Day Four

This day didn't start out so great, but it turned out to be a great day of touring Aswan. We got up early to have a little hotel breakfast before meeting our driver to take us to the train station. The food in the hotel was not what I expected as far as what I consider breakfast food. There were several bean dishes--fava beans, garbanzo beans, black eyed peas--some salads, and bread. They did have an omelet bar so that's where I went. And, of course, they had Nescafe--pretty much the only coffee available in Egypt.
We got on the train early and were very disappointed with our seats. We were able to get a private cabin but it was extremely dusty and the air wasn't working. Also, it seemed that outside our door was the go-to place for people to smoke. The worst part about this was that it was the workers mainly who were smoking and it seemed to be the norm so there was no amount of complaining that would get them to stop. We all wanted to sleep but were all too irritated by the dust and smoke to get any real sleep--the kids didn't seem to mind too much though.

With no sleeping going on, I was thinking about our trip so far and realized that I was actually grateful for this leg of the trip because had it not been for this I would have been unable to be satisfied with the rest of the journey. I came to the conclusion that without experiencing the bad, we cannot appreciate the good and this was, in a way, the main lesson I took from my whole stay in Egypt.

Luckily, this was the shortest train ride and we arrived in Aswan early in the day. We found a driver to take us around the town and our first stop was at a little masjid that Asmaa and I just loved, I just wanted to bring it home with me.

We then made our way up to the High Dam and did some drive-by site seeing on the way--we had to catch our train back to Alexandria so we had to be quick about seeing Aswan.

The road up was interesting because on one side was complete desert and on the other was lush gardens, but on both sides were signs of electricity.

Electric company

All of us on the High Dam

All of us again on the other side

The friendship monument displaying the relationship between Egypt and Russia (who financed the dam after the US said no)

We got back in the car and drove toward Philae--a small island in the Nile. This island contains several temples that were once flooded as a result of the construction of the first dam.

The market we walked through before renting our boat to take us to the island. The Coke store sign says Abu Karim Market (Abu Karim=Father of Karim).

This guy looked pretty hardcore, although I'm not really sure what he was guarding.

Our boat

Some people left their own carvings

I guess this was the site of a famous Egyptian music video so the kids were excited. I've never seen the video so don't know if this is the exact spot.

We got back on our boat and made our way back into town to a nice seafood restaurant. Ahmed and his sister set out in search of goods to take home, as there are certain things that can only be found in Aswan, or that just grow and taste better than what is found closer to the Nile delta. For example,  peanuts, cinnamon, red peppers, dates, pepper corn, and other spices.

At the train station our groups split and Asmaa and the kids headed back early and we decided to take the sleeper train and spend one more day in Cairo before heading to Alexandria. The sleeper train was great and something I would do again if we ever travel Egypt like that again.

Day Three

Our first night in Luxor was the most relaxing of the trip and we were all able to get some good sleep before starting our next big day--Luxor's west bank. We commissioned our driver from the previous day to pick us up and take us around the sites for the day and we are lucky that he turned out to be a cool guy because we forgot the diaper bag at the hotel and didn't realize it until we arrived at the Valley of the Kings. He went to a nearby convenience store to get us a supply of diapers, but we also remembered that our camera was in that bag. Fortunately, Ahmed's sister had her camera so we were still able to get some shots.

Huge rocks were removed from these mountains and then shipped to the other side of the Nile. It's amazing what the ancient Egyptians were capable of.

The whole valley is peppered with these tombs, several small ones like this, almost unnoticeable like these and other more  significant ones, like King Tut's which we weren't allowed to photograph
 

We did a lot of walking and it was really hot. We were here on December 25th and it was at least 90 degrees. The last stop in the Valley of the Kings was the tomb of Queen Hatshepsut.

Many of the ornamental carvings still retain the original color

There were two of these tress brought from Somalia and planted here as part of the Temple

We toured a few more less popular sites before heading to a restaurant in town. The place was recommended by our driver and we're pretty sure he gets some kind of commission for bringing tourists there, but the food was as good as he said it was so it was worth the higher-than-normal price. We then spotted a little place to get drinks and stopped in before heading to the hotel.

Karim got sick and spewed on me and that was our cue to head back to the hotel and get ourselves in bed.

