Egypt 3: In which it rains and I wish I had a million dollars

Hello again!

I keep telling myself to update quickly, or else I'll forget everything that happened during the trip! (I'm getting old....). So, here is (hopefully) my final entry on Egypt. More travels in the future will mean more entries to look forward to :)

Sometime during our morning in Luxor we saw an alabaster factory, of which there were many. Alabaster is very popular in that area of Egypt; I ended up getting some beautiful alabaster candle holders (in Cairo, though). We saw a quick demonstration on creating alabaster jars and pots from a chunk of the raw stone--it involves chipping away, then burying the hunk of rock in the ground so it doesn't break while the middle is bored out. The man demonstrating also showed us the difference between real alabaster (and other stones) and fakes which are (according to him) quite popular in the tourist markets.

Getting back to the boat was always fun, because we had towel animals to surprise us in our cabin! We had a very creative housekeeping guy, who knew how to make elephants, monkeys, babies, swans, boats, and crocodiles out of towels. It was great! He often showed up to see our reaction to his handiwork, too.

The next morning involved a trip to Karnak temple, which is connected to Luxor temple by the aforementioned Sphinx Avenue. Karnak was huge, with a lot of parts added on by various pharaohs who felt the need to claim the temple as theirs. Silly pharaohs. We had a full hour to wander around, and ended up seeing some parts of the temple that weren't mobbed by tourists. Very cool.

Here's one random note about Egypt: they use pop-tops on their cans. Pop-tops are the old fashioned way of opening a soda can; pull up a tab and a hole in the top pops off! This means that there are little tabs all over the place, which is why America got ride of pop tops a while ago (and sold their equipment to Egypt...). I thought it was great fun.

After Kom Ombo it was time for some tourism work, since my dad is making a website on Egypt (www.egypttravelplanner.com). This means going to see some of the nicest hotels and boats in Luxor! We first saw the Winter Palace, which made me wish for a million dollars. It was built to house European ex-pats or those who would come down to Egypt for the winter, and still retains a lot of the charm of that time. Many of the rooms looked like they came out of some fancy English palace a couple hundred years ago, and some areas allow only formal dress. My my. Made me want to get all dressed up and act like a millionaire.
Next we saw another millionaire's boat--a dahabiya, which is a sort of house boat that people can rent to take down the Nile. This one had a capacity of 14 people but carried even more crew and was equipped with a lounge, a kitchen, 5 cabins, 2 suites, and a hot tub. According to the owner, its maiden voyage was taken by Robert de Niro.
Our next stop was another nice ship, this one a cruise ship like our own, but a bit fancier. They served us welcome mocktails (welcome drinks are a wonderful Egyptian custom--we often got orange or hibiscus juice) and took us on a tour around the beautiful boat. Like our boat, it looked similar to the rest of the myriad cruise ships on the Nile.

Next we took a lovely caleche tour around Luxor. Luxor has a lot of signs of ex-pats--Irish bars, English food, German hotels, etc. but we were taken off the beaten path and got to see some of the real Egyptian Luxor. We passed through a market full of stalls and shops selling food, clothes, toys, and household supplies. Our driver even stopped to buy shoes! The market was fascinating because it's so different from how Americans shop. I really appreciated being able to see a side of a culture that works differently from ours, and an economy not as rich as that of America (though who knows, these days...). I tried to take photos but most came out fuzzy since I was in a (moderately) rapidly-moving horse carriage!
Our final stop was a traditional Egyptian café. My mom and I had tea with mint and our guide, Ashraf, got coffee and a shisha. We were the only women and the only foreigners in the café which was comfortable and cool and full of Egyptian guys smoking shisha. My mom tried it but I decided to skip. Even a snazzy water pipe can't persuade me to smoke.

That afternoon my mom and I went out for some more touristic research, while my dad stayed at the hotel with a case of food poisoning. We drove about an hour from Luxor, through beautiful fields of sugarcane, bananas, wheat, and other crops, and through a very underdeveloped village (whose contrasts with American life left a profound impact on me) to an oasis resort, which, again, made me wish for a million dollars. It was very different from the Winter Palace but equally luxurious: all the buildings were built in traditional Nubian-ish style and decorated with islamic motifs and woodcarvings. The place was full of plants, which made it seem even more like an oasis, and begged me to stay a week and forget about the rest of the world. The deluxe suite we saw even had a small hamam! I promised the owner I'd stay there on my honeymoon (about that million dollars.....).

That night my mom and I had a nice drink and a Lebanese dinner in our hotel, complete with a dance performance, which looked to be a traditional-modern fusion. The next morning we headed back to Cairo! On our way to our hotel in the center of the city we saw long lines of soldiers standing along the street, facing away from us. They were preparing for the arrival of the president (Mubarak), who lives in Heliopolis, which is along the way from the airport--though I liked to think it was all for us. :)

After an impossibly long lunch (waiting, not eating) at our hotel we spent the afternoon resting up and getting re-accustomed to hearing car horns 24/7. We had dinner in the mall across the street from our hotel, which was quite interesting because it was full of Egyptians and pretty lacking in tourists. Many of the stores were similar--fake brand names and such, with a couple galabia stores and a bunch selling millions of shoes. The top floor had a movie theater.
Then an early night, because our next day was busy!

In the morning we met our guide, Ahmad, and headed off to see the Mohammed Ali Mosque in the Citadel (AKA the alabaster mosque, because much of it is made of alabaster!). It was beautiful, but is no longer active and was quite full of tourists. We got some cool views of the city from the citadel, and could see pyramids, satellite dishes, and smog!

