Good morning and may you all have peace!
I promised that I would post about our recent excursion to Egypt. By "our" I mean dear Hubby ("Shrek"), myself ("Donkey"), dear 'Mom ("Fiona"), dear FinalCall ("Pinnochio" but not for the reason you might think - LOL!), and our respective offspring (say, one of the Three Blind Mice, one of the Three Little Pigs, the Big Bad Wolf, the Gingerbread Man, Sleeping Beauty, and Dragon - LOL and peace to you all, as well!).
I was having a bit of trouble as to "what" to post, given all that occurred as well as what we learned. It was a lot and I don't want to confuse the two, so here I will only set out the events of the journey, leaving what was learned for a separate post, which may or may not be posted on the general board. Most likely, it will be posted somewhere in the Members' section. That said, I am sure I won't recall everything and so others might add/correct things as I go. Now, then:
Cairo/Giza - Part 1 (first time) -
We left California for Vancouver BC 11am Monday morning, Nov. 14th, went from Vancouver to London overnight and had a short layover in London, then from London to Cairo. All flights went smooth as silk (takeoffs and landings included) which was great for me as I had a history of "white-knuckling" it during airflight. I have all but gotten over that (those 22- and 17-hour flights to/from Ethiopia a few years ago may have helped - LOL!) but still appreciate a non-turbulent ride when I can get it.
We arrived at Cairo International Airport around 8pm or so on the 15th and met with a little drama when we couldn't locate the Gingerbread Man (dear Hubby's son) - he'd flown in from Florida and arrived at another terminal on the other side of the airport. It took a few minutes but he eventually made his way to us and we all headed to our digs in Giza in a passenger van, accompanied by our escort, Rishaud (whom we met in the airplane holding up a sign with my name on it - very weird, IMHO, to see one's name held up in a foreign country - LOLOL!), a VERY nice Egyptian young man whose first language was Italian, then Arabic, then English (which was really good). Rishaud gave us some background to the Cairo/Giza area, including the population (11 million in Cairo/9 million in Giza) and that since he grew up in Giza virtually in their shadow of them, he "hated" the pyramids and Sphinx. Didn't care if he never saw them again! Of course, WE would like, "What?! How can you SAY that??!" Living near the Bay and Golden Gate Bridges, though, I can kinda relate. Kinda. No, not really - no comparison. Absolutely none. He also told us that, because we were a large group and American, we could expect to receive special treatment in the way of police escorts while we were in Egypt (well, Cairo/Giza, at least). This proved true for us personally, which I will share later below, but in addition to their regular police, Egypt also has a "Tourist Police" division, with offices at the airport, train station, tourist attractions, etc.
We arrived at our digs in Giza (which, by the way, is a FILTHY city! Enchanting... but filthy - I will elaborate further, below). The condo we rented was beautiful and will all amenities. Never mind the leaky toilet(s), it really was a kind of "palace" - modestly opulent; although nothing more than a condo flat, the ceramic floor tile, ceiling design and lighting, etc., made it seem almost like a mini-palace. Add the view (not the filthy streets below... or gazillion satellite dishes on crumbling rooftops, but the fantastic view of the pyramids "just there")... and we couldn't have asked for better:
[Well, okay, maybe a better elevator system: the one we had was subject to break down at any time... and often did. It first broke down on me the first night. A claustrophobic, I was SO proud of myself when I didn't panic as one of our hosts, dear Ashraf ("Ashi," we called him and he has become quite beloved among us!), tried... several times... to get it going. It would go, then stop... with the lights turning completely off each time it stopped! He tried about 7 times and we finally made it to our 9th floor pad. I don't know HOW I didn't lose it... but I didn't. That time, anyway.
