Day 4 and 5 Egyptian Museum, Citadel,Old Cairo and Felucca, Aswan

The Egyptian Museum is wonderful place with its big gardens and statues.  I almost impossible to describe in writing and pictures cannot capture the grandeur of the place.  Cameras are not allowed in the Museum so I will need to download some of the picture from the Internet. 

Kyle with a statue of Sesostris III located in the front of the Museum.After the Museum  we jumped into another wonder of the world , Cairo traffic. You wonder if you are ever going to get to your next location.  In one word “ Insane”.  From what I can see there are no rule and fequent bumps but due to the low speeds nothing that seem to life threatening.   The driver of our van earned every penny of the tip we gave him.  

Street vendor having some breakfast, seemingly oblivious to the crazy traffic around them.

The Mohamed Ali  Mosque was large and impressive.  I knew almost nothing about the Muslim religion and our guide Ali did a great job of explaining the call to prayer and the various other key parts.    

A view of the main ceiling inside the Mosque.

Kids outside of the Mosque pose for a picture with Grace.  In a conversation with our guide he stated that wearing the head covering in a chose and not a requirement.  As you can see in the picture one girl was not wearing a head dress and the other girls used them as accessories to their other clothing. Believe it or not even the full covering with only an opening for the eyes is now considered a fashion statement in Egypt. You will see young couples walking and the girl is in a full burka with nice makeup on her eyes.  I will try later in the trip to approach a couple and get a picture.

Next we visited the Coptic area and church.  Egypt was not always an Islamic state and Christ is still worshiped in some area but is not the religion of the majority.

Sign outside a Coptic church in old Cairo.

We visited Ben Ezra Temple a Sinagogue that is no longer used. According to our guide almost all the Jewish people have left Egypt and have moved to the US or to Israel.  Our Next stop was at Khan El Khalili Market.  This market dates back to the 14^th century.  You will find Tourist and locals mixed together bargaining for the best deal.  We had a lot of fun with the vendor here because they start every transaction off with where are you from.   I was amazed to find out how many knew where Hawaii was. I started telling them that I was from a different country, Spain, Mexico, Russia, Germany, but that didn’t work well as almost all of them know a number of languages and then I was the at a loss for words.  

After a few hours of shopping and walking we could use a break from the crowds of people so it back into the Cairo traffic head to the boat dock.   The Caption of the boat was a very friendly and enjoyed a good time.  In just 15 min he had everyone dancing and singing with the Cairo skyline in the background.  A felucca has no motor only a sails so this was a very peaceful break from a city that never stops.

Our next stop and final Farwell to our tour guides was at the train stations.   The train was 1.1/2 hours late and he stayed with us to make sure everything was ok.

Shown here is Ali (left) and Mohammad (Right) both excellent guides that went out of their way to help us purchase food, exchange travelers checks and buy gifts.  Ali was an excellent Egyptologist who did not fail to answer even one of my questions and many tests that I presented.  I spent a number of hours with him sitting a coffee bars while the ladies shopped. The topic ranged from Religion to tipping and everything in between, I enjoyed his conversation time together very much. He provided a perspective of Egypt that I would not have had otherwise.

The Train ride.  Well let just say it was an adventure.   Not so clean,  Not so fast, Not so reliable, Hard to sleep because they are noisy.  Nothing to eat, Better than walking..  Maybe .     Hey the upside Friendly passengers.   .  

One cool thing about the train ride is that they leave a door open from time to time to increase the air flow through car.  The kids enjoyed looking out and letting the air blow through their hair.  I always stay close by and would hold onto them when they did this because, one bad step and you would be on the tracks.  Vacation over.  

This is an interesting looking Guy who seemed to be a bag porter in Esna a few hours from Aswan.

We ended up at Aswan 14 hours after we departed from Cairo and everyone was really really tired.  Because we arrived late we could not go to the hotel and freshen up as we would miss the tour.  This was one of our hardest days of our trip so far. Needless to say it affected all of our enthusiasm for the sites and I only took a few pictures.  I need to come back to this location again in a better state of mind.   Below is a picture with and unfinished obelisk that was started during the reign of Queen Hatsheput but abandoned because of a crack.    I will post a picture of a finished obelisk later so you can understand the size and beauty.       

