Ok, I know people have been waiting for me to regale them with stories of my trip, so, here goes! I'll do two posts. This one for Egypt, and then I'll do another for Israel.
The trip started with one heck of a long flight. Salt Lake to St. Paul. St. Paul to Amsterdam. 8hr layover in Amsterdam...sigh. Amsterdam to Cairo. Arrival in Cairo at 2am. And once we arrived, did we have our luggage? No, we did not. Luckily, our tour company had sent Muhammad to help us with everything, and he dealt with the luggage thing while we sat there, blurry-eyed. After leaving the airport, we get to the hotel. It's about 4am by now. We go to check in, only to find that our travel agent had booked us in starting the NEXT day! No room. Awesome. But, they had a couple of free rooms, so my dad paid out of his pocket so we could actually sleep. Our first day in town was free, so, we wandered around close to the hotel, but, it was really dusty out, so we mostly stayed at the hotel.
Day 2 was our BIG Cairo day. We still had no luggage, so, we had to wear the same stuff as the day before…sigh. Anyway. We started out at the pyramids. They are incredible. They are a lot bigger than they seem on tv or in pictures. We walked around the big one, then our guide George took us up the hill for our camel ride! Yep, we rode camels at the pyramids. Here’s a pic of me on my camel, Moses.
After that, we went back into Cairo and went to the hanging church. It’s a really ornate, detailed church, and it’s called a “hanging” church because it sits up high so that it won’t flood and was protected, etc. We also saw another church (can’t remember the name of it) where the holy family stayed and hid for 3 months. After that, we visited Ben Ezra Synagogue which is where Moses was picked from the Reeds. I think that’s the right story, but don’t shoot me if it’s not! :) What else…from there we drove to the really big market/bazaar downtown. We just did a walk-thru, but, it was really impressive. There are hundreds of tiny little shops, and tons of VERY pushy salesmen trying to get you to buy everything! Those guys are actually everywhere in Egypt. You just have to ignore them if you’re not in the mood to shop. Our last stop of the day was the Egyptian Museum. It had a lot of amazing things in it, but, you’d never want to go without a guide, because none of it is labeled! You’d have no idea what you’re looking at. We saw all of King Tut’s treasures that they found in his tomb, and the golden caskets, and the really impressive golden head of his. Neat stuff. I still can’t believe that we fit all that stuff into one day. It was tiring! But, there was a treat when we got back to the hotel….our luggage! Hooray!
The next day we took a flight to Aswan. And the luggage stayed with us the rest of the trip, thank goodness! We saw the high dam, and took a motor boat to the Philae temple. The temple used to be on an island, but, when they built the dam, the island was covered with water, so, they took apart the temple piece by piece, and put it back together on an island next door. After that, we went to our cruise ship, that would take us up the Nile. Our ship was named Mojito. I found that especially amusing, since I’m a bartender. We set sail that evening, and by the morning we were at the Kom Ombo temple. It was another big, impressive thousands of years old temple. Pics can be seen on snapfish. We sailed again through lunch, then we went to Edfu. We took horse-drawn carriages to the temple there, and we also saw the unfinished obelisk that is still sitting in the quarry. That thing is enormous!
The next day was an EARLY day. We had to be out the door at 6:30am. We were in Luxor, and we started at the Valley of the Kings. The valley itself is not terribly impressive…it’s just a canyon in a mountain with a lot of small entrances into tombs. But, I’ll tell you what. Those tombs are amazing. We went into 3 of them. They are so well preserved, it’s amazing. They are of course covered in hieroglyphics, but all of the original color is still everywhere! Bright red, yellow and blue are the main colors. They are just amazing to see. Especially since they’ve been there for 4-5,000 years! There are 62 tombs in the valley, and they keep 16 open at a time. They rotate the open ones because even the act of breathing and the humidity that comes from it can damage the walls. Oh, and also…it’s soooooo hot down there. No ventilation. I was really grateful that we were there at 8am. It would have been awful in the afternoon. After that, we saw the temple for Queen Hatshepshut. See picture. It’s really impressive.
Then we visited an alabaster factory, took a felucca (sailboat) ride, then saw the Luxor temple. Lunch was next, followed by the Karnak temple. That one was amazing. It’s the largest temple in Egypt. You can get lost in there….there is even a man-made lake! After Karnak, we took a carriage ride through Luxor for 2hrs. It was really neat, but, we saw the extremes of life there. We went through the slummy, really poor parts of town. The children would run alongside us begging for money. They were super cute, but, it was sad too. Best part of the ride? As we were going through a market, there was a man holding a disembodied goat’s head! He said “take a picture!” So I did. Then he harassed me for a block or two to pay him for the picture! I didn’t have any small change, so I ignored him. Rude? Yes. Did I care? Not so much. Here’s the hilarious pic.
The next day we flew back to Cairo and went to the step pyramids. They were the pre-cursors to the pyramids that are so famous. It was pretty neat. We also stopped for lunch at a great outdoor place where a man had his camel kiss me. It was very soft and furry! And thank goodness the camel didn’t give me any tongue. Ha! Here’s a pic of that.
On that last night, we had dinner at a local restaurant with my friend Hoda, who is Egyptian, and that was really neat to catch up, and eat the “real” local food. I guess those are the main stories from Egypt…now I’ll have to start writing the Israel section!
