Touring in Cairo the last day

We began early on our last day in Cairo with a visit to the Egyptian Antiquities Museum. We were fascinated by the treasure trove of artifacts which sprawled on for literally acre after acre. In some corners and side halls, ancient stone statues were just stacked up...not enough room to display it all. Word has it that this structure will be used as a storage facility when the new museum opens in a few years. The photo below shows the pool in front of the museum, which is about the same size as our ship's pool. Growing in the pool are the two main plants of ancient Egypt, lotus and papyrus.

This is the inner courtyard just outside the Alabaster Mosque. The ornate structure in the middle features several water spouts for ritual cleansing. Note the clock tower up above. Muhamed Ali, the Egyptian leader, not the boxer, who is buried inside the mosque, made a political trade with the French. He traded an obelish for the clock in the tower. The clock was delivered and it did not work. What a bad deal! The French offered to send a replacement, but Ali declared that he was perfectly happy with the one he had.

Interior view of the mosque. Lighting originally was by oil lamps. The carpets are donated by Iran.

Looking up from the floor of the mosque into the huge domes overhead.

This is the smaller of two pulpits in the mosque. Donated by King Farouk, who was deposed in 1952. The man in the blue was chanting towards the alcove next to the pulpit and the sound reverberated throughout the hall. We don't know if this was an acoustic demonstration or something more holy.

This is the koshary restaurant where we enjoyed lunch. There was no chance of any of us finishing our big bowl...even though we ordered the smallest one.

Due to the bluish lights in the restaurant, the color is not perfect in this picture. The koshary looked a bit more appetizing than this was was delicious. Everyone tried the straight tomato sauce. Jacob and Jim went one step further and gave the vinegar based sauce a taste. Jim took the ultimate challenge and poured on some of the hot sauce, which was provided in a big metal pitcher on the table. This must be the most popular sauce with locals. Jim reports it was quite warming, with "back of the throat" heat first and then a numbing of the lips. Perhaps it would be useful as an anesthetic.

The floor of the restaurant was layered with wood shavings. Why? That's a mystery. Maybe it's like the peanut shells at Texas Road House.

After campaigning for this for over a week, we stopped and our guide led Jacob to a fruit stand and helped him make some choices.

We're now in the old Coptic Christian area, built during the early Roman times. This quarter includes the Hanging Church, which is built on large cross-beams spanning the walls of Roman structures, the ruins of a Roman tower, the Ben Ezra synogogue (said to contain an original of the Torah), and several other churches, one of which is built over the spot where it is said Joseph, Mary and Jesus stayed during their time in Egypt.

The Hanging Church dates back to 600 AD, one of the oldest churches in the world.

This is inside the Hanging Church, which is undergoing extensive rennovations. The man on the scaffold is working on restoring a painting.

The woodwork in the church was exquisite, much of it including inlaid ivory.

Not every bit of the Coptic Quarter was quite up to code. I imagine there is a strict weight limit to who can step out onto this porch.

We moved on to the Pharaoic Village. It was good in that it helped bring to life various scenes from ancient times. This is a little vignette with the pharoh's daughter discovering baby Moses in the bullrushes.

This girl is demonstrating threshing grain by throwing it up in the air and having the wind take the chaff away. Note the "beehive" oven in the background.

I believe this was replicating Karnak Temple. It was interesting to see all the wall paintings in full, unfaded color. Obviously they did not duplicate all three kilometers of the temple.

A special museum was devoted to the King Tut tomb showing how it looked when first discovered. This is a view into the burial chamber, with the huge burial "boxes" and sarcophagus cut away to show the gold casket inside. The three boxes fit one over the other, were made of wood and covered with gold, richly engraved, of course, and fit over the stone sarcophagus.

The boxes nearly filled the burial chamber up to the walls. As Jacob would say, "they were meant to be that way". The wall paintings in this replica were missing the black spots we saw in the genuine tomb. These are believed to have been caused by bacterial growth, promoted by the heat and moisture exacerbated by the steady crush of visitors to the original. The Egyptian authorities are working to counter this growth by providing some air conditioning in the tomb (not a bad idea for King Tut's mummy, which is also displayed in the tomb) and also by limiting the number of visitors. They do this by charging a separate entrance fee which is steep, even in terms of the expensive entrance fees charged for other attractions.

Here's one more view of the burial chamber. We are giving you lots of views of this to make up for the fact that we were not allowed to take any pictures at all in the Valley of the Kings.

Craig and Jacob pose in proper older brother / younger brother position while we wait for our van at the Pharaonic Village. We were getting pretty tired by then, and we still had our dinner cruise on the Nile to go.

This was taken on the top deck of our dinner cruise ship. The food was pretty good (for Egyptian attempts at western dishes) and the Japanese tourists in our dinning room were almost as entertaining as the entertainment itself.