The Temple of was Phila was build in a low lying area and flooded regularly even in the Roman times.  You can see early graphite on the top part of the temple because so much of it was underwater that this would have been the only areas exposed and accessed by boat during the 1800.   

The temple is on an island so a boat ride is needed to get there.  The boats are all ran by Nubians. The speak a different language and have a different culture.

Kyle is shown here closing out the day at the temple of Phila. 

We returned to Aswan to the hotel for a quick sleep as we get up at 2:30 so we can depart to Abu Simbal at 3:00 no rest again today.

Day 3 Pyramids and the sands of Giza

Pyramids and the sands of Giza

The morning started at 6AM with no power in the hotel, so getting ready to go was performed by cell phone light.   This make it interesting in a new hotel because you tend to run into things and trip over things much more than you would at home.  About the time Grace finished and the Kids were ready to go the power came back on.   The breakfast in the hotel was much better than all the previous reports that I have read.  In fact it was pretty good.  The tour guide picked us up right at 9 AM and off we went on a Cairo wild ride to the Pyramids.  The Pyramids just sorts of jump out of the Cairo landscape as you get closer to them.  The area around the pyramid is full of sounds and action. It’s very hard to describe but here it goes.  Try and picture this, every time I place a comma another person is talking. Vendors “ post cards want a post card Sir where are you from, Want to buy this for you, 20 pounds, hey this very good quality; Sir want a to ride a camel; Sir where are you from come and look at my scarf’s; Hello Sir Hello what is your name. “   Then you add the school kids that really just want to take picture with you and talk.  They really are a lot of fun.  School kids “Hello where are you from do you speak English, Hi there can we take your picture with us, I’m learning English in school can we talk”.   Now take all this talking and place some camels and horse in the picture, Police on camels chasing people that are trying to sit on the Pyramid blocks or vendor that have done something wrong never could figure out what and then 10 guides all around you explaining the pyramids to their respective tour groups.    Sensory overload I must add but we loved it.  Picture below is the largest Pyramid as you walk towards it from the parking lot.  You can see the entry about 1/2 way down and below that another opening used for tourists. 

School  kids who want their picture taken.  With the solar boat museum in the background.

 The Family at the Great Pyramids.

The calm and collected camels.   In the picture yes but boy did it get exciting later. Grace and Mom enjoy the relaxing ride as it's not going to last.

So look at the nice calm picture below of  the family on camels, seconds after this picture the camel seen in the previous picture decide that my Camel need a bite in the neck and I'm not talking about a little nible, I'm talking a full on wide open jaw around the neck choke the life out type of bite.   I was looking for a place to dismount in a hurry but these camel are tall.  It not like dropping from a horse it's more like dropping from a house.  The guides were smacking the camel and it even bit one of them.  Now Grace and Mama were on the alfa camel and thought they had taken a rodeo ride instead of a camel ride.  They were screaming louder than the guide who got bit and this scared the camel even more.   Grace want a camel ride at the Pyramids and boy did she get one. I asked her so how was your ride.. she stated," oh yeah baby, Love it but won't do it again"!

Kyle after the Rodeo camel ride.

 

The second most Iconic symbol of Egypt is the Sphinx.  There is a great deal of remodling work going on to restore years of damage but you really can see what an impressive monument it must have been.  It is hard to take a picture of the complete complex that contains the Pyramids and the Sphinx but one can only imagine how grand it would have been during the days of the Pharaoh.

I really wanted to go into a Pyramid and see just what a burial chamber would look like.  The passages are very small but the rooms are suprisingly much bigger than expected. Just think of all the weight that must be supported in the rooms with a complete Pyramid on top.

