only spit-roasted chicken, and damn was it good. They first give you plates of cole slaw type stuff, cold potato salad, beets, tahini, baba ghanoush, kofta (in the shape of balls not on skewers) and French fries, with a basket of fresh bread (and I do mean it was just made). TASTY. I eventually started taking bread, picking up some chicken, and dipping it in the tahini. Mmmm. Then back to our hotel, which would have taken maybe 10-15 minutes were it not for the totally normal, horrible traffic. We did actually move at a perceptible rate, but man was it slow. As I said, this is apparently the way it is all the time in Cairo (except not at like 4 in the morning). We decided to push the pyramid sound and light show to tomorrow so we could hopefully have more time to rest than we’d have had today. I am hoping to go shopping this afternoon/evening, but we’ll see. We’ll do the Khan on Wednesday, but there are shops nearby that I am interested in. I doubt we’ll be eating a large dinner. So, more later if anything happens. Oh, also it seems that there aren’t a lot of mosaics in the mosques as I can’t really find mention of any nice ones. I’m going to look into it though.
Day 9, Jan 6th
Last night we rested for a bit and then managed to find our way to the Egypt Crafts Center/Fair Trade Egypt store, with the kind assistance of some local men on the street. I bought scarves, beautiful soft hand-woven scarves from Nagada. I think I can get similar ones for less at the Khan, but this store was quiet and there was no sales pressure, both qualities that the Khan will lack. My mom goes some scarves as well. I… actually don’t remember if I ate anything for dinner. I was still stuffed from lunch. Today we started around 8:30, but our guide was stuck in traffic and didn’t get to the hotel til 9. My aunt begged off for the day due to stomach pains and general exhaustion, so it was just me, my mom, and my dad. First stop was Memphis, by way of the smoggiest streets I’ve ever seen. As in, someone standing 10 feet away from you was slightly fuzzy because of the smog. Seriously, this was bad. I thought we’d get away from it, as the sites we were visiting are outside the city, but nope. All smoggy. Memphis was the capitol of the Old Kingdom, and there really isn’t much there except two medium sized statues of Ramses II and ¾ of one large one lying on the ground. Oh, there was a sphinx too. Then on to Saqqara where the first ever pyramid was built, the Step Pyramid of Djoser. It was less surreal than the Giza pyramids, perhaps because I’ve seen almost no pictures of it ever. There was a nearby temple, and apparently in the area in front of the pyramid, the king used to fight bulls to prove his worthiness to reign (this would happen periodically not all the time). Also nearby were tombs of some nobles, as well as ordinary people. Then on to Dahshur, where there were three pyramids, but we only really saw one (there were another couple at Saqqara as well but were small and sort of sad looking). Apparently there are not as many tourists to these areas (we only saw a handful of vans/buses) so the road to the Bent Pyramid is very bad and sort of tough to drive on for cars/vans/buses, so we stopped at the base of the Red Pyramid and photographed the Bent Pyramid from a distance. This was too bad, as I was looking forward to seeing it close up. I think the deal with the Bent Pyramid is that they started building it in the manner of the pyramids at Giza, smooth-sided, but realized part-way through that the angle was too steep and wouldn’t work out. So they switched to a shallower angle and finished it. (EDIT: This was built before the Giza pyramids, though.) I wonder how they treated the engineer that messed that one up. Then we saw the Red Pyramid, which is no longer particularly red on the outside. Our tickets included entrance into this one, so we made the climb up the 120 stairs outside to the entrance, where my mom and dad were warned that the way in was quite difficult by two women recovering outside. The guy at the entrance can be essentially bribed with LE5 to let you take photos inside, despite the toppled sign at the bottom of the pyramid saying “NO PHOTO”. So I paid my LE5 and made the 65 meter descent down a long narrow tunnel where you could see the ceiling was actually pretty red. It led both down and in, and into a step-ceilinged room, which is the best way I can think of to describe it. This in turn led into another one. It was noticeably stuffy in the first room, and more so in the second. In the second there was a staircase at the back. Ascending this, I began to realize that a canary probably would have died by now, as the methane-ish smell was quite strong and the air quality was BAD. (EDIT: My dad commented that the reason canaries were used was because humans can’t smell methane. Okay, so it wasn’t methane in there, but it was something foul.) The stair led up to a small tunnel, on the other side of which was a third step-ceilinged room, except here you emerged at the start of the steps most of the way up the wall. I was actually concerned that I was going to pass out, not because I felt bad (I didn’t) or out of shape (not that either), but just due to lack of oxygen that I might not notice until it was too late. This made me nervous enough that I left the room quickly and got back to the bottom of the initial tunnel as quickly as I could. Then back up the 65m inclined path, by the end of which my hamstrings were not 100% and I was out of breath. I rested for a while, drank some water my dad had with him (he’d waited for me) and made the 120-stair climb down, a little shakily due to leg wobbliness. Then it was time for lunch, at Saqqara Restaurant. This was very much like Andrea’s yesterday, but had chicken, fish, or mixed grill. All three of us got the latter, of which the kofta was exceptional (chicken+veal were the other meats). Bread was similarly delicious as at Andrea’s as well, though the cat begging for food was much cuter at Saqqara. Then back to the hotel to wait to be picked up for the Pyramids Sound and Light Show at Giza. …And now we’re back from the Sound and Light show. (side note: I have so many tickets from so many sites now, it’s amazing.) It was, as the guide book said (Frommer’s), cheesy. Cheesetastic. Way dramatic. There were a couple times when I just laughed outright. I thought I got some decent shots of everything, and then when we got back I realized I’d left it on ISO400 instead of switching it to 1000. Doh. Oh well. Tomorrow is Coptic Christmas, so the traffic should be okay – UNLIKE today when it was awful – we almost didn’t make the sound and light show in time despite having started over an hour earlier. We have a car, driver, and Kareem from 9-1:30. We’re planning on the Mosque of Ibn Tulun, the Gayer-Anderson Museum, the shop Khan Misr Touloun (all in the same area), hopefully find the bookbinder, and then the Khan al Khalili, Naugib Mahfouz, Al Azhar Mosque and park, and… we’ll see how long the car lasts through that. There is also a nice restaurant in Al Azhar park, but I don’t know if we’ll get to go as 1) we might not have the car that late (dinner-ish) and 2) we are supposedly having dinner at some pre-planned place tomorrow – I think maybe the pseudo-Arabian boat we had lunch a couple days ago. We’ll see. At any rate, tomorrow is our last full day in Cairo and in Egypt. I will need to catch up on sleep for like a week when I get back.
