Today was a travel day, as we left Luxor in the morning for Dahab. Other than the flight being delayed about an hour, the trip was fairly pleasant and on a relatively new airplane, putting to rest our fears of a repeat of the dilapidated planes in Indonesia. Travel time is a little less than an hour, so by the time we reach cruising altitude, it is pretty much time to start the descent.

The airport is in Sharm el-Sheikh, about 60 miles south of Dahab, so for the final leg we need to find a taxi. Unlike Cairo, there are plenty out front of the airport, but we know from some articles we printed from Wikitravel, that we are in for a treat when it comes to negotiating a price.

The opening volley is 350 Egyptian pounds (about 70 US dollars), almost double what the article says we should pay. We manage to beat this down to 250, but there is clearly some collusion here with drivers shouting to each other in Arabic to make sure no one cuts the price too low. Irritated that we are being held hostage by the cab mafia, Ang sees a minivan from the Novotel in Dahab and wanders over to ask the driver if we can pay him to take us (since he is obviously going anyway). It looks like he will, until one of the cabbies comes over a yells at him for a while and he finally says no.

Now more determined than ever to win this battle (I think Ang will sleep on bench at the airport rather than give these drivers satisfaction), we regroup to consider our options. We know there is a bus from Sharm el-Sheikh to Dahab if we can get to the bus station from the airport so we ask about that. Half the cabbies tell us the bus station is closed (which we know is not true) and the others offer to take us for 100 Egyptian pounds, which is even more inflated that the price to Dahab.

Finally, the tide turns when we see the shuttle for the hotel we will be staying at when we move back to Sharm in a week. We tell the driver we are going to be guests, but that today we would just like to get into Sharm so we can go to the bus station. He agrees, and now we have leverage. After that, the price for a taxi direct to Dahab drops into the range we find acceptable and we prepare to be on our way, with one interesting twist. Not thrilled about having to drive all the way to Dahab for the fare we negotiated, the driver goes over to the Novotel minibus and “sells” us to the bus driver for what looks like 40 pounds.

The ride to Dahab takes about a hour (although it ends up taking us two as the driver took us along on some errands), and while it is all desert, it is more mountainous than the desert around Abu Simbel, so actually quite interesting. We try to get some pictures from the car, but none of the really turned out.

From all that we read before coming to Egypt, Dahab is an ideal place to do not much of anything. It is an old fishing village that hasn’t been built up as a tourist destination like Sharm, so still retains some of its original charm. It is well know by backpackers, divers and windsurfers, so quite laid back, and without the big resorty feel.

Our hotel ends up being about five miles from town, which is definitely a negative, as we much prefer to be able to walk into town for meals and shopping rather than being stuck on the hotel grounds, but there is a shuttle that runs a couple of times a day, so that helps. Since the next one isn’t for several hours though, I decide it would be a good idea to walk to town along the beach, which the concierge says is about four miles.

I’m way to stubborn to admit it at the time, but this was not one of my finer decisions. Parts of the beach are fenced off, and once you leave the shore, nothing is clearly marked, so taking into account a few double-backs and a pretty optimistic estimate by the concierge, I think we end up walking closer to six miles by the time we arrive. It is also quite windy today which, on the one hand, keeps it from getting to hot, but on the other is a bit like pouring lemon juice on a cut (where the cut in this case is my travel buddy who is already unhappy about embarking on this poorly thought out walk in the first place).

After a few hours wandering around the town and some dinner, we find a cab to take us back to the hotel. There is a small incident where our driver throws the cab into reverse and jumps out to rumble with another driver who thins he stole his fare, but we are becoming immune to such things, and wait patiently for some of the locals to hold the drivers back and talk them in from the ledge.

Tomorrow we will start to get the lay of the land here and figure out what all we want to try and do. The original plan was to use this as a base to do trips to Mount Sinai and Jordan, and maybe to do some diving, so we’ll see how that all works out in the morning.

Today is our final day here, and there are a couple of things yet that we want to see, so we motivate ourselves out of the hotel and onto the street in search of transportation. The street in front of the hotel is lined with taxis and carriages, so wea re able to haggle a fair amount on the price and finally settle on a carriage, figuring that will be a little more authentic Luxor. We are headed to the Luxor museum, and on the way, our chatty driver offers to wait for us at the museum, then take us to the local market, and then back to the hotel for just a few dollars extra. We debate this for a while, and finally agree, figuring it will be around lunchtime and we can find some street food at the market anyway. Rookie mistake, but more on that later.