When in Egypt it is required to see a belly dancing show. There was also a lounge lizard singer, two guys dressed in sailor outfits that did little dances, and this amazing guy who wore a multi-level "skirt" who spun around a million times, with the skirt going up and down and, at one point, lighting up.

Cairo Scenes

We arrived back in Cairo in the early evening, just in time for rush hour! Actually that's not true, as Cairo features a 24 hour rush hour. Our bus simply pulled off to the side of a very busy road, stopped in the merge lane, and off-loaded the luggage into traffic. Thank goodness our van driver was right there to rescue us. In this picture, the man to the right of Nancy is eating a big roasted corn on the cob, a snack food sold by vendors on the street.Here we are compressed into our tiny elevator in the Cairo hotel. The brass hinges are for the little swinging interior doors. Closing these was optional, i.e. the elevator operated with them open. Meaning if the elevator was moving and you wish to be maimed, you could just reach out and touch the elevator shaft wall as it went by. You did have to swing one of the doors partially closed in order to reach the control panel. Each floor had an elevator door and these swung back and forth and had to be closed in order for the elevator to go.Gas stations in Cairo were one of the most westernized operations we spotted. They were even well lit at night. One difference from America is they were overstaffed with uniformed helpers who pumped your gas. As we drove to the airport at 2 in the morning, the gas stations still had a half dozen uniformed staff ready to pump gas. Since half of Cairo was on the road at that hour, I guess this staffing level made sense.

These old white VW vans were everywhere. We were told they are for transport within the municipal area and run fixed routes for just a half pound a passenger (ten cents). Often times the vans would simply slow down at an exchange point and passengers would hop on or off. The side doors were always open, as were the rear engine covers.

We sent Craig to make our last ATM withdrawal. Note he is under the protection of the white coated Tourism Police.

We saw several of thse street sweepers in their green uniforms. Talk about an endless task! Note the lush grass in the median...the only place in Egypt we saw green.

Here's one of the reasons for the lush grass in the median, the watering guy. No automatic sprinklers here.

Hurghada to Cairo - more photos

This is not exactly in chronological order so forgive us. We stopped into Burger King in Hurghada for a quick, safe meal before our long bus ride. Jim went for the Whopper and was surprised that it came with barbeque sauce. Like at McDonalds in Luxor, the lettuce was not very appetizing. Here's the scene at the bus station loading area. We joked that this was our bus, and silently hoped that it wasn't. It wasn't.

Here's our bus. They loaded everyone on board according to pre-determined seat assignments. The driver had a complete list with everyone's names.

As we boarded a young man was handing out little blue styrofoam boxes. We assumed he was selling something so we kind of avoided him, but it turned out this was your little box lunch. Included was a juice box, a bit of pound cake, and something featuring pate which none of us opened. Amazingly, it came free of charge and the young man didn't ask for a tip. That's one for the record book!

Moving back to the night before...

after our snorkel trip we were in the mood for some more seafood. Our guide said that the Star Fish restaurant was his favorite, so we gave it a try. Jacob wanted shrimp (no surprise there!) and was pleased that they were only slightly smaller than the columns of Karnak.

We selected our fish from a big display on ice near the front door. Since the pricing was by weight, I was most thankful that Jacob does not like lobster. I wanted sea bass but that fish must have been a ten pounder. I settled for something much smaller which was from the Red Sea but had a name unknown to me. This would be a good restaurant for you if you are accompanied by someone speaking Arabic, as the waiter wasn't really interested in explaining anything to us in English (those demanding Americans again!)Back to the bus trip...

we loaded into our "first class" bus and headed north along the western coast of the Red Sea toward Suez. There were a few interesting sights (sprinkled between vast deserts of boredom) including this small wind farm. Note the new construction in the background. We imagine in a matter of years that there will be quite a few more resorts along the coast.

The bus wasn't bad in terms of physical space. The agony came in the form of the passengers in front and behind Nancy and Jacob, who shouted into their cell phones non-stop, and the very active little kids in front of Jim and Craig.

This pipeline (we assume for oil) ran along the coastline for many miles.

Here's a view of the unassuming entrance of the fantastic reststop, which was definitely the highlight of the trip.

Inside the large covered area (roof was straw) was a great number of tables and chairs and other interesting features, such as this hookah bar. The hookah pipes are behind Craig. We saw much bigger pipes than these during our trip.
Here's more construction as we near Suez.

Still more construction, with an oil tanker just off the coast.

The road suddenly took a series of sharp curves, and we saw a huge future resort tucked into the cove. The curved brown buildings blend in with the hills behind.

Here's another oil tanker off the coast.