Day 10, Jan 7th
I have been assiduously avoiding the news and trying not to think of work while I’ve been here, entirely successful in the former case, somewhat of a failure in the latter. Apparently something is going on with Israel, so today we had two guys walking around with us, Kareem and one whose name I didn’t get. We went to the Mosque of Ibn Tulun, which was deserted (in terms of tourists) except for us. We had shoe covers put on us, and walked around. It was peaceful and very nice to be the only ones there. It’s the oldest mosque in Cairo, built around 875 AD. We went up the minaret, though only I went to the top, where there was nothing to stop me from just falling off. Very nice views all around, but smog and humidity really restricted the distance I could see. Then to the Gayer-Anderson Museum. He was a British officer who obsessively collected stuff from all over and signed over everything to the Egyptian government when he left thr country right before he died. In return, they gave him the title of Pasha. This museum is where they filmed part of The Spy Who Loved Me. It was really amazing, some lovely pieces. Inlay, mosaic fountain, rugs, etc. Then we shopped at the Khan Misr Touloun – I bought two inlaid mother-of-pearl boxes. And then off to the Khan al Khalili, where I unsuccessfully bargained for some scarves for a friend, and am not regretting the extra money I didn’t pay for the scarves I didn’t buy. The big heartbreaker, though, is that the bookbinder I really wanted to go to is closed today. I was counting on that bookbinder but… that’s how life goes, I guess. Now rest, then lunch, then shop nearby and walk, then dinner – a 2-hour Nile cruise aboard the boat we lunched on the other day. I am very sad about the bookbinder. Except no! After lunch we tried to get to the shop behind the hotel in the cathedral but it was closed for the holiday. We went back to the Fair Trade store because my aunt wanted some of the scarves for her friends and the weave was finer there. I bought some scarves for my friend, feeling slightly bad that I could have paid less at the Khan. Then I sadly went back to my hotel room moping about the bookbinder while my parents and aunt took a short walk along the Nile. I decided to forlornly call the bookbinder again (Kareem said he called 3x and a 4th while we watched), and lo! They answered! They said they were open til 11. I called my dad but he didn’t pick up – we still haven’t figured out how to reliably call each other. I called my mom and my aunt with no better luck. I cursed in the empty hotel room and waited impatiently for their return. They got back 10 min later, and I immediately called my dad who called Kareem to see how we could get there. Kareem said to call the place, get the bell captain to write directions in Arabic, get a taxi, tell him to wait for us while we were in the store, and go. So we went downstairs, nervously, to put this plan into effect. I was waiting to talk to the bell captain when behold! I saw Ahmed, our second escort this morning, and told my dad to go ask him if he’d come with us. He did, and Ahmed said he would. So the bell captain called the store and got directions which he relayed to Ahmed. Ahmed told us to follow him just outside next to the hotel because getting a cab in front of the hotel is more expensive. He talked to some guy on the corner, and after 30 seconds an unmarked silver car came to a stop in front of us and we got in. Ahmed told him to head for the Khan, since the shop was near there. We got out in front of a mosque where there was a funeral procession – we saw a rug(?)-draped coffin being carried in by several people followed by a long line. Ahmed asked a series of 3 people where Abd El Zaher was, getting us closer each time. We shortly arrived at Abd El Zaher’s bookbinding shop, a nice glass-fronted store with lots of nice-looking books, both blank and address books, as well as photo albums. I selected some books and had them monogrammed, which is included in the price (!). Then, with me tightly clutching my books and smiling, we left, made our way back to the street and the car, and the hotel. Success! I am very happy now. Interesting note about Ahmed: he lives 3 hours north of Cairo by train, and commutes to work here. The reason he was in the lobby is because he had nothing to do between this morning and tonight for our dinner, and he lives too far away to go home, so he was just hanging out. While we were waiting in the store for the monogramming, he showed us a picture of his daughter in a cabbage patch. Very funny. Then, someone brought in a chair for my dad and Ahmed joked that he was going to sit on my dad’s lap because “my gun, very heavy”. We laughed, but wow. Good to know that our escort is packing. Actually, seriously good, because I don’t think it’d have been entirely safe for us to be where we were without him, and we certainly would never have found the place on our own. So, I owe him a huge debt of gratitude (we tipped him, of course, but I mean non-monetary gratitude). Now I am content with my shopping experience, and almost out of Egyptian pounds. Now we wait for the dinner cruise, the night’s sleep, and the 8:30 ride to the airport for the 12 noon flight. If the cruise is interesting, I’ll write a bit more, if not, Salaam Egypt!
so, this is long. 28 handwritten pages long. almost 14 typed, single spaced, times 12 pt pages. i'd be shocked if you read it all in one sitting. in fact, i might be shocked if you read it all period. :) hopefully some of you will find it interesting, though i'll be honest: i wrote it mostly to help me remember what happened.
i took ~1500 photos. i'm in the process of narrowing them down to a number which i'll post on flickr. no, i don't have a flickr account... yet. i will let you all know when i do.
so, here goes.
Day 1/1.5, December 28/29th, 2008
Flight to JFK on tiny plane. Uneventful, though late getting boarded/out of the gate. Flight to Cairo at second gate over from where we exited – nice b/c of prev. mentioned late flight. Seemed to be a big tour group on the plane – Pilgrim tour. Some (non-tour-affiliated?) lady brought her Pekingese with her on the seat neat to her (in a carrier, but took her out during the flight). Flew over Canada, Dublin, along down the east coast of Italy. People on the right side of the plane could see pyramids. I was on the left. Flight time ~11 hrs, ~6000 miles. Landed in Cairo ~10:23 local time, 3:23 am back home. Quickest customs/immigration line EVER. Got bags quickly. Oh, were met by Alaa before customs/imm. He took our bags outside where we were put into a minivan and driven to the Fairmont Heliopolis. Checked in, rested ~20 min, ate some lunch at the Lebanese place in the hotel. Good hummus, okay falafel/kebbeh. Went to rooms to sleep ~1.5 hrs. Were going to go to Basilica of Notre Dame and Korba (supposedly pretty architecture in that neighborhood) but was getting dark and decided to go on felucca on Nile instead. Mohammed (of course) drove us into the city through old (ancient) (and very poor) Cairo and Islamic Cairo. Saw the City of the Dead (because people live in the cemetery), took pictures from the car of lots of mosques. Saw the Citadel and Mosque of Muhammed Ali. Detoured to a papyrus shop where we stubbornly refused to buy anything (detour wasn’t our idea!). Tried to get driver to just drive us around instead of falucca in the dark, but he said they’d already called the felucca guy. So we went on an early evening (it was dark though) felucca ride on the Nile. It was cool though not too chilly. A nice, pretty, relaxing ride. Pleasant. Of course, the captain’s name was also Mohammed. Drove back through downtown and “New” Cairo – packed, lots of shops, drove by the Khan. Ate buffet (good desserts!), boiled water with which to brush teeth. Overall impressions: air quality is a problem here. It’s also just a visually poorer-looking city than I expected – I expected more modern everywhere. Probably just my ignorance though. People seem friendly so far. I keep having to second-guess whether I should smile or look at people, which is a little unsettling. I am wearing my “wedding” ring though. The whole not-supposed-to-eat-uncooked-veggies/fru