The Luxor museum is quite a bit smaller than the one in Cairo, but also far less packed with stuff, which makes it easier to focus on the pieces they do have. They also have a couple of mummies on display, including one of Ramses I, which for most of the last 100 years was on display in a oddities attraction in Niagara Falls before researchers actually figured out it wasn’t just some scrappy mummy found in the desert.

After the museum, we find our driver, and head off to the market. When we get there, it looks interesting and I see a couple of food carts, but just as quickly it is gone, and it becomes clear that we aren’t going TO the market, but only to SEE the market. Instead, our driver wants to take us to the special bazaar where only the locals go, because apparently the locals also buy tacky souvenirs. The light bulb finally goes on that this is the Egyptian version of the tuk-tuk drivers in Thailand, who offer to take you somewhere for cheap, but then reroute you to some shop where they hope you’ll buy something and they get a kickback.

We dutifully wander through the bazaar, but even the few things we have mild interest in are so absurdly priced, that we leave empty-handed, much to the chagrin of our driver. As it is getting into the afternoon, we figure we may as well go back to the hotel until it starts to cool off, so ask the driver to take us back, stopping by a pharmacy and a shawarma stand on the way. There are pharmacies everywhere here, so after we pass the 6th one, we ask where we are going, and it turns out, there is another very special bazaar that he is taking us to. This time we wave him off, and seeing a pharmacy on the corner, have him stop there.

For reasons I can’t explain, we still let him take us in search of a shawarma (basically an Egyptian version of a gyro), which he tells us he can buy us for 5 Egyptian dollars each. We know the real price is about half that, but figure if he knows a good place, it is worth the extra. When we get to his place of choice, we hop out of the carriage to take a look and settle on the meat we want, specifically saying not the one with liver. Our driver quickly shuttles us back into the carriage so we don’t see the actual price, and brings us back the hot sandwiches.
I probably don’t need to say it, but yes, as we start moving down the road and start to eat our lunch, we taste the succulent liver in all its glory. It is cheaper that non-organ meat of course, meaning a little extra profit for our driver. Ang chokes her’s down (big high five to her), but I don’t have it in me, so scrape out the chunks and just eat the bread, while finally making our way back to the hotel.

The silver lining in this otherwise depressing outing, is that we do see the part of town where a lot of stores and eateries are, so in the evening we wander back on our own and find some of the best street food we have had this trip (and with the exception of the Indian restaurant, probably the best food period). For about four dollars, we stuff ourselves with small pita sandwiches stuffed with a variety of fillings (eggplant surprisingly being one of the best) and fresh sugarcane juice.

It is great way to finish up our time in Luxor, as tomorrow we leave in the morning for the airport. We have mentioned to quite a few people we have met that we are going to Dahab, and the reviews have been universally positive, so we are excited to finally get there and see what it has in store.

Ang is home. Her home away from home at least, as we find ourselves once again at her beloved Sheraton. Now I give her a lot of grief over her penchant for cushy hotels, but I have to admit, after spending the night in a glorified closet on the train, and four nights in tight quarters on the boat, walking into a real hotel room with a real bed is a treat. And with the low season beginning here, its dirt cheap, so really nothing not to like.

We’ve slipped into relaxation mode now, so much so that I find it difficult to even find the motivation to pick up the laptop. Combine that with very little to report (save for a blow by blow account of my time reading by the pool), and it will make for a very short post.

The hotel is a few blocks removed from town down a semi-private street, so to walk to anything close you need to run the gauntlet of kalesh drivers (the horse-drawn carriages that are everywhere here in Luxor) and taxicabs. The kalesh drivers in particular are quite persistent, following us down the street telling the same bad jokes about Egyptian Ferraris. They don’t ever cross the line of being really annoying, but it would be nice to walk down the street in peace once in awhile.

Before we left Seattle, we were told about a great Indian restaurant in Cairo that we never got a chance to visit, so when we see one in Luxor that our guidebook recommends, we decide to splurge. A whopping $24 later we walk out stuffed, and head back to the hotel, stopping at a minimart to pick up a few snacks and drinks to take with us (breakfast for two at the hotel costs almost as much as the room so we do draw the line there).

All in all, a pretty average Redmond day for Ang (but with sun), although I can see why she likes it, as the break from a week on full speed is definitely nice.

Another day, another early morning, this time even a bit more so than usual as we need to pack up and check out. We’re less stressed about not knowing where we’ll be sleeping tonight, as we’ve come to terms with potentially losing a few dollars for the night we already paid for. One thing we will miss though is the cleaning crew that cleans our room. Every day that we have been here, they have come in during the afternoon and left behind a different creation made out of things in our room. Here are pictures of a couple of the more creative ones.

