The Royal Family on the Nile

The first week in June 2010 Jen & Jesse, Lindsey, and Mary joined me in Egypt for some time sightseeing in Cairo and a trip down the Nile on a cruise boat. Jen, Jesse and Lindsey were in graduate school with me at UF. Mary lives in Italy but travels to Cairo often.

We spend the first part of the trip visiting the sites in Cairo. We visited the Khan El Khallili market, the Egyptian museum, and the pyramids at Giza. An AUC colleague, Amanda, has a friend who operates some stables near Giza so we decided to view the pyramids on horseback. It was a neat way to see the pyramids, traveling through the desert on horseback.

A picture of the gang on the horses, with a nice backdrop:

This was my second visit to Giza, but the first time on horseback. I enjoyed the horses, and that is an easy and inexpensive thing to do in Egypt, so I will ride again this fall.

After 3 days in Cairo, we flew from Cairo to Luxor. Luxor is the home of the famous tombs in the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens. The Valley of the Kings contains 57 known tombs, the most famous of which is Tutankhamen. There is some interesting history here. The early Egyptian pharaohs built pyramids as their tombs. Pyramids serve as spectacular monuments to the pharaoh's greatness (even 3,000 years later), but they also served in ancient times as enormous beacons saying “treasure located here.” In spite of all their best efforts, the ancient Egyptians couldn’t keep the tomb raiders from finding their way into the pyramid tombs and plundering them. So in later times the pharaohs tried a new strategy of building their tombs in secret, carving them out of the limestone in the desert deep underground. Egyptologists speculate that the tombs were built by prisoners of war who were all killed when the tomb was complete to keep its location hidden. But it is impossible to put that much treasure in one place without someone knowing about it, so even with all the stealth most of these tombs were eventually discovered and plundered. That is the reason Tutankhamen’s tomb was such a spectacular find. As pharaohs go, he was a minor king, but his tomb is the only one to date discovered untouched.

Sadly, we didn’t have enough time in Luxor to visit the tombs, but we did see the Luxor Temple and Colossi of Memnon.

Some pictures of the Luxor Temple. I hired a private guide to give me a one hour tour (for 100 Egyptian pounds, which is about $18). I learned a lot, but too much to go into here.

This temple later served as a Christian place of worship, and here you can see where the original carvings were painted over with Christian imagery:

Below is a picture of the "Avenue of the Sphinx." The Temple of Karnak is located about 3 km up the Nile from the Luxor temple, and the two temples were once connected by a broad avenue lined with sphinx statues. These statues were covered up over time by the flooding of the Nile, and in recent times houses and other buildings were built on top of them. This section has recently been excavated, which involved removing a lot of houses and relocating the population. Good for archeology and tourism, but the locals I talked to did not seem too happy about it.

It is hard to tell from the picture below, but each pedestal has a sphinx. They stand about 4 feet high, and each sphinx is about the size of a large golden retriever. I think there are plans to excavate the entire avenue all the way up to the Karnak Temple, which will require displacing a lot more Egyptians from their homes.

The next day, the car picked us up from the hotel and drove us down to Esna to get on the boat. I saw a friend from AUC on the plane from Cairo, and he told us that there is a temple in Esna near the boat dock that is worth a visit. This is the Temple of Khnum, and we made a visit there our first morning before departing on the boat.

We boarded the boat around noon and began our journey down the Nile. There are a myriad of cruise options on the Nile, mostly on large cruise ships. But we opted for a smaller sailboat and I cannot think of a better way to make the trip. The boat has 8 cabins, so it can transport up to 16 people. When we got on board, we asked how many other people would be on the boat with us, and were told that the 5 of us would be the only ones on the boat. Our captain said, “You are the royal family this week.” And we were literally treated like royalty for the next 4 nights. There were 5 of us on a boat with a crew of 8, and the crew met our every request quickly. The food was terrific, the sights were amazing, and being on the smaller boat meant we could stop at a lot of places the larger boats cannot.

Here was the itinerary for the week:

Day 1

Pick up from Nakhil Hotel at 9am travel to Esna arrive at 10am. Set sail after permissions from the police and spend the day sailing down to El Kab, moor for the night.

Day 2

Visit El Kab in the morning after breakfast then sail down to Edfu and visit the temple late afternoon, moor at Fowersi Island for the night.

Day 3

Sail down to Silsila Quarries arriving after lunch, visit the temple of Horemheb and then sail down to manea Island to moor for the night.

Day 4

Visit Komombo after breakfast and the rest of the day sailing down to Aswan

Day 5

Transfer from the boat into Aswan and your hotel.

Each night the captain would ask us when we wanted breakfast in the morning. We could say 5AM or 11AM, but whatever we chose we would have more delicious food than we could eat delivered to us on deck just when we were ready. After breakfast we would visit one of the nearby ancient temples or tombs, return to the boat and be served ice cold lemonade on deck, eat a delicious lunch, and then spend the afternoon sailing south. We would usually visit another sight late in the day. We moored for the night at sunset, had dinner, and after a little social time turned in for the night. The cabins were all very comfortable with a private bathroom in each.

I cannot say enough about the service on board. One member of the crew, Ahmed, seemed to be there solely to meet our every need. Thirsty? There was Ahmed with lemonade, tea, coffee, water or beer. Hungry? Ahmed would start bringing up courses of fish, chicken, beef, lamb, potatoes, rice, salads and fruit. Ready for a shower? Ahmed would turn on the generator and see that the water was warm. I'm sure that Winston Churchill was no better attended to on the Nile than we were this trip.