Day 2, December 30th
Long day. Up at 5:30 to get to the airport for a (supposedly) 7:30 flight to Luxor. Didn’t actually leave til around 8:30 probably. Plane ride was interesting – watching the sand just slide away beneath you in these amazing shapes that look like rocks carved out by water. (EDIT: that’s because that’s what it was, not just sand. Duh.) You could tell which way the water would flow by the etched-out areas betting bigger, so you could tell which way the Nile was. Also interesting to see sand sand sand green Nile green sand sand sand. Luxor is a small town, about 400,000 compared to Cairo’s 22 million (Egypt ~80 million I think). Dropped our stuff off at the hotel but the rooms weren’t ready so we just went on our tour. We were met at the airport by Ashraf, the driver was Atef, and we then met up with Nana who took us around Karnak and Luxor. Karnak is amazing. It’s a 60-acre complex of temples built and added onto over I think several hundred to a thousand years (?). There just aren’t words to describe looking at the massive stone pillars, walls, obelisks, statues that were built and carved so many thousands of years ago. In some places, you can still see the paint. Imagining the whole complex painted… I can’t imagine how spectacular it must have been. Man was it crowded. All nationalities were represented, as far as I can tell. Nana said it would take 4-5 days to fully explore and explain everything there, and I believe her. Then we went on to Luxor Temple, which really is kind of just one temple instead of a whole complex of them like Karnak. It is a little odd b/c Luxor Temple is just in the middle of town right by the road. It’s weird to just drive by this ancient temple on your way to dinner. Anyway, the temple was nowhere near as impressive as Karnak, though “as impressive” as Karnak is a tall order to fill. There are columns, and even a wall built in low-relief (easier and yet longer lasting than the Egyptian high-relief) by Alexander the Great, who wanted to be accepted as a Pharaoh. Also interestingly, there was an area with Roman paintings in it. So, hundreds/thousands of years ago, Roman armies camped there for long enough to paint the walls with their own art. Also in one corner was a mosque (~1100 yrs old if I understood correctly, but updated since then) that turns out to have been built on top of a Christian church. Also, there used to be an Avenue of the Sphinxes from Karnak to Luxor, and they are in the middle of restoring it. You could see part of it in front of Luxor Temple. I believe that Karnak is in general built to honor the god Amun, and then once a year he traveled down the Nile to Luxor Temple (literally, they would take his gold statue on a boat) to honeymoon with his wife, who I think was represented by 42 names at Luxor temple, one for each of Egypt’s 42 provinces. (Anyone catch the 42 reference there?) After that we were beat (I barely slept at all the previous night) so we went back to the hotel, ate mediocre Italian and slept for a while. Then off to the Mummification Museum. Really, just call it a large room with mummification-related stuff in it, cause calling it a museum sort of overinflates its offerings. It’s cool though. Worth the $10/30 min if you’re around. Then we went to the sound and light show at Karnak. A little cheesy at times, according to the guidebook, but maybe I’m just a sentimentalist at heart because I was kind of moved by the narration of the temple’s history. Pretty lights, hard to capture the shots I wanted with the camera. (BTW, I am shooting with my Dad’s old Nikon D80 with an 18-200 lens. Yes, you’re right. It’s heavy.) After that, we tried to find a restaurant I’d read about on Lonely Planet’s website. First the driver took us to a place that was called the Swiss Inn, not the Mercure Inn. We were like, that’s not it. Then he called our guide Ashraf, who told the driver to do what we said (go back to the Mercure we’d passed). We went there – no restaurant. Then Swiss Inn used to be the Mercure, but now is, clearly, the Swiss Inn. Also, the restaurant may be closed, said Ashraf and some random guy on the street that helped our driver. So we directed the poor frustrated driver back to the Swiss Inn. We went in only to discover that not only was the restaurant closed, it’d been demolished, and we’d walked past its ruins on the way in. You could still see part of an archway with Dawar El Umda on it, except you couldn’t see the “Umda”. So we took a regular cab back to our hotel and ate at the Nubian Restaurant’s buffet. What was there? The very Nubian Greek lamb fricassee (too fennel-heavy for my taste), moussaka (also greek), chicken piccata, chicken cacciatore… are you seeing the pattern here? Anyways, we have to get up at 4:30 tomorrow and stay up til midnight for New Year’s, so I’m going to bed now. Oh, also, I found my jeans that have been missing for 6 months! In the front pocket of my suitcase, which I clearly haven’t checked since I came home from California in June… yay! Also some guy at Karnak was wearing a Yankees hat (I have my Red Sox one and was wearing it at the time). No casualties to report.
Day 3, Dec 31st
Also Mom’s birthday! Up at 4:30, except Dad thought I said 4:20 so called our room then. My aunt was already up. No box breakfasts b/c hotel said they had to be ordered by 8pm and we asked at like 10. Picked up in the lobby by Yasser of the Sindbad hot air balloon company. Picked up other tourists as well, and then we headed to the dock. We sat on a smallish motorized boat around a table. We were served tea or coffee and a “Dream Cake Slice” which tasted like sort of cheap Nilla Wafers. Oddly, though, kind of tasty. We had to write down our weights on a sheet of paper to give them enough information to be able to balance the balloons. Once across the Nile we were transferred to vans that took us to the balloons. We passed 3 or 4 other balloon places on the way right near ours. It was pretty fun to watch the flat balloons that were laying on the ground inflate because of all the hot air created by the huge jets of flaming gas. Each basket (gondola? What are they called?) had 5 separate areas – 4 for people, one on each corner, and one in the center for the pilot. Guess what our pilot’s name was? Yep. Mohammed. The ride lasted about 45-50 minutes and was muss less chilly and much smoother than I expected. It was lovely to watch the sun rise while floating in a balloon over the west bank. We could see Karnak and Luxor temples on the east bank. I kept trying to get a good shot of the temple of Hatshepsut, but it was dark and far. I think I got some good ones of the whole ride though. We managed to not land on any power lines (though we certainly looked like we were about to drift into them at one point), and were driven to a different location than where we started. We seemed to just land in a random field, though there were no crops growing in that particular one. We were met by our guide, Nana. We mentioned the need for food, and we stopped by the… temple of Habu I think? Medinet Habu?... anyway, by a place right in front of there. We were given menus and three out of four of us ordered chocolate crepes. They had crepes. How odd. They weren’t bad, either. During the wait for our food and then more while we ate, we were looked at piteously by this super cute dog and little marmalade kitten, who also had the somewhat-demanding-yet-still-piteous mew down pat. Nana dropped some bread for them. I really wanted to pet the dog. Such a cutie pie. Anyway, then we went to the Valley of the Nobles and saw the tombs of Rekhmire and Sennofer, both of whom served under Amenhotep II. Rekhmire was, I think Nana said, the #2 guy in Egypt after the Pharaoh, and Sennofer was in charge of all the gardens. Both very wealthy men. The paintings on the walls were well preserved in Rekhmire’s tomb, and some of the detail was amazing. For example, there was a bird painted that was a few inches long, but great care had been taken to show the scaly texture of skin on its legs. Apparently as soon as the men got to those positions, they started building their tombs. That’s apparently the way it worked back then. Sennofer’s tomb was down 44 steps, and was amazingly preserved. Some portions of the wall had cracked off, but not very much, and the paintings were nearly pristine. Just amazing detail and color all over the walls, columns, ceilings. This ceiling was done as grapevines in one room and flowers in the other instead of stars b/c he died before they had time to polish the roof and make it into stars. Well, died and the 70 day mummification period was too short for the typical star ceiling, so. It just blew my mind to imagine people over 3000 years ago painting these scenes that essentially look as if they were painted yesterday. Then we went to the Valley of the Kings. You can guess who was buried here: Kings. One ticket is good for three tombs. 