Pharaoh Business

So the long awaited blog about my trip to Egypt is finally at hand. I've been so busy in Illinois that I haven't found a minute to spare (ok so maybe that's a bit exaggerated, more like I was waiting for my sister to send me pictures to show). Anyway, on to the stories!

Story begins may 18, my family and I flew from New York to Amsterdam, stayed there for a few hours and went into the city during our layover. Really nice place, I'm sure you've heard all about it, and we took a boat ride around the canals. But considering we couldn't spend much time there, not much happened besides the fact that I bought a T-shirt.

Anyway, 5 more hours of plane rides later, plus an extra hour of time zone change from Amsterdam, we arrived in Cairo around 3 AM, then spent an hour on a shuttle to our hotel. But man, totally worth the travel time. First of all, we were so hungry, so we decided to stay up til 5:30 AM when breakfast started (which was a feast, by the way), and then we got to our rooms just as the sun was rising, which was absolutely amazing because we had a pyramid view from a balcony in the hotel. Yes, this picture is from the hotel balcony. And so we spent the first day with my dad's side of the family in Cairo, and I haven't seen them in maybe 6 years, so it was really nice. Afterwards, we went to a sound and light show on the pyramids and the sphinx, which was absolutely awesome and amazing(ly informative). We also quickly got used to the 7 hour time difference considering we had slept around 4 hours the night before after 25 hours of traveling, so we got to bed really early (around 3 in the afternoon EST).

Just as a sidenote, when I was a kid, people used to ask me all the time if people in Egypt have cars or if people just ride around on camels all the time, and nobody ever believed me when I answered the former. Well, although we traveled everywhere else by car, when it came time to go into the desert, we switched our mode of transportation. There's something about riding camels around the pyramids that just gives a storybook authentic Egyptian feel, and at the same time made me feel like such a tourist. Regardless, we got a better-than-google-images view of the pyramids from behind, and then afterwards rode back to civilization.

One of the more fun things we did in Cairo was go to khan el khalili, which is a market on the street where you bargain for everything. And they have everything for sale. Jewelry, clothing, spices, decoration, musical instruments, etc. And my favorite part is that the vendors try to guess the language that you speak, and they speak many. So I had English, Arabic and French thrown at me (and I passed the test on 2 of the 3), but just a general bargaining strategy in Egypt is to say you are Egyptian, so I found that I got better prices when I spoke in Arabic. Plus my mom speaks French as well, so as long as I was with her I was in good shape. But all around me I heard all kinds of other languages (German, Russian, and some others that I couldn't distinguish). I bought some papyrus and a tabla, and my mom got an entire gold plated tea set with a tray and a stand (which was a huge ordeal/nightmare to bring back home on the plane, but that's a separate story).

While we were in Cairo, we also toured the city and went to the Egyptian Museum where they have mummies in cases, which was really awesome, and what was even better (well not quite) was the fact that we got the Egyptian price instead of the tourist price (which was 2 vs. 50 Egyptian pounds). Unfortunately, we only had about an hour and a half to spend in the museum, so it was really just a quick tour, and cameras weren't allowed inside, so you'll have to visit and see for yourself.

   After 4 days in Cairo, we flew to Aswan and saw the high dam and got a bit of history before getting to the cruise ship that we were going to take down the Nile. The boat was huge (and with an amazing open buffet), and each day it stopped at different temples, and we had a tour guide to tell us the story of each. My favorite was the temple of Sobek, which had mummified crocodiles (the story of the temple is that his son was eaten by a crocodile, and his son would not reach the afterlife unless he were mummified, and so he found every crocodile in the Nile and mummified them just in case his son was inside). All the papyrus laying around my house makes so much more sense to me now since I know the stories of all the gods (I really should've learned about this sooner). But photos just can't do justice to these temples. For example, we visited one that had 134 columns, each 26 meters tall, complete with the drawings, and some preservation of the colors. It's absolutely amazing how intact they are after thousands of years.

Aside from the temples, we also visited the Valley of the Kings, where we entered four tombs (including that of Tut). One of them was 3 stories above the ground, and there was a narrow open staircase that led up to it, and several members of my family refused to climb up because it was too high. Plus, for anyone who is claustrophobic, the tombs are really not the place to be. But for me, it was one of the highlights of the trip. The artwork on the walls was just incredible, and I can only imagine what these tombs looked like back in the day. One of the most interesting things is that the workers started digging the tombs the day each pharaoh rose to power and stopped the day he died, so it's clear how long the pharaoh was in power based on the length of the tomb. You can imagine the length of the tomb for the pharaohs that ruled for over 30 years.

So we ended up in Luxor after 4 days on the cruise, and took a flight from there to Sharm el Sheikh, which is basically the most amazing beach ever. After days of traveling and touring, it was really nice to sit and relax. And this hotel had an even better buffet (if you hadn't noticed, food is basically the most important part of any vacation to me, and middle eastern cooking is undoubtedly the best in the world, and I don't want to hear otherwise). So the hotel staff had a crew that put on shows and programming all day, and then we went on several adventures. For one, we took a boat to Ras Mohammad national park to snorkel, which was just absolutely incredible. There was an unbelievable number of different colored fish, and I saw a sea turtle as well. So amazing.

After a week at Sharm el Sheikh, we flew back to Cairo to visit family and friends for another day, and then came home. We had 6 passengers, 5 carry-ons, 11 suitcases, the tea set, and 1247 photos to bring home. And 30 hours and much crankiness later, we reentered the US reluctantly with the sad realization that it was time to get back into daily life.

Fortunately, I have the rest of the summer off :)

Comments

[JHU_Kate]

I thought that the marketplace part of your story sounded really fascinating - not that the rest of it wasn't! Wow.

[Jessie]

wow, i really enjoyed reading this entry, egypt sounds absolutely amazing! hahah camels are such ridiculous creatures. i'm coming to jhu this fall (thinking about neuroscience) and i wanted to say how much i enjoyed reading your and all the admissions blogs this year!

[Stefanie]

you are so cool. haha :)