I went to Egypt!

A few weeks ago I was talking with my friend Clark who was working for an NGO in the Middle East. He told me he was going to spend some time in Egypt and I thought to myself, "Gosh, it has been quite some time since you've had a proper vacation Maria and you haven't seen Clark in 23 months. Oh look, a plane ticket to Cairo is pretty affordable!" So I bought the ticket, took time off work and went to Egypt for vacation.

One day we ventured to Coptic Cairo, the Christian section of town.

Clark is excited to be in Coptic Cairo

I would also like to add that the preservation and what not of Coptic Cairo is heavily funded by Greece so there were lots of Greek flags around - I can't escape the Hellenic invasion

The next day I went to visit the Pyramids and Giza. Clark waited for me at a nearby cafe due to the fact that when one goes to the Pyramids they are harassed incessantly by people trying to sell you crap, take you on camel rides, etc. So I explored the pyramids by myself. Even with all the hassle it was truly amazing.

This is the view of the whole shebang from outside the entrance area.

This is the giant man kitty, aka the Sphinx and the pyramid of Khafre in the background.

Pyramids!

More pyramids

Me and the pyramid of Khafre

Same pyramid from a different angle

The view of Cairo/Giza from the pyramids

A group of nice Spanish men took this picture. I was pleased with myself for being able to understand them when they told me to bend my hand. Leave it to the Spanish to take the cheesy tourist photos.

The following is a lot of pyramid/sphinx photos. I couldn't stop myself from taking lots of photos.

I quite like this photo as you can see all three pyramids (I did not like the obnoxious camel ride guy pestering me whilst I took this photo though...)

On Friday we decided to visit the City of the Dead, which is a very large cemetery where people have moved into family tombs. It was quite the process getting there as the cab driver didn't know what we were talking about but we finally made it to the Citadel which is relatively close by. However, once at the Citadel we could figure out exactly where to go. Clark did an excellent job of pantomiming death to a nice old man who sort of pointed us in the right direction.

Not particularly shocking that the route the the City of the Dead was through the slums.

After walking through the slums for a while, we stop to try and figure out where were are. This task was much easier said than done as every map in my Lonely Planet was not good and didn't think it was necessary to label street names. However, we eventually made it and walked around the cemetery for awhile. It was intense to see people so poor they were living in a cemetery. But people still offered us food as we walked by. A lot of the family tombs are really impressive and beautiful, which is then juxtaposed by such poverty.

Friday evening Clark and I headed off to the south to visit Luxor. Fun side story: we went to the train stain earlier in the week to buy our tickets. We are told that it is sold out to Luxor but we can still buy tickets to Aswan, the next big town after Luxor, and get off at Luxor ON THE SAME TRAIN. This makes absolutely no sense to me and Clark and we decide to regroup and try to buy tickets at another window. This time we argue with the woman saying it makes no sense that the train to Luxor is full but we can still buy tickets FOR THE SAME TRAIN but must buy the more expensive ticket to Aswan. A nice guy in line offers to do some translating for us and explains the exact same thing we have been told twice now. No one thought it was weird to buy a more expensive ticket for the same train because it was full going to Luxor. Whatever, we sucked it up and paid the extra money for the ticket to Aswan and went on our merry way.

After 12 hours on a train we arrived in Luxor and found a very nice and cheap hostel and decided to check out the East bank of Luxor on Saturday.

This is the view of the West bank across the Nile as seen from outside the rather disappointing and overpriced mummification museum. We visited those mountains the next day.

This is the Temple of Luxor, a temple built by Ramses II around 1400 BC.

There should be two obelisks at the entrance but Napoleon took the other one and put it on the Place de la Concorde in Paris. Way to go Napoleon...

This is the avenue of the sphinxes. It originally extended 3 km, all the way to Karnak.

Sphinxes up close!

Entrance to the temple

Clark's back and an obelisk

Those pillars and statues are so insanely huge

See, tourists are nothing but mere specks compared to the giant pillars

A sitting Ramses II

Just about every surface was covered in hieroglyphics, some places you could still see the color.

More hieroglyphics

After visiting the Temple of Luxor we ventured down the road a bit, via horse, to the Temple of Karnak, which makes the Temple of Luxor look like a speck. It is a huge complex made up of the ruins of several temples and was built over 1,300 years.

This is the entrance to the temple. Please note the other end of the avenue of the sphinxes.

Theses pillars are twice as big as those at the Temple of Luxor

You can't really convey how absolutely massive this place is via photo.

View across the Nile from the temple

On Sunday Clark and I decided to rent bikes and visit the Valley of the Kings, the big valley were all the pharaohs had their tombs. Excellent idea. Except for the fact that I woke up with pretty bad stomach problems (clearly salad was not the best choice I made on this trip...) and it was really ridiculously hot (100F/38C). However, I am a trooper and rode my bike like a champ until I couldn't anymore, which was pretty far, all things considered.

The Colossi of Memmon, two absolutely enormous statues that act as the entrance of sorts to the valley. Somewhere after here is where I could no longer bike and we got a cab to the the Valley of the Kings. Once at the Valley of the Kings, my illness got the best of me, but I soldiered on. Then my illness got the best of me again, inside a tomb. Luckily I was prepared and didn't destroy any 4,000 year old artifacts.

This is the actually valley. It is really beautiful, I wish I hadn't been sick I could have appreciated it even more. The heat didn't help things much either. The tombs themselves were really interesting (and hot as hades, holy cow), some were really elaborate with multiple chambers and all covered in hieroglyphics. This is combined with the fact that you are standing in a tomb that is thousands of years old, its kinda hard to wrap your head around that.

After exploring the Valley of the Kings and resting in the visitor center a bit so I could try and recover, then getting some "bake sticks" the closest thing I could find to a saltine cracker (which worked wonders - Clark just thought they would make me puke more, oh ye of little bake stick faith) I managed to peddle my bike, which I believed to be as old as the tombs, back to the Nile. We did stop at a nice French restaurant on the way, one so I could further recover and two, because Clark was hungry. Clark had a very nice lunch and I had some delicious mango juice.

We then continued our journey back to the ferry boat and made it back the East bank where we went back to the hotel and I continued by recovery process.

The East bank of Luxor as seen from the ferry.

Sunday night we took the train back to Cairo, which took significantly less time - amazing how that will happen when you don't randomly stop on the tracks from extended periods of time. Monday we didn't do to much due to travel fatigue and excessive heat and I caught a cab to go to the airport at 2am Tuesday morning.

All in all it was a really amazing trip.