65 tombs, 11 open to the public. We saw Ramses IV first. It had Coptic graffiti on some on the walls, and the figures at person-height were defaced, literally. As in, their faces were scratched off, supposedly by the Coptics or Romans, I don’t remember which. But, the thing that really killed me was I think I saw some Latin graffiti in there too. I mean, LATIN. The ancient Egyptians were coming alive for me, but Latin? Come on now. Next tomb was Ramses I. He only ruled for ~2 years, so his tomb was small but the colors were well preserved. Apparently, for kings’ tombs, the artist and the high priest decided where to put the tomb in the valley (the priests had maps of other tomb locations), and which scenes from the Book of the Dead to put on the walls. Scenes were first drawn in in red and black, then carved, then painted. In contrast, in the Valley of the Nobles, the tombs were only painted, and with scenes from everyday life. Last tomb was that of Tuthmosis III, deep in the mountain. This was interesting because it was unfinished – most everything was still in the red and black ink. In many cases, apparently junior artists would draw with the red paint, and then senior artists would correct their hieroglyphic spelling in black in right next to it. There were many examples of this. Also, this tomb was H-O-T. After this it was like 12:30, but we decided to wait to eat til we got back to the hotel. This was brave of us because we then went to 2 more places. Once, an alabaster “factory”, more like alabaster craft shop. (Other stones too.) Then, the Temple of Queen Hatshepsut. This is the famous temple with three tiers of pillars that look like they are carved into the mountain. Her image was defaced by her stepson/nephew/something else Tuthmosis III who was pissed at her for stopping him from being king for 18 years. Queen Hatshepsut was the only female ruler to rule as a king – she dressed up like a king and everything. For some reason, it was here, at this temple, that I was like, woah, am I really here? Can I really be looking at this? I still don’t fully understand. I just kept looking around in disbelief. Then, back to the hotel, finally. Some lunch in the courtyard, and up here to write this and wait for the 9:30 start time of the New Year’s Eve party/buffet. I am tired and would like to sleep, but I’d rather write all this down while it’s fresh in my mind. I can sleep another time. And shop another time. Tomorrow, in fact, I hope to go to 2 shops that I’d identified. I’ve been assured they are open: “Friday, Sunday, New Year’s day, never a break!” Totally unrelatedly, I am still struck by the poverty I see driving around. Not that I expect every place to look like home but… well, do I? Well, for whatever reason, it surprises me. Oh, so at the alabaster shop I accidentally bargained for and (purposely) bought a small item. It went like this: Me: How much is this? Him: 250 ($1 = 5LE) Me: Oh, never mind, that’s way too much. Him: How much did you want to spend? Me: Uh… I didn’t want to spend more than $10. Him: 35. (he meant dollars here) Me: Oh no, I just wanted to spend $10. Him: How many Egyptian pounds is that? Me: about 55. Him: …. Me: I don’t want to insult you, so thank you. (At this point I walked away b/c my mom had already bought her thing and we were about to leave.) Him, coming after me 10 second later: 100. (here he meant LE) Me, quickly calculating that was just under $10: No, I just wanted to spend $10. (we turned to go.) Him: [something about wanting to make me happy], okay, we give it to you for $10. I borrowed the $10 bill from my Dad, paid, and we left. My First Bargain! (Yes, I took it with me when I left, for you careful readers.) Okay, I just got a call that the hotel (notified by the travel agency) is bringing up a birthday cake for my mom, so time to go. And then sleep, and then shower. Happy New Year! Addendum: sleep and shower, good. Dinner buffet, fair to good. Singers, fair. Belly dancer, good though I’m no judge. Very jiggly. Man dancing in skirt with tambourine-y things – awesome (EDIT: Sufi dancer, otherwise known as Whirling Dervish). Men and women dancers – fair. Indeterminate stroke of New Year’s and overpriced not-that-great sparkling wine (champagne would have been ~$400) – fair. Tomorrow, Dendara and more west bank sites.
Day 4, Jan 1, 2009 (!)
Up at 6:45ish, breakfast buffet. Met by Nana in lobby and off to Dendara at 8-something. It’s about 60km from Luxor, just past the town of Qena. It’s a temple to Hathor, and is magnificent. It still has a roof, which is highly unusual. There was a lot of color still on the stone, and the temple itself is quite intricate. Rather than a large complex like Karnak, this was really all just one temple. There was the now-familiar hypostyle hall, which led into a hallway off of which were several rooms. It continued into a sanctuary where the statue of the goddess was kept. There was a hallway all around the sanctuary even though there was only one entrance to it. There were I think 13 little shrines off that hallway. In one of the areas before the sanctuary, there was a stairway leading up on the right. This stair went up in a square spiral, if I can say that. Oh, also in one of the shrines around the sanctuary there was a staircase to a crypt where the priests would have kept supplies. Even down there, the work was amazingly detailed. So – up the staircase and out onto the roof of the temple. There was a columned area which was a shrine to the New Year (appropriate!). Walking further around, there was also the room with the zodiac, which is the first known depiction of the zodiac in its present (disc?) form (though not all the signs are the same). Then there was a staircase going down, but all in a straight line this time, coming out in the same place the other staircase started, except on the opposite side of the temple. There was also a cool little (like, 4x8 max) room at the top of the shrine directly behind the sanctuary that was reached by climbing a steep metal staircase. It was used for secret rituals, though just which ones weren’t specified (I guess it was secret!). We took a long time at Dendara (but totally worth it!) so we were trying to figure out how to do everything we wanted. I did not want to eat at the hotel again, so we were going to shoot for Restaurant Mohammed on the West Bank, which was on the way to our afternoon sites. Since we were running late, Nana suggested taking a motorized felucca across the river, since the restaurant was on the other side, on the river. That didn’t sound quite right to me, but we went with it. Turns out, they (whoever had incorrectly informed her) were talking about some super sketchy-looking place (from a GI perspective). So we improvised and stopped at Restaurant Francais, run by a French guy who had lived in Orange County for 10 years and was wearing a Reef (I think) shirt and looked like a surfer. We got what were essentially grilled cheese sandwiches (cheese on toast), which took forever, and ate them in the car on the way to Deir El Medina, which was the city and tombs of the men who worked on the royal tombs. I can’t remember the names of the tombs we saw, but the colors were perfectly preserved and looked amazing. Next, to