Next we saw the Egyptian museum, which is where archeologists dump everything they find in Egypt. Well, not everything, but a lot of it (they're planning on building a newer, better Egyptian museum near the pyramids). We saw a lot of the beautiful treasures that were found in King Tut's tomb, along with twenty or so mummies, including some of the ones we had been hearing about, including a few Ramses and Hatshepsut. I probably could have spent half a year in the museum and not seen it all.

Next, for a visit to Khan el Khalili, Cairo's bazaar. We had lunch at a wonderful restaurant called Naguib Mafouz, after the famous writer. Then strolled around looking at jewelry, scarves, textiles, and all of the other millions of things that are sold there. If we wanted to buy something, we called on Ahmad to bargain for us, since natives always get lower prices.

Then a super long drive back to the hotel, since the traffic was crazy! Our driver (also named Ashraf, like our former guide), was amazing and quite patient.

The next morning we got up early to go to the pyramids! We had to get there early because they only sell about 150 tickets in the morning to enter the pyramid. After a brief look-around outside, we went into the great pyramid. At first the passage was wide and high, but soon it got smaller, and we had to be bent over double to climb. As we went in further it became harder to breathe, and even I felt a bit claustrophobic (the fact that it was chock full of other tourists didn't help with the amount of oxygen in the air). Climbing up played with my perceptions; at some points being at an angle felt like being vertical. When we finally got to the burial chamber, it was not spectacular (though a lot easier to breathe in). There was a broken sarcophagus, an air-monitoring thing and a security camera. I did a handstand in the burial chamber, but photos were unfortunately not allowed. On the way out, rather than climbing down, I just slid down the railings.

Next we got to take some pictures at a great lookout a bit away from the pyramids, and then took camel rides! Riding a camel was lots of fun, and I decided that a camel would make a great birthday present for me, hint hint. :)

Then we saw a museum about the Solar Boat (which is not actually the correct name), a big boat that was found buried next to one of the pyramids, supposedly having been used to transport the pharaoh from the East side of the Nile to the West.

Next we got to go down into a smaller pyramid--this was for a queen. The way down was equally steep and tight, but much shorter. I found it quite amusing to see a Red Bull can on my way down...
In the burial chamber we were allowed to take pictures, so I got a good one of a handstand inside a pyramid (I hope the pharaohs + queens don't mind). As we still hadn't gotten enough of the pyramids, we then took a walk around the medium-sized pyramid, and discovered where young Egyptian couples hang out (behind the pyramid of Khafra). Then a short van-ride to the sphinx, which is (believe it or not) smaller than I expected. We took the tereotypical "sphinx in front of the pyramid of Khafra" picture, then headed to a beautiful nearby hotel for lunch. During lunch, it started raining! Rain is very rare in Egypt; our guide says it come about twice a year. On the way back to Cairo (which was accumulating puddles because it has no drainage system), we taught our driver how to use the defrost setting.
We had two more stops before officially heading home: memphis, which holds a huge statue of Ramses II (who else?) and a bunch of other Egyptian artifacts, including a mini sphinx. We also went to see the step pyramid of Sakkara, one of the oldest pyramids (built before the great pyramids at Giza, which are the ones everyone knows about). After a quick tour in the rain (I went barefoot and got my feet muddy) we took another long, slow trip back to our hotel in Cairo traffic; luckily it was fun to look around at Cairo life (in the rain!).

Our final day was spent visiting coptic (old) Cairo, but first we saw some beautiful mosques. One Mosque was built in the 13th century, and the other was from the 18th century, but they looked similar. Seeing these mosques reaffirmed my love for Islamic art, which I find much nicer than the thousands of pictures of saints and religious figures that Christianity has produced. Since Islam forbids the depiction of living beings, a lot of the art is made up of beautiful geometric designs. Some of the tombs we saw were made up of and surrounded by beautiful stone like the alabaster we had been seeing all over.

Old Cairo, where the copts (christians) settled, is about twenty feet lower than the rest of Cairo, since it's so old. We saw two beautiful churches, one of which was built above an old roman fortress. Coptic churches have/had services in the coptic language, which has its own script! It was quite cool. We also saw a synagogue, so we had a very multi-religious day. We visited the coptic museum, which holds an (unexpectedly) vast array of coptic art and artifacts. Who would guess, from a country that is predominantly islamic?

Finally, we saw an old palace that was built by the family of Mohammed Ali, before the revolution in 1952 (Fun (or not so fun fact): Egypt is now ruled by Egyptians, but before 1952 it had not been ruled by Egyptians since the time of the pharaohs!). It mostly held impressive weaponry and silver from the time of Mohammed Ali and his family (he was Ottoman).

Then lunch at a restaurant "straight out of Casablanca/Bogie" as my parents said. We had lentil soup (my favorite!) and wonderful mezze (including köfte and liver!). For a main course I had chicken and rice with molokhia. Molokhia is a type of green plant found in Egypt that is chopped up and put in a soup-like mixture. It turned out to be very slimy! But I enjoyed it.

We took a quick rest at the hotel, then the tour rep and his adorable kids took us to dinner at the Four Seasons. The food was delicious but we ate little since we'd had lunch at a traditional Egyptian lunchtime--around 4:30! Dinner time in the summer, according to Ahmad, could be around midnight. Wow!

Well, there's not much more to say. We woke up relatively early the next morning to get the airport and take our flight from Cairo to JFK. We flew over the Nile delta, the Greek islands, the Balkans, the Alps, Paris, London, and Ireland! It was really cool, and I got some really great views. It was certainly pretty sad to land in the US again and get re-accustomed to the snow.

Egypt was wonderful. Many of the Egyptians we met said "come back soon!" which I thoroughly plan to do.