After breakfast, Mohammed meets us on the boat to take us to our tour guide. The plan is to visit the west bank of the Nile in the morning (where the Valley of the Kings is), return at lunch to find out the resolution of our room, and then spend the afternoon touring the east bank. It will make for a full day, but the costs are all included in our cruise price, and if we make it through, we will see most of the sights in Luxor and have a few days to take is slow before leaving for Sinai.

Although there are villages on the west bank of the Nile now, in pharaonic times, people lived on the east bank and buried their dead on the west. This matched the path of the sun, which was “born” in the east on then “died” in the west. And unlike earlier pharaohs that built large pyramids to mark their burial sites, pharaohs in this period carved their tombs directly into the mountain and then covered them to keep them hidden from grave robbers.

There are different parts of the mountain where you could be buried depending on who you were, and we start our tour in the Valley of the Queens. The most famous temple here (for Ramses II’s wife Nefertari) isn’t open to the public any more so we look at a few others, stopping in between for our guide to have a smoke break and show us pictures of all the things that we would otherwise be seeing if the tomb was open. Our guide is OK, but there seem to be a lot of places where he substitutes myth as fact, which makes a lot of the other things he says a bit suspect, but it beats having no guide at all (as we have experienced).

Our next stop is the Valley of the Kings, which of course is famous as the location of King Tutankhamun’s tomb. It is only about 10am, but already the heat is unbelievable (Susan, its hot enough here you could probably get by with just a long sleeve shirt ☺ ). The tombs themselves, while normally quite stifling, are actually a pleasant break as they are in the shape, and despite having little circulation and being stuffed with people, are actually cooler. The entry ticket includes access to three tombs (out of the 12 or so that are open to the public at any given time), and our guide recommends three from the Ramses line as being the best (back at the boat we see that our guide book recommends three others so I think the guides just like to pick the closest ones).

The tombs themselves are amazing for the condition they are in thousands of years later. When they were built, the walls were covered with carved hieroglyphics painted in vibrant colors, and the colors remain to this day. In some places they are in such good condition you wonder if they can possible be real and not touch ups by some local artists. In some, the sarcophagus is still in the burial chamber, and you see just how big these blocks of stone (weighing up to five tons) are and how difficult it would have been to navigate them through the tunnels to their final position.

Next up is the mortuary temple of Queen Hatshepsut, one of the few female pharaohs in Egypt. This is another building that gets a lot of air time, but again, seeing it up close and getting a sense for the scale provides a whole new perspective. Of all the places we have been today, this is the only one where we are allowed to take pictures (other than from the parking lot), so we collect quite a few of different parts of the structure.

The last stop of the morning is at the Collosi of Memnon, two giant statues that are all that remains of a mortuary temple that once covered 85 acres. With that complete, we head back to our boat and find Mohammed, who lets us know that we will be spending the night in our old room, but have to be out by 8am the next morning before it sets sail. That resolved, we sit down to a quick lunch and head back out for part two of our tour on the east bank.

The highlights on this side of the river are the Temple of Karnak, Luxor Temple and the Luxor Museum. The latter isn’t part of the tour, so is something we will do another day on our own. We first visit Karnak Temple, which at 200 acres, is the largest religious complex ever built. It would be impossible to really see something this size in the hour we have available, but we do see the most popular parts including the giant entry pylons, the Hypostyle Hall (a 50,000 square foot room with 134 massive columns, each weighing about 70 tons), and a couple of obelisks.

With the afternoon coming to an end, we head over to Luxor Temple. Back in the day, Karnak temple was connected to Luxor temple by an avenue nearly two miles long lined with sphinxes. Parts of this still remain and the local government is working to restore the full length of this avenue, kicking some people out of the way in the process. It will make for a very impressive stroll when complete though, apparently in the next year or two.

Luxor Temple is amazing in its own right, but at a fraction the size of Karnak, is the less impressive of the two. We are there at the end of the day though, so decide to let our tour group leave without us (the site is almost directly across the street from our boat) and stay until it starts to get dark and the lights come on. This is the first site we have seen lit up, and it is a much, much different experience. We take a lot of pictures to try and capture the moment, but as is too often the case, they don’t do it justice.

Worn down from a very long day, we walk back towards our boat, passing by a McDonalds that we had to take a picture of for Sammy (they have McYum Yums here Sammy!). Tomorrow we check out for real and move over to our hotel. I am hoping that the connectivity there is better so we can upload all of our pictures so far. If we can, they will be here.

In general, our day today was to be pretty light, with only one excursion in to Edfu where we docked the previous night. Sadly, it doesn’t translate into getting up much later, as we need to be awake, dressed and done with breakfast by 8:00. We know from yesterday that we don’t have a guide arranged here, but are hoping that if we look sad and pathetic enough that someone will take pity on us and let us latch on.