the temple of Medinet Habu. This was also a large temple, though most of the roofs were gone. There were some amazing colors left on the walls and columns, and the roofs that were there, though. It was built by Ramses III who was killed by his second wife, Titi, because she wanted her son to be king. There were many scenes of Ramses III defeating his enemies in battle. Apparently not only did they cut off the hands of their captives, but they also cut off their penises (penes, to be grammatically correct). There was, to illustrate this, a carving of a pile of penes. Yep. Anyway, this temple went on for a ways, and deserved far more than the 30-45 min we gave it. We then went to the Valley of the Queens, somewhat inaccurately named because others were buried there as well. For the life of me, I can’t remember the first tomb we saw, and this was just over two hours ago! The second was that of the murdering queen Titi. More well-preserved colors. I can’t hope to get the name of the third tomb right, but there is some question about who was in there – ad adult or a child, because the skeleton of a fetus was found inside the coffin. However, the paintings show a child being led by his father, though a competing explanation is that he was an adult for…. I can’t remember what reason, sorry. Again, great preservation of color here, and amazing detail, and again, everything was both carved and painted (though the paint went into far more detail than the carving, which makes sense). Finally, we were done for the day and are now back at the hotel awaiting our 7:45pm pickup for our reservations at Sofra, apparently an excellent Egyptian restaurant. Finally! I’m so tired of hotel food. Then tomorrow morning we have to be up at 5ish for our 6am pickup for our flight to Aswan. More on dinner afterwards…. Yep, Frommer’s was right. The veal tagine with spring onions, etc… to die for. So good. Unfortunately I got the pigeon stuffed with rice, which was good but not as good as the veal. The veal was oh-my-god-I’m-going-to-eat-this-every-ni
Day 5, Jan 2nd
Not as good a day as the others. Ate breakfast and were transferred to the airport just fine. Very nice airport at Luxor, looks brand new. Took one Xanax and was okay for the 25 minute flight, though I still couldn’t look during takeoff or any turns in the air. I was wrong before about sand that looks like carved out mountains/rocks. It isn’t sand, it really is carved-out rock. (Carved by water). Couldn’t find our guy that was supposed to meet us at Aswan for 20 min, which was okay though a little stressful. Turned out we were going to start touring right away, not even dropping our luggage off at the hotel. Our guy was named Asaad, and our guide was Yvonne (Egyptian/Syrian, though I don’t know why the French name). Asaad left us almost immediately and we went with Yvonne and the driver (I’m just going to guess Mohammed though I don’t know if we were ever told) to Aswan high dam. The guide books were right, it’s not that cool. Pyramid-shaped in cross section, with not-particularly stunning views on either side. Apparently soon Lake Nasser will be the second-, instead of the first-, largest manmade lake, because China is apparently building some huge dam that will beat out Lake Nasser. We drove over the old dam and took a felucca to Philae. It used to be on another island, but would have been submerged by Lake Nasser, so it was moved to an island in between the two damns. It was crowded inside. The grounds had a lot of people on them but inside the temple was packed, kind of like Karnak (though almost nothing is “inside” there since there is no roof). Yvonne was not particularly good at explaining what was going on with the temple, but she did let us walk around a bit on our own so at least I got to see bits she wouldn’t have shown us. So, originally the temple was along a straight line, but when they moved it, there was something particular to the island they moved it to that made them decide to change it. Bizarre. Oddly, despite the reason I wanted to go to Philae in the first place (The Mummy Returns – you can laugh at me I don’t care), my favorite thing about Philae wasn’t any particular ancient feature, but carved in to one side of an entryway was the phrase “B. Mare stultus est” in block roman style letters. How hilarious is that?! Unfortunately there was no date, so I don’t know if it was from an expedition in the 1800’s like most of the “graffiti” I’ve seen, or from actual Romans. From Philae we went to a gold shop where my aunt bought me a gorgeous Ankh necklace that I love. We then went to a perfume place where we bought a bunch of essential oils, and I finally smelled frankincense and myrrh for the first time that I was aware that that was what I was smelling. We got lotus and papyrus oils, which supposedly can’t be exported, and some orange blossom and something called Scent of the Desert or something like that. When I saw we, I mean my aunt and my mom, though I think I’ll try to steal some lotus and papyrus. Then it was off to the Nubian Museum (what’s a Nubian?) which was also rather poorly explained by Yvonne. I am not sure if it was because we were in a hurry, because she didn’t know, or if she just didn’t care. Then we needed to eat, so the driver took our bags to the hotel while we took a felucca to the Nubian Restaurant. It was packed and we had to wait for a table. We ordered before we were seated. Service was not very good, and they didn’t even switch the dirty tablecloth from the previous diners. The food was good though I wouldn’t say it was stellar. Me, my mom, and Yvonne had fried Nile perch with rice, and my aunt and Dad had chicken. They also gave us a bunch of little plates of things like tzatziki (don’t know what it’s called here), red cabbage, and tomato and cucumber salad. Too bad we could only eat the tahini. The brown bread was good though. Also they gave us a dish of cooked vegetables so we could eat those. The check was a long time in coming, and my dad was convinced that Yvonne scammed us by going up to take care of it herself and then having us pay her, even though we saw the check. But, of course, we can’t read Arabic and couldn’t hear or understand their conversation, so… that, coupled with her telling my dad to tip the driver 50LE (~$10), which was way more than we were told or tipped in Luxor, made us not too happy with her. Then we went to Elephantine Island by felucca, which took a while even though it was close by because the felucca was not motored, just powered via sail. There was a sad little museum there, which Yvonne walked us through, not really explaining what the significance of anything was, just saying what things were, which was already obvious from the labels. Ditto once we walked outside to see the ruins of the temple of Khnoum, though she said I think maybe one paragraph of explanation that I don’t recall because honestly all the explanation of ancient history are starting to run together. Hence my writing each day :). By this point it was I think almost 4, and we’d been told that our flight tomorrow back from Abu Simbel -> Aswan was fine but the flight from Aswan -> Cairo was at 10pm instead of a continuation of the Abu Simbel->Aswan flight in the afternoon. And, as I said, we weren’t that pleased with Yvonne. We were still supposed to go to the Botanical Garden, but we said that if we were going to have all this time tomorrow in Aswan again, that we’d just do it tomorrow afternoon. So we went to the hotel where my dad expressed his (our, really) displeasure with the flight situation only to find that the flight was at midnight (!) instead. So, as I write this, he is on the phone with Nadia from our travel company, and we will see what happens. I think we’ll just end up eating in the hotel so we don’t have to take a ferry over and back to the mainland tonight. In the morning our flight to Abu Simbel is at 9 am, and supposedly we will arrive back in Aswan anywhere from 1:30-2:30, depending on whether we get a reasonable flight out of here and can stay at the airport, or have to come back to the hotel. So, more later if anything changes.