  After lunch we received a tour of the country side on the way to Sakara one of the capitals of old Egypt.  Here we visited the step Pyramid of Zoser and the Tomb of Ti... Not our Ti but one that died just a few year earlier like 4000, years.

Here is a few pictures from Ti's tomb. He liked his hippo hunting and many other things that he depicted on the wall of his tomb. I was only able to get a few pictures because of time constraints but I could have spent hours in the tomb. The art work was incredible.

Day 2 Church and the Flight to London\Cairo

It’s always good to go to church on Sunday and even better when you’re traveling.  You can never have too many people praying for a safe trip and my Brother’s Church always make a big deal about the your visit.  This welcome tells you a lot about Texas hospitality with plenty of hugs and lots of good food.  Yes my brother was not going to have us leave Texas hungry. He made sure that we had another serving of the wonderful brisket on a bun with some barbeque sauce.  Hard to beat for a dine and dash meal.  The trip to the airport went like clockwork.

12:45 Departure from Church, Hit the gas station for a refuel at about 1:15, Returned the car and was on the shuttle to the Airport by 1:30. Check in went  smooth  for Grace, Ti and Kyle but they found there was a problem with my return leg.  “ Mr. Willis you include a flight from Toronto to Chicago that you did not pay for”   Ok so how did this happen?  I have all my seat and reservation print outs with no side trip to Chicago.  My known return documented in my details book was Cairo, London, Toronto and Houston.  I showed the document to the nice ticketing counter clerk and she started looking at the screen, scratch her head, looking, scratching, looking, and scratching. All this fuss makes you start to think oh my gosh I can get to Cairo but never return.  After 10 minutes of this she calls in a Manager who gives me a boarding pass, takes my bag and hands me a new itinerary.  Guess what all my business class seats on the return flights are now gone and I’m in coach going Cairo, London, Toronto, Chicago and then Houston.  Oh well I thought the business class seats were a mistake anyway as the mileage that I used was not for business class.  Darn I was just teasing the kids not 10 minutes earlier that I would be drinking champagne in business class and they were giving me hell about it.   Ok with check in completed it off to security. My sister In law Debbie was telling us about the new full body scanner and the pat down screening that was causing quite a steer with Airline passengers.  She was stating it was wrong just wrong  look at every detail of your body.  Guess what both Grace and Ti were picked for the full scan.  For a guy well I just don’t see what all the fuss is about, so I’m interested in the response from the ladies after it is all done.   From Grace” I have no problem with it except the fact that they dig through all your personal affects when they could have easily just scanned them. “ From Ti “ I didn’t mind because it was a lady doing the pat down and she was nice”  Well for me the only issue I had was the fact that all the carryon’s were left in the scanner area. This could increase the chances of theft because there is no way to secure your items while they conduct the body scan\ search.  Seeing a problem with this I got the family together after the security station to talk it over and come up with a plan going forward.  If one of the family ended up getting scanned searched the other members would collect all the carry on.  I think we will run into this again in London so I wanted everyone to be ready.  We arrived at the gate just when the boarding started, once again Grace had a smile because there was not running.  I can tell she still once to run because old habits are hard to break.  Once on the flight we noticed that all the video monitors were blank in our section.  A few moments later an announcement from the flight attendant confirmed our fears.  They are broken for a 9 hour flight. No lights, No video no nothing. Ah but the flight attendants have a solution.  Free drinks to calm the passengers and we accepted the offer.  We would party then sleep and forget the whole movie thing all together.  Another Gin and Tonic please!  Thank you very much.

It’s always good to go to church on Sunday and even better when you’re traveling.  You can never have too many people praying for a safe trip and my Brother’s Church always make a big deal about the your visit.  This welcome tells you a lot about Texas hospitality with plenty of hugs and lots of good food.  Yes my brother was not going to have us leave Texas hungry. He made sure that we had another serving of the wonderful brisket on a bun with some barbeque sauce.  Hard to beat for a dine and dash meal.  The trip to the airport went like clockwork.