Sure enough, one of the guides for an Australian couple offers to at least help us arrange to get from the boat to the temple site without getting ripped off by the carriage drivers (the temple is about two miles away and transportation for everyone is horse-drawn carriage). We are soon on our way, and the driver offers to let me join him up front and passes over the reins. The horse has probably made this trip a few hundred times, so I figure, what could go wrong?

I figure I pretty much have the hang of it – pull left to go left, right to go right, and back to slow down – and have just settled into a masterful rhythm, when something (probably my unexpectedly awesome skills) spooks the horse and it takes off. In her comfy seat, Ang takes it all in stride, but after trying to play it cool while the driver tries to calm him (or her, I didn’t really check) down, I quickly go to plan B, which essentially boils down to looking for anything close by to hang on to.

Our little piece of excitement over, we arrive at the temple site where the guide from our boat sells us some tickets and we follow her through the gate. The Australians don’t seem to mind having us around, so we ask if it is OK if we join their tour and share their guide, and just like that, our problem is solved.

Of all the temples in Egypt, Edfu is in the best condition, so in large part, what you see today is the closest there is to what it would have looked like a few thousand years ago. The colors are faded and much of the roof is missing, but it is in such good shape, it feels a lot like a movie set. All of the cruise boats are on a similar schedule, meaning they have all disgorged their passengers to see the temple in the same one hour window, so it is quite crowded and a bit difficult to hear the guide as she explains the history, but we get the general picture of what we are looking at and are able to take a few pictures before our tour is done.

One thing we’ve noticed is the high level of security that is present. To enter, you need to pass through a metal detector like at the airport and several armed guards. Of course the guards are usually sitting down reading the paper, and they don’t stop anyone going through the metal detector, so it is just one long beep and people with cameras and pockets full of change stroll through. At one of the temples, the guard asked us a couple of time “No bomb?”. We looked at him, slightly concerned that we had set something off, and he started laughing like it was the funniest joke in the world.

For the rest of they day, our only plan is to cruise the rest of the way to Luxor, so in theory, it should be some time to rest a bit. I use the time to try and catch up on a bit of work (the Internet is spotty, but enough to take care of the major things) and Ang heads down to the front desk to see if we should expect a guide in Luxor, as we know we will need one given the number of things to see there.

When they ask her if she wants a 7:30 wake up call to check out by 8:00, she is a bit surprised, as the trip we booked in Cairo had us staying on the boat until Tuesday. The desk clerk called his head office, and they confirmed that we were only booked for three nights instead of the four that we paid for (there it is, the sound of the second shoe dropping) and that there really wasn’t anything he could do since they needed to get the boat ready for the new group of passengers that would be going back to Aswan.

After arguing a bit, it is clear that he really can’t help, in part because there is no one on the boat he can talk to (since we are in the middle of the river), and in part because his English isn’t that good. We do give him the number of the agency we booked with in Cairo and he is able to reach their office in Luxor. They tell him they will send a representative to meet us that evening at 8:00 when we arrive, and with no other options, we just try to enjoy the rest of the day, mostly sitting on the roof deck reading a book, and drinking one of my contraband beers.

When we arrive in Luxor, sure enough, there is someone there to meet us. Ang is convinced that we are going to just get the shaft altogether, while my bet is that someone will bribe someone else (who may then need to bribe a third person) and it will eventually all work itself out. Neither of us is right at least for today, as Mohammed from the agency tells us that we should just check out in the morning, leave our luggage on the boat while we go on a tour, and that when we get back, the problem will be solved.

The worst-case scenario it seems (once we have ruled out the boat leaving port with our luggage while we are gone), is that we will end up having to check into our hotel in Luxor one day early. Of course that’s not ideal, but overall, if that’s the worst thing that happens while we are here I’ll consider it a successful trip (and being stuck on a boat for four days, I haven’t had the opportunity to be scammed so have some extra money in the budget). Like all days, we need to be up early in order to catch our tour, so we plan to call it a fairly early night and see what tomorrow brings.

We knew it was going to be an early morning, but while 2:45am sounds bad in theory, in practice it is much, much worse. Nevertheless, we manage to drag ourselves out of bed and out to the waiting minibus for our trip to Abu Simbel. Given the dearth of tourists we have seen, we are optimistic that the two other people in the bus are going to be the only ones with us, leaving a good amount of room to stretch out and get some much needed sleep. There’s no good story in that though, and 4 stops and 30 minutes later we are packed in like sardines for a tasty three hour drive.