Day 6, Jan 3rd 2009
Nadia was told that the plane we were supposed to be on had engine trouble and so they had to switch to smaller planes. Weird, but okay, so we couldn’t do anything. Up at 6, ate breakfast. If I eat sausage and eggs one more time I’ll cry. It’s just, that’s what’s at the breakfast buffets that we can eat. No porridge with milk, no fresh fruit except bananas, no cereal with milk, no nice desserts with cream in them (unfortunately I do not know how a napoleon is made – if I knew they were safe I’d be scarfing them down by the handful), no uncooked veggies…. When I get back to the States I’m going to eat a fruit salad and drink tap water, just to counteract the angst of this time here. Anyway. Picked up, to airport, on plane to Abu Simbel. ~25 min flight, still couldn’t watch takeoff. Lake Nasser = big. And we got to see Abu Simbel from our side of the plane before landing. Plane->shuttle->ticket->approached by English speaking guide (included in cost of entrance ticket). He talked a little about the temple of Ramses II, how the sun shines into the sanctuary on Feb 22nd and Oct 22nd each year. Used to be the 21sts, but when it was moved to save it from being submerged by Lake Nasser, the height made a one-day difference. I found it a little odd that he’d build this huge temple with a bunch of statues of him, but have it dedicated to a god – it kind of seemed dedicated to him, at least in my mind. All over the walls were scenes of him making offerings to various gods. Maybe the statues of himself are just so that they know he was the one who built it. At any rate, this was also a similar experience to the Temple of Hatshepsut, the “I can’t believe I am here looking at this” thing. Then we went on to the temple of Nefertari, Ramses II’s favorite wife. 6 statues outside, 4 gods, 2 her. Much smaller than the first temple. Our guide says that Nefertari was a Nubian. Inside were statues of Hathor (the temple was dedicated to her), and scenes showing Nefertari making offerings to the gods, Nefertari at her coronation between Hathor and Isis, and Ramses II and Nefertari together. After that temple I went back out in front of Ramses II’s temple to just stare. Though I thought it’d be a bit bigger (it was definitely really big but somehow I imagined it even larger), it was still breathtaking. Temple->shuttle->plane->Aswan. The flight we were on back to Aswan was the one we were supposed to be on to Cairo, and it was definitely continuing there. The nice big plane. Remember, the one that was supposed to have had engine trouble? Yeah. So someone clearly a) forgot to make our reservation in the first place and b) then lied to someone about it. Irritating, but again, there was nothing we could do – we even checked at the ticket desk. So we came back to the hotel to eat lunch before meeting Yvonne and going to the botanical garden at 3:15. We didn’t get to the restaurant at the hotel til 2:50 though. Oops. We tried to get a message to them – it wasn’t clear if we were successful. At any rate, we met Yvonne and Asaad (not sure why he was there) in the lobby and went to the botanical garden. It was decent – it’s winter so not really many flowers out except poinsettias. Some cool palm trees though. On the felucca back, our boat crew (of 2, standard) showed us the baby crocodile they kept under the floorboards in the boat. Poor thing. It was probably 8-9 inches long. Then, back to the hotel to rest and shower before our 9:45pm pickup for our 12:20 flight. Ow. If that is really the flight we are on, we won’t get into Cairo and to the hotel until 2 something. Supposedly I will meet up with
ebenezer either late tonight or early tomorrow morning for breakfast, as he is also in Cairo, though he leaves tomorrow. Assuming dinner and the flight to Cairo go smoothly (which is not necessarily a safe assumption), that’s all I have for tonight.Day 7, January 4, 2009
Dinner happened, we did not get an earlier flight, and we landed in Cairo around 1:30 am. Not without incident, however. I decided to be half-brave and take ½ a Xanax. I’d contemplated not taking any, but thought no, I’d rather take it. True story. Anyway, everything was fine, we boarded, strapped in, taxied for takeoff, turned onto the runway, spun up the engines, started to take off… and then braked, hard, and aborted the takeoff. Yeah. Loved that. Apparently the runway lights had not been on. Way to go, Aswan air traffic control. The second try went fine, but that meant that for the rest of the flight, I was exhausted, half drugged, and terrified anyway. Woo. Got to the Cairo Marriott okay, but they seemed to have trouble checking us in. Possibly because no one confirmed with them that we were going to get in so late…? Who knows. At any rate, we made it, and I texted
ebenezer. We met up in the lobby and caught up for a while before I pleaded exhaustion and went to bed. It was 4am at this point. We had agreed to have breakfast at 7 since he had to leave at 8 for a 10:10 flight, so I was getting up in 2:45. Which I did, and we had a nice little buffet breakfast. Well, it was only okay, but it did not involve me eating sausage (shut up) so I consider that a good breakfast. Went back to the room and to sleep until we had to meet our tour guide Amira at 10. She spent 6 months in Bloomington Indiana – why, I don’t know. We went right to the Egyptian Museum. Definitely super crowded and not particularly well documented or explained. Just mostly a collection of artifacts with labels. Good thing we had a guide to explain some of it, but we sort of had to rush through. At the end we had the choice of paying 100LE to see the royal mummies or wandering around. My family wandered, I paid to see the mummies. Queen Hatshepsut’s was there (obese and diabetic) as well as Ramses II. Definitely weird to think that this was a well-preserved human body that was born ~3000 years ago that I was looking at. I don’t regret paying the 100LE though – I’m in Egypt. I should see mummies. Duh. Of course the highlight of the museum was the entire second floor, devoted to everything that was found in the tomb of Tutankhamun. The reason he’s so famous isn’t so much that he was a boy king, but that his tomb was the only one found in the Valley of the Kings that wasn’t robbed, so it still had everything in it. Lots of gold, alabaster, semiprecious inlay… the famous mask of gold inlaid with lapis lazuli (among other things). One of the coffins was made entirely of gold… really it was just a spectacular collection. It made me think of 2 things: 1: Man, these guys were RICH, and 2: Can you imagine if tomb robbers hadn’t emptied out all the other tombs? Imagine how much stuff we’d have found by now… 65 tombs in the Valley of the Kinds, Tut’s was just one. And then there’s the Valley of the Queens and Nobles. Then it was off to the Citadel and the Mosque of Muhammed Ali. As the Citadel itself is mostly in ruins, all that’s really left is a wall. It’s the mosque that people to go see. Built largely of alabaster, now instead of being shining white it’s kind of brown and dirty, which is a shame. Amira said that they don’t clean it because they tried and it started falling apart…? Apparently, alabaster amplifies the voice well, which is why they used it, so the sheikh could call Muslims to prayer back in the day when there were not loudspeakers. It was nice, but not as impressive as I expected. No mosaics or anything. Also Amira mentioned that there were no other mosques on the itinerary, but I was pretty sure that we’re supposed to go to El Azhar park and Mosque. We’ll see. There was a (very distant) view of the pyramids from the mosque, as well as a good view of old / Islamic Cairo. Then we were off to lunch, only we got stuck in traffic that was literally all stop and no go for a while. We made it to lunch minus my dad who had a headache and went back to the hotel. Lunch was on a boat permanently moored right in front of the Marriott (which is on the Nile) and was an Arabian buffet, supposedly. Nothing really stood out except the curried chicken and the dessert pastries. Now we are at the hotel switching rooms because my mom’s room had gnats in it. Tonight we don’t have anything planned, so more later.Day 8, Jan 5th