12:45 Departure from Church, Hit the gas station for a refuel at about 1:15, Returned the car and was on the shuttle to the Airport by 1:30. Check in went  smooth  for Grace, Ti and Kyle but they found there was a problem with my return leg.  “ Mr. Willis you include a flight from Toronto to Chicago that you did not pay for”   Ok so how did this happen?  I have all my seat and reservation print outs with no side trip to Chicago.  My known return documented in my details book was Cairo, London, Toronto and Houston.  I showed the document to the nice ticketing counter clerk and she started looking at the screen, scratch her head, looking, scratching, looking, and scratching. All this fuss makes you start to think oh my gosh I can get to Cairo but never return.  After 10 minutes of this she calls in a Manager who gives me a boarding pass, takes my bag and hands me a new itinerary.  Guess what all my business class seats on the return flights are now gone and I’m in coach going Cairo, London, Toronto, Chicago and then Houston.  Oh well I thought the business class seats were a mistake anyway as the mileage that I used was not for business class.  Darn I was just teasing the kids not 10 minutes earlier that I would be drinking champagne in business class and they were giving me hell about it.   Ok with check in completed it off to security. My sister In law Debbie was telling us about the new full body scanner and the pat down screening that was causing quite a steer with Airline passengers.  She was stating it was wrong just wrong  look at every detail of your body.  Guess what both Grace and Ti were picked for the full scan.  For a guy well I just don’t see what all the fuss is about, so I’m interested in the response from the ladies after it is all done.   From Grace” I have no problem with it except the fact that they dig through all your personal affects when they could have easily just scanned them. “ From Ti “ I didn’t mind because it was a lady doing the pat down and she was nice”  Well for me the only issue I had was the fact that all the carryon’s were left in the scanner area. This could increase the chances of theft because there is no way to secure your items while they conduct the body scan\ search.  Seeing a problem with this I got the family together after the security station to talk it over and come up with a plan going forward.  If one of the family ended up getting scanned searched the other members would collect all the carry on.  I think we will run into this again in London so I wanted everyone to be ready.  We arrived at the gate just when the boarding started, once again Grace had a smile because there was not running.  I can tell she still once to run because old habits are hard to break.  Once on the flight we noticed that all the video monitors were blank in our section.  A few moments later an announcement from the flight attendant confirmed our fears.  They are broken for a 9 hour flight. No lights, No video no nothing. Ah but the flight attendants have a solution.  Free drinks to calm the passengers and we accepted the offer.  We would party then sleep and forget the whole movie thing all together.  Another Gin and Tonic please!  Thank you very much.

In London we arrived at the terminal and the gate for our next flight to Cairo was not assigned. We knew Graces Mom would be around someplace but this Airport is big.  We had Grace watch the bags and the kids and I searched the holding area high and low.  We found her waiting with the smile you see below.  

By this time the gate was assigned and off we went to find it because most of the gates are a 15 minute walk from the holding area. 4 more hours to Cairo.

The flight was much better as all the movies worked fine.   Everyone got in a good movie or two and we even saw the pyramids as we circled Cairo on the decent.   Below is a tile art work in the lobby of the Cairo International airport.

I was really glad we had someone to pick us up a the airport because the scene curb side could have really been a bit much.  I was asked a number of time if I need a taxi or a hotel and just the newness of it all would have set us back a bit.  Everyone was cool not one really push at all just a different situation to absorb. 

The tour operator helped us get a cell phone SIM card and dropped us off at the hotel. First equipment failure of the trip was the converter.  The converted from a US plug to an Egypt plug would not work. I found the fuse had blown.  No way was I going to find a fuse at 7 PM in Cairo by myself and I really need to charge the cell phone. Time for a McGyver moment, I found that Kyle had an aluminum candy bar wrapper that I could wrap around the fuse to get it going.  See picture below.

The room is no Hilton but then again we did not pay Hilton prices either. It was clean with tile floors in the bathroom an new fixtures.  After a quick trip to the restaurant  for some food and some local beer I was ready for the bed..Another day is behind us with the Pyramids schedule for the morning.