All traffic between Aswan and Abu Simbel has to go in conveys that leave town at specific times during the day. This is supposedly for safety reasons, but I think it really just makes it easier for the checkpoint guards to collect all of their baksheesh at a few convenient times instead of having to be awake all day and charging each car as it goes by throughout the day. We arrive close to the 3:30 convoy departure and there are already dozens of minibuses like ours and much larger coaches full of blue haired ladies, but it means we don’t have to wait that long before we are actually on the road.

An hour or so down the road, travel buddy at my side with her head tilted back and mouth open in a quiet snore, the sun starts to rise over the desert and two thoughts come to mind as I watch. The first is that the desert is surprisingly beautiful, particularly in the early light when the colors are most vibrant. The second is that there is absolutely nothing out there. There are no cactuses, no tumbleweeds rolling by, not even a few scraggly plants eeking out a basic existence. As far as the eye can see in any direction, there is only rock and sand. Unless there are reports of Jawas in the area, the convoy is definitely overkill.

The name Abu Simbel may not ring many bells, but the temple there is something most people would recognize from pictures. Three thousand years before Mount Rushmore, Ramses II had these giant statues of himself carved into a mountainside overlooking the Nile river, serving as the entrance to a large temple hollowed out of the rock. As an added twist, the whole complex (there is also a second, smaller temple that Ramses II had built for his favorite wife, Nefertari) was moved in the 1960s to save it from the rising waters of Lake Nasser.

As we are restricted by the convey system, we only have a brief time in the two temples, and once again, cameras aren’t allowed inside, so we only get pictures of the entrances. By 9:00am (earlier than we would likely even be up on a regular day) we are back in the packed minivan on our way back to Aswan and the departure for our Nile cruise.

Our itinerary is to spend the next three days making our way slowly down the river to Luxor, stopping along the way to visit a few temples. Thankfully, given our early start, there is only one stop planned at the end of the day, so we are able to just relax and watch the countryside go by from our faux patio (doors, but nowhere to actually stand without ending up in the river). The boat is fairly large and there is a pool and bar on the top deck, but we just don’t have it in us to take advantage.

The stop we do make is at Kom Ombo, which is a temple complex changed several times over the years as different civilizations occupied Egypt. The first shoe drops on the trip we reserved in Cairo (it’s shocking that it took this long) and we find that no one has arranged a guide for us at either this stop or the one we will make tomorrow. We decide to head over anyways and read about it when we get back to the boat to try and put it in perspective.

In isolation, Kom Ombo would definitely be an impressive sight, but it has been a long day, and after cramming in a lot of sights in a handful of days, one temple is starting to blur into the next, so we don’t spend too much time wandering around, taking a few pictures before heading back to the boat. On the way, I get to thinking having a couple cold beers in the fridge might be nice given the heat, so stop at one of the shops along the waterfront. They ask if we want beer, and lo and behold I do, so I say sure. I am quickly escorted to the back of the store where we conduct some business and they stuff my purchase into my backpack along with some tips on what to say to the police if they stop me. Needless to say, these may be the last two beers I buy in Egypt.

Finished with our brief stay in Cairo, we headed off for the train station and our night train to Aswan, about 600 miles south. Our previous experience on an overnight train in China was reasonably pleasant (two bunks, small sitting area and a private bathroom), so we weren’t too concerned about this one and figured it a much better use of time than going all the way back through Cairo to the airport and spending another night in a hotel.

We arrived at the platform in time to see the train before ours just leaving, and from the sight of it knew we could be in for a bit of a rude awakening. The people here can clearly fix anything, with the result being equipment that would have long since made its way to the scrap yard in most other countries is just hitting middle age in Egypt. Nonetheless, we have a schedule to keep (in theory we are being met in Aswan by a representative of the travel company we booked our Nile cruise with), so as soon as our train pulls in, we find our car and step on board.

We quickly find our cabin, and are happy to see that it does only contain two bunks as promised (we have heard many stories of reservations for two berth cabins turning into four berth cabins upon arrival complete with strangers). However, that is pretty much all there is, as the cabin is no more than 5 feet across and slightly more than 6 feet long (the latter I confirm when I turn in for the night and am able to fit it perfectly). The upside is that as a night train, we will be sleeping 80% of the time anyways, so won’t miss the space much.

Our tickets include two meals, an about an hour out of Aswan, our steward brings in breakfast. In Cairo, we had breakfast at the hotel, so this is our first real exposure to a typical Egyptian breakfast, as we quickly learn that bread is pretty much the base component of everything (my tray contains four different buns of varying dryness and an orange). Not being particularly big bread eaters, both Ang and I eye up each other’s orange, but the cabin is too small to grab it and run away, so we hunker down, guarding our prize like Smeagol and the one true ring.