My aunt came into our room last night saying my dad’s temperature was 106 and that he wouldn’t call the hotel doctor. I immediately went over there only to learn that it was really 101.6. Phew. As I said to my aunt before I walked out of our room, 106 was “kind of impossible”. We had walked around the hotel shops and gotten some sandwiches, and I was like man, he sure got real sick real fast. But fortunately he was okay this morning. I think I slept for 11 hours. We all needed it – this trip has been very bad for resting. Off we went at 9:30 to see the pyramids. Yet again another surreal experience. Another case where you’ve seen them so often in pictures/tv/movies that when you are actually looking at them, you just assume you must be looking at a picture or something. Oh – Cairo’s air quality is terrible, and from one pyramid, the next was a little fuzzy, even though they are fairly close together. Even just in front of one, it’s not totally clear. Terrible smog. They only sell a limited number of tickets to go inside the first pyramid so we bought tickets to go inside the second. It wasn’t particularly interesting – in and down, in and straight, in and up, and then a room. It was not painted or anything, and there was only the stone sarcophagus in there. Having seen so many spectacular tombs, this wasn’t. But it was kind of neat to think that when I looked up, there were millions of tons of pyramid above me. Then we went on a camel ride, all 4 of us. Smelly, mean, ugly animals. Somewhat picturesque, very smelly. We went a little ways where you could get a good shot of all the 9 pyramids (I think one was in ruins but counted as a pyramid anyway). Yes I have pictures of me on a camel. And “holding” the top of the great pyramid of Khufu. In my Red Sox hat! This pleases me. I think it never really sunk in that I was there, cause even when we were getting back in the van it didn’t seem real. Then off to the right-next-door Sphinx. The Sphinx has the head of Khafre and the body of a lion. Khafre was Khufu’s son, and the other large (though not as large) pyramid is Khafre’s son. Family tradition. So, Khafre head lion’s body – the head was carved out of one stone, but the body was constructed out of smaller stones. There is also a temple right next to it, though I have no idea of its significance. Same surreal feeling. I feel a little bad that I’m going to come back from Egypt and not really believe that I saw all the cool things I saw. I will have to refer to my ~1,200 pictures to convince me. After the Sphinx we went to lunch at Andrea’s, which was a place on my list. They serve only spit-roasted chicken, and damn was it good. They first give you plates of cole slaw type stuff, cold potato salad, beets, tahini, baba ghanoush, kofta (in the shape of balls not on skewers) and French fries, with a basket of fresh bread (and I do mean it was just made). TASTY. I eventually started taking bread, picking up some chicken, and dipping it in the tahini. Mmmm. Then back to our hotel, which would have taken maybe 10-15 minutes were it not for the totally normal, horrible traffic. We did actually move at a perceptible rate, but man was it slow. As I said, this is apparently the way it is all the time in Cairo (except not at like 4 in the morning). We decided to push the pyramid sound and light show to tomorrow so we could hopefully have more time to rest than we’d have had today. I am hoping to go shopping this afternoon/evening, but we’ll see. We’ll do the Khan on Wednesday, but there are shops nearby that I am interested in. I doubt we’ll be eating a large dinner. So, more later if anything happens. Oh, also it seems that there aren’t a lot of mosaics in the mosques as I can’t really find mention of any nice ones. I’m going to look into it though.
Day 9, Jan 6th
Last night we rested for a bit and then managed to find our way to the Egypt Crafts Center/Fair Trade Egypt store, with the kind assistance of some local men on the street. I bought scarves, beautiful soft hand-woven scarves from Nagada. I think I can get similar ones for less at the Khan, but this store was quiet and there was no sales pressure, both qualities that the Khan will lack. My mom goes some scarves as well. I… actually don’t remember if I ate anything for dinner. I was still stuffed from lunch. Today we started around 8:30, but our guide was stuck in traffic and didn’t get to the hotel til 9. My aunt begged off for the day due to stomach pains and general exhaustion, so it was just me, my mom, and my dad. First stop was Memphis, by way of the smoggiest streets I’ve ever seen. As in, someone standing 10 feet away from you was slightly fuzzy because of the smog. Seriously, this was bad. I thought we’d get away from it, as the sites we were visiting are outside the city, but nope. All smoggy. Memphis was the capitol of the Old Kingdom, and there really isn’t much there except two medium sized statues of Ramses II and ¾ of one large one lying on the ground. Oh, there was a sphinx too. Then on to Saqqara where the first ever pyramid was built, the Step Pyramid of Djoser. It was less surreal than the Giza pyramids, perhaps because I’ve seen almost no pictures of it ever. There was a nearby temple, and apparently in the area in front of the pyramid, the king used to fight bulls to prove his worthiness to reign (this would happen periodically not all the time). Also nearby were tombs of some nobles, as well as ordinary people. Then on to Dahshur, where there were three pyramids, but we only really saw one (there were another couple at Saqqara as well but were small and sort of sad looking). Apparently there are not as many tourists to these areas (we only saw a handful of vans/buses) so the road to the Bent Pyramid is very bad and sort of tough to drive on for cars/vans/buses, so we stopped at the base of the Red Pyramid and photographed the Bent Pyramid from a distance. This was too bad, as I was looking forward to seeing it close up. I think the deal with the Bent Pyramid is that they started building it in the manner of the pyramids at Giza, smooth-sided, but realized part-way through that the angle was too steep and wouldn’t work out. So they switched to a shallower angle and finished it. (EDIT: This was built before the Giza pyramids, though.) I wonder how they treated the engineer that messed that one up. Then we saw the Red Pyramid, which is no longer particularly red on the outside. Our tickets included entrance into this one, so we made the climb up the 120 stairs outside to the entrance, where my mom and dad were warned that the way in was quite difficult by two women recovering outside. The guy at the entrance can be essentially bribed with LE5 to let you take photos inside, despite the toppled sign at the bottom of the pyramid saying “NO PHOTO”. So I paid my LE5 and made the 65 meter descent down a long narrow tunnel where you could see the ceiling was actually pretty red. It led both down and in, and into a step-ceilinged room, which is the best way I can think of to describe it. This in turn led into another one. It was noticeably stuffy in the first room, and more so in the second. In the second there was a staircase at the back. Ascending this, I began to realize that a canary probably would have died by now, as the methane-ish smell was quite strong and the air quality was BAD. (EDIT: My dad commented that the reason canaries were used was because humans can’t smell methane. Okay, so it wasn’t methane in there, but it was something foul.) The