Also, as I said, Giza is filthy - there is garbage everywhere. Literally. Piled up in the streets and, worse, clogging the irrigation channels. There is also all manner of animal dung due to horses, camels, dogs, cats, and gawd knows what all else relieves itself in the streets! The lion's share of the filth is due to the bedouin culture - these people have lived nomadic lives for millenia but are now called upon the settle down in goverment-constructed houses so that their children can regularly attend school. Historically, they attend carpet-making school, not remedial/elementary school, and the government is trying to change that. Not going quickly, we were told, but going. Anyway, imagine people who are used to living in tents and travelling from place to place now having to live in one place. They most probably didn't have "garbage" before, living off the land. No plastic bags, bottles, cans, disposable diapers, etc. Now, living in a metropolitan setting, they do. The feral dogs/cats handle most of the organic, non-fecal garbage (or maybe they handle that, too!), and so although we saw packs and packs of feral (NOT "wild") dogs and hoardes of feral cats, none looked very unhealthy. Sure, they had fleas and flies, but I saw very little mange, disease, and almost NO ribs showing. All of the animals were on the lean side (I did wish some of the horses were fatter), but none looked like they were starving. Even out in the desert! But, yeah, Giza's streets are abhorrently filthy. Even our dear hosts/guides acknowledged that. Cairo is old and dusty; Luxor is old and dusty, but a bit more "resort-y", and from what we could see of it, Sharm Al Sheikh is "beachy/resort-y" (until you head up into the mountains and then it's just... well, primitive desert. I digress.]
The digs were wonderful, though, and pretty large and so fit all 10 of us quite comfortably:
That evening, we also met Alaa, another now beloved one, who is part-owner of the condo with his brother-in-law, Vern (through whom I booked the place). These two men, along with a couple others that I will share about in a sec, were not only FANTASTIC hosts/guides, but absolutely wonderful caretakers (which I will also share about). Between Alaa and Ashi, we learned that the next two days had been planned out for us: for the first day we would visit the Giza pyramids, drive down to Sakara, have lunch, visit some tombs/temples, then drive to Memphis and visit Ramses II's museum. On the second day, we would visit the Cairo Museum and the Citadel (of Mohammed Ali - NOT the Cassius Clay one, but the first one who the second named himself after, though Lord only knows why, once you come to know some of the history of the first one. Another digress... LOL!). Through all of this, we would be accompanied and guided by Ashi's father, which we later learned was quite a privilege!
SO...
We get up the next day and head downstairs (some walked, some took the elevator - the elevators... yeah. I need to spend a moment sharing about those here: first, one of the two elevators always played a Muslim "hymn" when it started up. We were told that many elevators did this due to... I don't quite know how to describe this... potential "safety" issue with rising in an elevator? NOT because they didn't always work (although, that was certainly the case with ours!), but just the act of being lifted off the ground and the POTENTIAL to fall/be harmed/killed. So, a prayer was always said as the elevator took off. I, personally, LOVED this - LOL! Not the hymn/prayer, per se, but that we always got a bit of Egyptian/Muslim "elevator music" when we got on that one. And, curious enough, THAT one never broke down on me - it was ALWAYS the other one (I had another episode where the Gingerbread Man, the Big Bad Wolf (my son) and I were "stuck" for less than 3 minutes but, to my great embarrassment, I did lose it - LOL! When the elevator initially stopped, my son started showing slight signs of panic (rapidly pushing buttons, etc.) and so I told him to "be calm, calm down," etc. The elevators "worked" by means of tapping a fob on a panel, then pushing the floor you wanted. Well, I tapped the dang fob in this car... and SEVERAL times... and... nothing. NO movement... AND... the doors don't open when you're between floors (and we were between floors!), as it's a single door that pushes out (versus two that slide apart). Needless to say, after about 2 minutes, somewhere from inside me (I don't know where) came my voice calling for my husband ("HUBBBBYYYYYYYYYY!"). They say he came running down the stairs to find me - I don't know; the elevator FINALLY worked, we got to the 9th floor... and then I had some kind of delayed "reaction" where my body went into shock and my blood sugar plummeted. I could barely stand up, began shaking, and had to take a few moments to "recover." Don't know HOW I convinced myself to get on EITHER of those elevators AGAIN... but I did... and several times... after that. Praise JAH, the LIGHTS didn't go out this time, though - I don't think I would have made it - LOLOLOL! Digression.
We all make it downstairs, though (no elevator mishaps, praise JAH!) and met our dear guide, Ashi's father... Moses. Which is not enough, just to say his name. (Mr.) Moses is an 87-year-old Egyptian former archeologist and Cairo University antiquities professor (!!)... who aptly wore these fantastic yellow suede tennis shoes with the labels... wait for it... "Turbo" on the heel backs. And let me tell you, he WAS a turbo! A quintessential "energizer bunny"! NONE of us were able to keep up with the man... and I ran trying! Dear Pinocchio was closest, but only after I kept yelling at everyone to "keep up!" out of respect for dear Moses. The rest were never able to do it, even the young people! We would stop to look at something Moses told us about, then I would turn and he would be 100 yards away, climbing stairs even... and so I'd run to catch up with him - LOLOL! I was like, "We can NOT let this 87-year-old man leave us in the DUST, people!"