Arriving in Aswan, we leave the train and breathe a sigh of relief seeing someone standing on the platform holding a card with our name. Sam takes us quickly to a taxi where the driver throws our bags on the roof (without tying them down) and peels off toward the river. When we arrive, lo and behold we are taken onto a boat that appears to be of the quality promised when we booked in Cairo. We are definitely relieved, as spending a day stranded in Aswan trying to book space on a different boat would have taken a little something away from the experience.

The boat isn’t scheduled to leave Aswan until tomorrow, so with the rest of our day we go on a package tour that stops at the Aswan High Dam and Philae Temple. The former is a bit underwhelming since its just a dam (a big one, but a dam nonetheless), but the temple is interesting, on part because of the process involved in taking it apart and moving it to higher ground to keep it from being submerged by the water rising behind the completed dam.

After the temple we make our way back to the boat and spend about an hour walking through the local market before dinner and an early bedtime. We have a wake up call at 2:45am to catch the 3:30am bus to Abu Simbel ☹.

For our second full day in Cairo, we are having our guide from the museum (Mohamed) take us to the pyramids at Saqqara and at Giza. We had originally just planned to see Giza, but when he told us about the full day guided tour that he would take us on, including transportation in his car, it was hard to pass up.

Since we are leaving on the night train, we also had to check out of the hotel, so combined with some time to talk to Nick (the other kids were already asleep), we are up fairly early. Mohamed arrived promptly at 9am, and after convincing hotel security he was legit (even though we weren’t that concerned, it was comforting to see the hotel take enough interest to check all of his credentials and note the information), we headed off to Saqqara.

Saqqara is most well known as the place, where the first pyramid was built for the pharaoh Djoser, by his architect Imothep (who despite some bad PR in The Mummy, was pretty famous in his own right). This pyramid is known as the Step Pyramid, as it was built as a series of small square platforms on top of one another rather than the straight-sided versions that came later. The pyramid itself was part of a large complex of buildings, such as temples the pharaoh would use in his afterlife, and tombs for the nobility of the time, who were allowed to be buried near the pharaoh. A handful of later pharaohs also built their pyramids at Saqqara, although at a time when Egypt was waning in wealth and power, so none of them were equal in size to the Step Pyramid and attract little attention.

From Saqqara, we can also see two more of the famous pyramids at Dahshur, about 30km in the distance. These are the Bent Pyramid and the Red Pyramid, both built for the next pharaoh Snefru. Our schedule doesn’t have enough time to see them close up, but we do get a couple of snapshots of them through the haze.

One of the other pyramids at Saqqara was built for the pharaoh Teti, and it is our first opportunity to enter one and walk all the way down into the burial chamber. With the exception of the Great Pyramid (built for Khufu), there is nothing inside of the pyramids, with the actual tomb being built underground. So to enter, you walk duck style down a fairly steep tunnel, where the temperature gets gradually hotter and the air increasingly more stale.

This pyramid was build some 300 years after the Step Pyramid, and one of the new features not present in earlier versions are hieroglyphics carved into the granite walls in every room of the tomb. The detail and volume of these carvings are mind blowing, and we could have easily spent hours in this small room underground just running our fingers over them and trying to imagine them being chiseled into the rock over 4,000 years ago. Ang tried to bribe the guard to let us take a picture (which in retrospect probably wasn’t the best idea), but without success, so there are none to post. Nonetheless, the time spent in this tiny underground room is definitely the high point of our trip to Saqqara.

After a nice lunch down in the valley (where plants actually grow), we head back toward Giza. On the way back, our guide tells us that Saqqara is now well known as a place where carpets are made, and all along the road there are buildings marked as carpet schools. We didn’t stop to take any pictures, but as far as we can tell, “carpet school” loosely translates to Egyptian sweatshop, and is apparently a place where children go to learn how to weave carpets. The front of these buildings are decked out quite nicely and contain the showroom, with the actual school either in the basement, or behind the showroom in a plain, unfinished brick building. We think back to how much our kids complain about how boring their school is and wonder if maybe carpet school would keep them busier.

We arrive at Giza at little after 1pm, and despite seeing the pyramids for two days already from our balcony, nothing could prepare us for seeing them up close. They are simply massive, and as we walk around them listening to our guide talk about the history, I can’t stop staring, trying to imagine how the ancient Eqyptians could have possibly built something of this scale. Mohamed reminds us that the pyramids at Giza were built around 2500 B.C., so that by the time the Chinese were building the Great Wall, the buildings I am staring at had already survived over two thousand years.