Day Two

The first part of Day Two started in the train station followed by a 1am train ride to Luxor. This was an over-night ride so not the most comfortable, although we did spring for 1st class tickets. Really, we were all so worn out I don't think any of us had a hard time sleeping. We woke in the morning not far from our stop in Luxor and readied ourselves to head straight to our hotel.

We freshened up and then headed out to our first stop--an amazing seafood restaurant. We live in MD so we know a thing or two about Blue Crabs and the crabs we had here were better than any I've tasted. We also had bbq bolti which I'd had a few times in Alexandria but these were twice as big and much easier to peel and eat. We got an order of bbq shrimp as well. All of this to feed 6 people and 2 kids for about $30.
After we all stuffed ourselves we made our way to the Karnak. We arrived a little too early in the day and found that a night show was scheduled for later in the evening and that night happened to be the Arabic night (each day of the weak they gave the night tour in a different language). We checked out the Karnak museum and found a train used for archaeological excavations that was made in Denver--small world I guess.

To fill more time before the show we found a taxi driver to drive us around for a few hours to do some museum hopping. We saw the Luxor museum--perhaps the best Egyptian museum as is housed more detailed artifacts than what we saw in the Egyptian museum in Cairo--and the Mummification museum--also neat but I missed much of this as Roqaya was done with that day and not happy about being out any more. From this point on, through the rest of the trip she would let only me carry her when she didn't want to walk anymore (as I mentioned before, strollers and most of Egypt don't mix, so we didn't bring it).

We still had a little time to kill before it got dark so we found a little restaurant with outdoor seating on the bank of the Nile. We weren't really hungry so we ordered ice cream and enjoyed the fresh air and dusk views.
Our timing was perfect and we made it back to the Karnak just before the night show began. This was one of my favorite parts of the trip even though the presentation was in Arabic and I used a portable radio with the English translation of the show that kept switching to other languages and sometimes Christmas music.

Material for these pillars and the rest of the Karnak were transported from the West bank of the Nile.

Egypt, revisted (day one)

I found myself thinking about Egypt today and remember that I never really wrote about our travels outside Alexandria. By the time we got back I was exhausted; it was quite a trip. Our first day started early in the morning. We caught a train from Alexandria to Cairo which took about 3-4 hours. I enjoyed the train station and our first train was pretty nice compared to some of the other trains.

Our first stop after leaving the station was Giza. This was probably the easiest leg of our journey because we took the subway to within a short distance of the pyramids and sphinx.

The kids thought holding the handles was the fun part

Sneak peak --pun intended :)

These guys wanted us to pay them a lot of money for a ride to the pyramids. I'm glad we didn't fall for it, it was less than 1/4 mile to the entrance. But apparently these guys make a living by getting tourists to ride their mule-drawn carts without giving a price and then charge something ridiculous at the top. I guess it works because they're still doing it.

Standing on the base of the big pyramid. We thought it would be as cold as it had been in Alex so we took our winter coats and ended up carrying them around all day, not fun when you also have kids to carry around all day. BTW, most of Egypt is not stroller accessible so this was not an option.

While at the pyramids, you must take the "I'm bigger than the pyramid" picture

This is a more realistic perspective (and a very cute pic of Karim and his cousin)

I'm glad we got to make a stop in Giza, but really for me it's one of those places that you go to see, say ooh aah and then move out. There wasn't a ton of excitement other than viewing and contemplating. The rest of the time we spent saying 'no thanks' to a million people trying to sell us all kinds of services and apparently 'no' in Arabic means "maybe. ask me a few more times".

We got back on the subway and headed for the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. We weren't allowed to take our cameras in but we did get to see a lot of stuff and I'm glad we made this stop because it made the later stops more interesting. For example, seeing all the things from King Tuts tomb before going into the tomb itself and imagining all the stuff that had been in there.

On our way to dinner we did a quick stop by Al-Azhar school and masjid. We didn't have time to go in but we snapped a few pictures outside, it's an amazing building.

We had a great dinner and then headed back to the train station to catch our next train. Outside the station we spotted this rare spot of grass and a good number of dogs seem to make this their bed at night as it retains more heat than sand or concrete.

And then we spent a really long time in the station waiting for our late train. Not the most fun I've ever had. This picture was taken around midnight and our train was still a couple hours out.

We eventually got on the train and headed for Luxor...