Anyway, our first stop with [Mr.] Moses was the pyramids at Giza. There, we met giggly Muslim school girls (we met a LOT of those, and boys, as well, during our trip - LOL!), circumvented extremely tenacious souvenir hawkers, climbed on the Great Pyramid, and visited the area behind the pyramids:
We left the pyramids (which, although quite impressive, struck me in the same way as did the Statue of Liberty: not quite as... ummmm... "awesome"... as I might have expected - the Statue, because she's quite short and stout, actually, and not at all as tall and slender as some images depict. The pyramids because, well, for some reason they really weren't as dramatic as I had expected) to visit the Sphinx and adjacent area. Now, the SPHINX, THAT was something to see, at least I thought so (although, it too was smaller than I'd imagined):
From the Pyramids, we headed to Sakkara and on the way we stopped and had lunch at a lovely little outdoor "restaurant" which served pretty good food (I'm told - I didn't each much, trying to save my stomach. Which might have been a good thing because everyone... EVERYONE... except dear Hubby and me... came down with a bout of "Pharoah's Revenge" at some point during the trip. It only lasted about 24 hours for each one but even so was pretty gnarly, hear tell. Dear Hubby and I were spared, praise JAH - LOL!).
I don't think we took pics of the restaurant but one thing that stood out (to me) is that this is were our police "escort" seemed to have started - as I shared above, Rishad, told us we would received this kind of attention. My trip companions were skeptical when I told them we were being "escorted"... until the same truck of heavily armed "police" kept showing up a few minutes behind us when we stopped at various attractions (Sakkara, Memphis, etc.).
In Sakkara, we visited a tomb (the owner's name which I can't recall and which I couldn't go into - the decline was just way too narrow and deep for me but son and daughter, who are just as claustrophobic, did go in - daughter even got herself into a sarcophagus - say WHAT, now??!!), the exerior of the Mastaba of the Two Brothers (Khnumhotep and Niankhkhnum), the interior of the Mastaba of Ka-Gemni, which I did go into, and the Step Pyramid of Djoser, which we got to by going through the Gisr el-Mudir, a kind of temple/stable and purportedly the oldest known structure in Egypt:
From Sakkara, we went to Memphis, were we quickly visited the Museum of Ramses II; quick because the museum closes at 4pm and, in addition to starting an hour later than Moses would have liked (he wanted 9am; we wimped out, due to jet lag and begged for 10am!), we'd spent a lot of time at Giza, lunch, and Sakkara. By the time we arrived, the museum and compound were actually closing but... due to the GREAT esteem for dear Moses, who, we learned, not only (1) comes from one of the larger families in Cairo/Giza, (2) is WELL known himself, all OVER the city and especially in the tourist attractions/museums, but (3) especially HERE, at the Ramses II museum... because HE ACTUALLY EXCAVATED SOME OF THE ANTIQUITIES THERE (including the one below)!!... we were not only allowed to go in to the compound at the last minute (AND spend a few moments bartering for souvenirs before we left), but just as we were leaving... they briefly reopened the museum for us (nevermind that the museum "officers" wanted to be paid for doing so - LOL!)!!
After Memphis, though, we were SO tired that we declined dear Moses' invitation to dinner and went back to the flat. Some of us went to the neighborhood supermarket (which is like a kind of micro-Walmart in that it sells pretty much everything, from food to clothing to appliances/electronics... but in a space about 1/5 the size). I was shocked when I paid the tab: for what would have come to over $80 here, we paid about $26 USD. When we arrived in Cairo, the Egyptian pound was 15:1; by the time we left, it was almost 18:1. Our hearts broke for the people as many were poor enough and this wasn't helping!).
So, that was Day One. Day Two consisted of visits to the Cairo Museum and Citadel, and while I don't have much to share about the Citadel (but do have photos, below, including more giggly school girls - LOL!), there is a lot to share about the Museum (well, what we found and "learned" there!) and then, our trip to Luxor! And so I will stop here, for now, and pick up with those details in a bit. Maybe today, maybe during the week... maybe next weekend. But I will post them, as there is much to share (some of which will be shared in the Member's section, though).
Again, peace to you ALL, and hope you enjoy this bit of summary!
Your servant and a slave of Christ,
SA
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