Mohamed also points out some markers on the ground that show where the original edges of the pyramids would have been as almost all of the smooth limestone casing (save for a small chunk at the top of the pyramid of Khafre) and many of the inner blocks (which are what you see now) were removed over the years and used in the construction of other buildings in Cairo. Based on these markings, I figure that as massive as what stands there today is, easily a third to a half again as many stones must have comprised the original buildings in the time of the pharaohs.

Behind the pyramid of Khufu, there is a separate museum built specifically to house a wooden boat that was excavated from a pit near his tomb. Rebuilt, the boat measures over 140 feet in length and is made of cedar, which remains in excellent condition even 4,500 years later. Designed for the pharaoh to use in the afterlife, the boat was never actually put into water, but instead was constructed, disassembled, and stored in a pit carved into the limestone, and then covered with a series of huge limestone blocks.

We bought an additional ticket to go into the pyramid of Khafre, so head over next to do that. Mohamed tells us there isn’t really much to see inside the pyramids as these were built before the time when the builders started carving hieroglyphics into the walls, and it turns out he is pretty much spot on. It is interesting to see, but mostly because of the scale (the passageways and burial chamber are much bigger than the other pyramids we have been in) and to be able to say that we did it.

Our final stop in Giza is a visit to the Sphinx. Having seen countless images of it over the years, it is nice to have a chance to see the real thing, but up close, it seems a lot more worn down than I imagined it. Because of that, or perhaps because it was at the end of a long day filled with really big things, it doesn’t inspire the same feelings of awe (Ang may say different). Its location is closest to the tour bus drop off so it is also the most crowded part of Giza and we get the opportunity to see a number of klassy (with a K) tourists dressed in tank tops and shorts. We’ve read this is a no-no in a Muslim country so joke a bit about them, but on the inside I definitely acknowledge they are likely pretty darn comfortable, while I am really, really, hot.

Finished with our trip, we head back to the hotel to pick up our bags and get ready for our night train to Aswan. We have a few hours to kill, so we take advantage of some final internet access to talk to all the boys before they head off to school and we head into what may be a 5 day void of connectivity.

Our first full day in Cairo got off to an early start (for one of us anyway). Still adjusting to the time zone, I found myself wide awake at 4:00 in the morning, and rather than stare at the ceiling for a few hours, made my way up to the business center to get on to the Internet and catch up on things. While it was good to have a bit of time to deal with emails (sadly, the needs of PDA Verticals go on even when I’m on vacation), by late in the afternoon, I am the walking dead.

We set out for the Egyptian Museum after breakfast, which is back in the center of the city (our hotel in Giza is out on the western side). Rather than fight the relentless traffic, we make our way to the subway, which proves to be extremely efficient. I note while riding that the people that design subways must not really ride them, as even a short trip here would quickly reinforce that handles hanging from the ceiling are a bad idea since they force people to raise their arms to hold them. Where it it routinely 90 degrees plus, that can be a very, very bad idea.

Once downtown, we make a quite stop at a travel agent to book our Nile cruise. We did a bit of research while still in Redmond, but didn’t reserve anything figuring we could get something here once we were sure what days we wanted to be on the river. That may turn out to be a good thing as the price we paid here was about half what we were quoted earlier, but of course, the proof in that will be when we actually show up for the boat and see if our names are actually on the list (and if they are, whether we are sharing a room with two other Egyptian families). Since reservations here are paid in cash and by the time we get to the boat we will be 600 miles from the travel agent’s office, the arrangements are not without some risk.

The rest of the afternoon we spend in the museum itself, which is crammed full of all kinds of amazing pieces. After walking through about 10%, using our guidebook to point out the highlights, we realize we will be far better off with a guide to tell us about what we are seeing. For about $40, he spends the next 2 hours walking us through the history of Egypt, and while the general overview is pretty well known, there is a lot of detail I never knew and find quite interesting. In retrospect, I think going to the museum first will help put a lot of the other things we see from here on out into better context, so while we didn’t plan it that way, should definitely benefit from it.

The big draw for the Egyptian Museum is the collection of items from the tomb of King Tut. Unfortunately, cameras are not allowed in the museum or we would have a ton of pictures as the exhibit goes on forever. The death mask and gold sarcophagus are a couple of the most well known pieces and it is great to actually see those in person, but they are only a few of the thousands of items found in the tomb that are on display. Even more amazing is that King Tut is only really famous because his tomb was found complete and not because he was a particularly noteworthy pharaoh. With some of the longer reigning pharaohs having burial chambers ten times the size of King Tut’s, it is hard to imagine what those would have originally held before they were robbed.