Mahmood was our cook, and while it was nothing fancy- roasted chicken, fried fish, potatoes, fruit salad, cucumber salad, rice, etc. it was all delicious and we were always served twice as much as we could possibly eat. I think even I gained weight on the trip. Here I am spending some down time on the Nile. I read "The Red Badge of Courage" on the trip.

One night we were docked at a remote place, so the crew played music and gave us an impromptu party:

We saw so many temples and tombs that I've kind of lost track of them all. If I had it to do again I would take notes, or take a guidebook with me and make notations. But I think from the pictures and the videos you can get some idea of how spectacular the sites were.

Here is the Temple of Horus:

My best Indiana Jones look:

The boat pulled over by some old rock quarries where the rock for the pyramids was cut and floated up the Nile to Giza. It is in the desert, and we took a long walk through the quarries and saw some old tombs and an old temple that is not very well preserved.

Here I am sitting where a the stone has obviously been cut out. I don't know exactly what this stone was used for, but it was quarried between 2000 and 3000 years ago!

The temple at Komombo:

Being UF grads, we all noted how many alligator scenes we saw in the temples:

Before we left, we read all this stuff in guidebooks about the health issues of swimming in the Nile. And we all decided we would skip it...but then, man! it was so hot, and that Nile looked so inviting. And westerners in Egypt have told me that the Nile isn't bad once you get near Aswan. Our captain pulled over at a place that he assured us was very clean water, so:

Strange creatures in the Nile!

We left the swimming area and sailed to just north of the Aswan bridge where we docked for out last night on the boat:

Here is a picture I took of all of us right before we got off the boat:

We reluctantly left the boat in Aswan and spent the day there before catching an evening flight back to Cairo. While in Aswan we went to the Temple of Isis:

What a fantastic trip! I hope to do it all again someday, and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in visiting the Middle East.

Roman Holiday

I'm not exactly the most accomplished world traveler, but I have been around just a bit in the last year. And I must say I have found in Rome my favorite city to date. The monuments, art, and history are all terrific, but the best thing about it is being part of Italian life. The people are for the most part good looking and lively, the food is simply delicious, and even the language is beautiful. It was a quick trip, but I managed to see and do a lot in just a day and a half, and I will certainly return. I threw a coin into the Trevi fountain (an Egyptian pound) so that means I'm destined to return!

The Trevi fountain was my first stop in Rome. I knew of it only from the famous scene in La Dolce Vita, and I was surprised how big it was. I can't describe it adequately, and the pictures don't do it justice. Watch the movie, and then go see it for yourself!

I also went by the fountain the next day, so here is a picture in the daylight:

Another sight I saw my first night in Rome was the Column of Marcus Aurelius. You can't tell from the picture, but the column has pictures on it from top to bottom that tell the stories of Marcus' campaign in the Danubian wars. The column was built in 193 AD, and restoration work was done in 1589.

Piazza di Spagna was my first stop the next day. It is a beautiful square, with steps leading up to a church. 

There is a famous street leading away from the square. I asked an Italian the name of the street, and she told me the name in Italian. Seeing the puzzled look on my face, she said in English it is "Let's go shopping!" I walked down the street later and saw what she meant--the street has all the famous high end shops like Gucci, Bvlgari, Aramni, etc. I noticed a pair of ladies sandals in a window selling for 450 euros. That's about $500 bucks for a pair of shoes. Needless to say, I the only shopping I did was window shopping.

Here is a picture from the top of the steps, looking out down the "let's go shopping street."

I made it to the Coliseum on Saturday. Quite an amazing sight.

Next to the Coliseum on one of the seven hills of Rome is what seems like a large park but I think it is part of the Roman Forum. There are several houses here where emperors lived and a lot of other sites. But I was pretty tired by this time and couldn't take it all in. My favorite site in this area is a large area that was a private theater for one of the emperors (Domitian?) where he staged gladiator battles and other stuff for his private entertainment. While I was here, a tour group with a guide who spoke English came by and I listened in. Their guide explained that the structure was originally covered in marble, but the marble was later taken to build St. Peter's cathedral. He said that the Vatican didn't like the word "taken," they preferred to say "recycled." I understand that a lot of the original marble at the Coliseum met the same fate.

One of my favorite buildings from this trip is a modern one completed in 1935, the Monumento Nazionale a Vittorio Emanuele II. It contains the Tomb of the unknown Soldier in Italy.

The best site, by far, that I saw this trip was the Pantheon. Several years ago I read a lot about this building in one of my favorite history books, Daniel Boorstin's The Creators. I never thought I would get to see the building in person. Pantheon means "all the gods" and it was originally a temple to all the pagan gods. Somewhat ironically, it has been well preserved because because around 600 AD it became a Christian church and has been well cared for through the ages. You have to see it in person to believe it, but here is a video I took inside the building. You can see and hear a Christian religious service going on in the background while I took the video.

I just scratched the service on a quick 2-night stay, but I will certainly go back. I haven't even mentioned all the delicious food! The ice cream was the best. I don't know how it is that they make ice cream so much better in Italy, but I couldn't stop eating it! It was worth the trip just for the chocolate ice cream I had the first night at the Trevi.

My next trip is at the end of May. I'll have some guests from the US here, and we are going to Luxor, Egypt and taking a Nile cruise. I won't have much to blog about until then. The university is keeping me busy, and I haven't figured out how to get paid for full-time travel yet.