stair led up to a small tunnel, on the other side of which was a third step-ceilinged room, except here you emerged at the start of the steps most of the way up the wall. I was actually concerned that I was going to pass out, not because I felt bad (I didn’t) or out of shape (not that either), but just due to lack of oxygen that I might not notice until it was too late. This made me nervous enough that I left the room quickly and got back to the bottom of the initial tunnel as quickly as I could. Then back up the 65m inclined path, by the end of which my hamstrings were not 100% and I was out of breath. I rested for a while, drank some water my dad had with him (he’d waited for me) and made the 120-stair climb down, a little shakily due to leg wobbliness. Then it was time for lunch, at Saqqara Restaurant. This was very much like Andrea’s yesterday, but had chicken, fish, or mixed grill. All three of us got the latter, of which the kofta was exceptional (chicken+veal were the other meats). Bread was similarly delicious as at Andrea’s as well, though the cat begging for food was much cuter at Saqqara. Then back to the hotel to wait to be picked up for the Pyramids Sound and Light Show at Giza. …And now we’re back from the Sound and Light show. (side note: I have so many tickets from so many sites now, it’s amazing.) It was, as the guide book said (Frommer’s), cheesy. Cheesetastic. Way dramatic. There were a couple times when I just laughed outright. I thought I got some decent shots of everything, and then when we got back I realized I’d left it on ISO400 instead of switching it to 1000. Doh. Oh well. Tomorrow is Coptic Christmas, so the traffic should be okay – UNLIKE today when it was awful – we almost didn’t make the sound and light show in time despite having started over an hour earlier. We have a car, driver, and Kareem from 9-1:30. We’re planning on the Mosque of Ibn Tulun, the Gayer-Anderson Museum, the shop Khan Misr Touloun (all in the same area), hopefully find the bookbinder, and then the Khan al Khalili, Naugib Mahfouz, Al Azhar Mosque and park, and… we’ll see how long the car lasts through that. There is also a nice restaurant in Al Azhar park, but I don’t know if we’ll get to go as 1) we might not have the car that late (dinner-ish) and 2) we are supposedly having dinner at some pre-planned place tomorrow – I think maybe the pseudo-Arabian boat we had lunch a couple days ago. We’ll see. At any rate, tomorrow is our last full day in Cairo and in Egypt. I will need to catch up on sleep for like a week when I get back.
Day 10, Jan 7th
I have been assiduously avoiding the news and trying not to think of work while I’ve been here, entirely successful in the former case, somewhat of a failure in the latter. Apparently something is going on with Israel, so today we had two guys walking around with us, Kareem and one whose name I didn’t get. We went to the Mosque of Ibn Tulun, which was deserted (in terms of tourists) except for us. We had shoe covers put on us, and walked around. It was peaceful and very nice to be the only ones there. It’s the oldest mosque in Cairo, built around 875 AD. We went up the minaret, though only I went to the top, where there was nothing to stop me from just falling off. Very nice views all around, but smog and humidity really restricted the distance I could see. Then to the Gayer-Anderson Museum. He was a British officer who obsessively collected stuff from all over and signed over everything to the Egyptian government when he left thr country right before he died. In return, they gave him the title of Pasha. This museum is where they filmed part of The Spy Who Loved Me. It was really amazing, some lovely pieces. Inlay, mosaic fountain, rugs, etc. Then we shopped at the Khan Misr Touloun – I bought two inlaid mother-of-pearl boxes. And then off to the Khan al Khalili, where I unsuccessfully bargained for some scarves for a friend, and am not regretting the extra money I didn’t pay for the scarves I didn’t buy. The big heartbreaker, though, is that the bookbinder I really wanted to go to is closed today. I was counting on that bookbinder but… that’s how life goes, I guess. Now rest, then lunch, then shop nearby and walk, then dinner – a 2-hour Nile cruise aboard the boat we lunched on the other day. I am very sad about the bookbinder. Except no! After lunch we tried to get to the shop behind the hotel in the cathedral but it was closed for the holiday. We went back to the Fair Trade store because my aunt wanted some of the scarves for her friends and the weave was finer there. I bought some scarves for my friend, feeling slightly bad that I could have paid less at the Khan. Then I sadly went back to my hotel room moping about the bookbinder while my parents and aunt took a short walk along the Nile. I decided to forlornly call the bookbinder again (Kareem said he called 3x and a 4th while we watched), and lo! They answered! They said they were open til 11. I called my dad but he didn’t pick up – we still haven’t figured out how to reliably call each other. I called my mom and my aunt with no better luck. I cursed in the empty hotel room and waited impatiently for their return. They got back 10 min later, and I immediately called my dad who called Kareem to see how we could get there. Kareem said to call the place, get the bell captain to write directions in Arabic, get a taxi, tell him to wait for us while we were in the store, and go. So we went downstairs, nervously, to put this plan into effect. I was waiting to talk to the bell captain when behold! I saw Ahmed, our second escort this morning, and told my dad to go ask him if he’d come with us. He did, and Ahmed said he would. So the bell captain called the store and got directions which he relayed to Ahmed. Ahmed told us to follow him just outside next to the hotel because getting a cab in front of the hotel is more expensive. He talked to some guy on the corner, and after 30 seconds an unmarked silver car came to a stop in front of us and we got in. Ahmed told him to head for the Khan, since the shop was near there. We got out in front of a mosque where there was a funeral procession – we saw a rug(?)-draped coffin being carried in by several people followed by a long line. Ahmed asked a series of 3 people where Abd El Zaher was, getting us closer each time. We shortly arrived at Abd El Zaher’s bookbinding shop, a nice glass-fronted store with lots of nice-looking books, both blank and address books, as well as photo albums. I selected some books and had them monogrammed, which is included in the price (!). Then, with me tightly clutching my books and smiling, we left, made our way back to the street and the car, and the hotel. Success! I am very happy now. Interesting note about Ahmed: he lives 3 hours north of Cairo by train, and commutes to work here. The reason he was in the lobby is because he had nothing to do between this morning and tonight for our dinner, and he lives too far away to go home, so he was just hanging out. While we were waiting in the store for the monogramming, he showed us a picture of his daughter in a cabbage patch. Very funny. Then, someone brought in a chair for my dad and Ahmed joked that he was going to sit on my dad’s lap because “my gun, very heavy”. We laughed, but wow. Good to know that our escort is packing. Actually, seriously good, because I don’t think it’d have been entirely safe for us to be where we were without him, and we certainly would never have found the place on our own. So, I owe him a huge debt of gratitude (we tipped him, of course, but I mean non-monetary gratitude). Now I am content with my shopping experience, and almost out of Egyptian pounds. Now we wait for the dinner cruise, the night’s sleep, and the 8:30 ride to the airport for the 12 noon flight. If the cruise is interesting, I’ll write a bit more, if not, Salaam Egypt!