We wrap up our museum visit checking out the mummy room. There is an extra charge to see the mummies and guides aren’t allowed in those rooms, so we leave them for last. Like the King Tut artifacts, we have seen plenty of pictures of mummies, but seeing them up close is definitely a whole different experience. Keeping in mind they are over 3,000 years old, seeing fingernails, teeth and hair is a little surreal.

Following the museum, our plan is to grab a quick snack to tide us over while we get back to the hotel and a restaurant we want to eat at near there. We pick out a few items by pointing at them, and quickly find our table full of the things we selected plus a whole host of other associated things like salads and bread. Not really sure whether they come with what we asked for (and not able to speak the language) we just dig into what has quickly become a full meal. The food is pretty good, but we find when we get the bill that we need to be far more specific as every item has its own charge.

No longer in need of dinner, by the time we get back to the hotel, I am ready for a nap, so while Angela catches up on her email, I study the inside of my eyelids.

Tomorrow we are heading out to the pyramids with the same guide we used at the museum. He is going to take us to Giza and then down to Saqqara (the burial grounds from when the capital f Egypt was Memphis), after which we will head off to the train station for our trip down the Aswan (where we will find out just how trustworthy Egyptian travel agents are). I suspect Internet access will be pretty limited between now and when we check in to our next hotel in Luxor on Tuesday, so may have very little opportunity to post between now and then.

After a fairly uneventful set of flights, we arrived in Cairo around 3pm local time.  We have definitely been spoiled with Cathay Pacific (mixed in with getting older and more grouchy) and now are quick to complain about seats that don’t go perfectly flat, but our connection was perfect in Frankfurt (only 90 minutes on the ground), and with impeccable German efficiency we stuck strictly to the schedule. The airport in Cairo seems fairly quiet for mid-afternoon which works to our advantage as we are able to quickly get our visa stamps, clear customs and pick up our luggage (yes, I caved and checked baggage).

Having traveled a fair amount, we like to think we are fairly sophisticated with airport transportation, and based on some data from our travel book and the information kiosk in the terminal, we navigate with our heads down through the horde of gypsy cab drivers, laughing inside at the inflated rates they are offering and head towards the cab stand – basic travel 101.  We realize we have a problem when we can’t actually find any cabs, even though everyone we ask points us to the same place to get one.  After stumbling around aimlessly for a few minutes (and marking ourselves as the tourists that we are), we find a driver with a rickety old cab who offers to take us to our hotel, which is 50km away.  The price seems steep and we try to haggle him down, but there aren’t any other cabs to be found, so we all know who has the upper hand.

The striking thing for me about Cairo is how monotone everything is. I’m not really sure what I expected given that, save for the Nile running through it, it is in the desert, but there is really just brown in every direction as far as the eye can see.  The big exception is the various colors of the cars that comprise the bumper-to-bumper traffic for pretty much our entire journey. Gas prices are fairly heavily subsidized here, so at least for people that can afford a car, there doesn’t seem to be any reluctance to get something full-size (versus using scooters and motorbikes) and the resulting traffic is horrendous.  They try to make up for the volume of cars by cramming 6 lanes of traffic onto a three-lane road, and for them it seems to work.  I could easily roll down my window and touch cars on either side of me, but surprisingly we don’t see a single fender bender in our 90-minute commute.

Our hotel for the next two nights is in Giza, directly across the street from the pyramids and we luck out with a room facing that direction. Since we arrived close to 4pm, it is still plenty light enough to see them towering in front of us directly from our balcony.  Definitely one of the most impressive views we have ever had, and a great way to start our time here. At night, they light them up a bit, which makes for a fairly impressive sight.

Once checked in, we hop back in a cab to a Radio Shack in search of a converter that will let us charge our electronics here and then the train station to procure tickets on the sleeper train to Aswan.  With those errands out of the way, we spend the rest of the evening wandering around a local market.  We find some street food stalls and are convinced enough that what they are selling is lamb to try it.  We also find a number of bakeries and, of course, have to indulge.  While there are the typical cakes and such available, the majority of what we see are pastries made of some combination of phyllo, nuts, and honey.  Pretty much everything we try is delicious, and between these and the street food, we beat back the hunger.

We get back to the hotel around 8:30 and spend a few minutes online trying to catch up on email and checking in.  Our plan for tomorrow is to head for the Egyptian Museum, and then wing it depending how much time we spend there.  There are quite a few things to see here, but for us, the traffic and noise are a bit much so we’re going to stick to the main attractions and then hit the road after two days.