Providing electricity to the desolute, remote areas along the coast must be quite a chore. It doesn't look like these power towers are built for the long term, as they seem to be perched precariously on the mounds.

We all got a bit tickled by the end of the trip, entertained by the insanity of the two guys screaming in their cell phones and the little kids jumping around.

This is a great shot of traffic in Cairo, just a huge slowly flowing mass of vehicles. Craig's Egyptian girlfriend can be seen at the far left.

The helpful lady at the front desk of our hotel in Cairo suggested we go to Christo's, and even drew us a little map on the hotel business card. We got a little bit turned around on the way there (it seemes like nothing in Egypt is right around the corner, and "it's a five minute walk" can mean anything less than 100 miles) but we finally tracked it down. The bread oven was in operation outside the restaurant. We'll have to track down the recipe for this traditional pita bread, but we saw the ladies forming the dough into flat discs, letting them rise in the meal (it wasn't corn meal, but a rough ground flour of some type) then transferring them into the oven for baking. When they baked they puffed up, and we saw this puffed pita bread being sold all over Egypt. In between the two layers of bread there was just air, so when you gave it a squeeze it went flat again. And yes, the two women bread bakers asked for a tip, which we gladly provided, since they shared some of their fresh baked bread with us and weren't chasing after us. We discovered that, fresh from the oven, the air inside the puffed up bread is super hot!

Hurghada and the Red Sea

We arrived in Hurghady after night fall and after touring around town looking for what we thought was our hotel, our driver called back to the travel agent and determined where we were really staying. It was presented to us as an upgrade but...

The next morning we were off for our snorkeling trip. It was a reasonable deal, with gear rental and lunch included, and we enjoyed it. There were many entertaining aspects to it, and it was also a bit of an adventure. Before getting on the boat, we first were provided with our snorkeling gear. We secured a good spot on the top deck of our boat. We were accompanied by mainly Polish tourists. Part of the seaside edge of Hurghada is visible in the background. Apparently this was a sleepy little fishing villiage until about 20 years ago when relative stability in the Middle East provided a booast to tourism in the area, and the Red Sea became a big sun and fun attraction for middle class Europeans (less expensive than more traditional European beach spots).Craig checks out the very very blue water. The water was indeed beautiful. What wasn't beautiful was the trash floating in the water. Near the shore there were countless water bottles, plastic cups, styrofoam bits, etc. This fit with the overall appearance of the town, which was littered with trash and not in the best of repair.When we reached a midway point to our first destination, a beach island, the boats began to circle up and the tourists gathered along the railings. What was going on? Everyone on our boat became very excited and were practically pushing each other to see over the edge of the boat. Everyone from all the boats was whistling and shouting and banging on the boats.

What was the frenzy all about? A couple of dolphins. The boats zigged and zagged and tried to get the best view of the dolphins. This went on for about 20 minutes. We thought for sure that either the boats would run into each other, or run over the dolphins. We were relieved when the dolphins finally evacuated the scene and we continued on our way.Though the boat operators made you sign a legal release that would have made any American lawyer green with envy, there was not a great emphasis on safety. If you wanted to, you were even allowed to sit on the back edge of the boat, while it was motoring along at top speed, and dangle your feet into the water. They did do a head count before we left each destination, so that was reassuring.

This is the beach on the desert island. The sand was quite coarse, verging on uncomfortable to walk on.

In contrast to some of our other experiences on the trip, this was a big group scene. We were impressed that the boats worked well together and with the exception of a few shouted sharp words between boat captains, there were no real conflicts. Even though there were just a few shore boats to unload all the passengers from many vessels to the beach, everyone just waited their turn (or perhaps the off loading was prioritized by the amount of payments from each ship?) Whatever the case, there wasn't a great deal of campaigning to get us to shore more quickly than anyone else.

We first waded out into the water, then snorkeled a bit and swam around. Note how the water changes from a deep blue to a beautiful light blue as the depth lessens at the shore.

At our first snorkel spot, the water was calm and there was plenty to see underwater. There were a few reefs which extended 15 to 20 feet down with a nice variety of fish swimming around and hiding in the folds of the reefs. It was a bit of a mass event to have everyone in the water at the same time, but with the calm water it worked out OK. It was just a bit more like visiting a major tourist attraction vs. communing with nature.
Back on board, we enjoyed some lunch cooked on the boat. It consisted of grilled fish, potatoes, rice and veggies. The wind was blowing really hard so it was hard to eat without sending rice flying in all directions. Our flippers, stored on the floor, ended up covered with rice. We were provided with bottled water and also Pepsi (small glass bottles) but beer was available from the roving beer man. He carried the big bottles around in his plastic blue bucket.

At the first snorkel spot we enjoy calm seas and Jacob and Craig took advantage of this.