Alexandria

Even from the beginning stages of planning our trip, we wanted to go to Luxor in Egypt. It has tons of cool stuff. We went to the train station and found tickets to Luxor, but couldn't find a train back to Cairo before Susannah and I flew out! We tried lots of different options but nothing was available. We made a quick decision to try to get tickets to Alexandria so we could have a little "Mediterranean get-away" for a few days. Katherine had been to the Mediterranean in Greece, but we had yet to see it so we bought our tickets.

This is Katherine and Susannah on the train ride over. It was on the train that we started researching Alexandria using our trusty Lonely Planet guide. It was then that we discovered that Alexandria had at least 4 million people - it was not going to be a relaxing little place and we also learned that the beaches are absolutely packed. As far as things to do, there are a few things, but not nearly as much or as interesting as Luxor or other things on our list from Cairo.

So, when we got to the train station, we decided we were going to change our tickets to later that night instead of the next night so we could get back and cross more off of our "to see" list in Cairo. Changing our tickets ended up being a total pain. It was like a wild goose chase to one place then the other. Katherine and I are showing our frustration in this picture. We finally got it taken care of . . . after an hour!

We did have a couple of hours before our train left so we hopped in a taxi and the driver to us to a "less busy" beach called Mamoura. It was still many feet deep with wall to wall umbrellas and chairs. We couldn't even see the water at first.

Also notice our clothes. We felt very immodest in these! The women that swim there are still in their dresses or pants to their ankles and are covered to their wrists. They also swim in their veils! By the time we got to the beach, paid, changed and waded through the chairs, we swam for maybe 15 minutes before we had to head back to the train station.

Before we left, I got a few pictures from a higher view. The water was refreshing, but was not clear nor beautiful at that area of the Mediterranean.

You can see that everyone swam pretty close to the shore. Many of the men were in little kid tubes. I don't think that swimming is quite the past time there as it is here.

The gardens at Mamoura were beautiful. Susannah stuck her arm out the window and on top of the taxi to get this picture with a bit of the garden and the impressive entry gate.

Alexandria had many mosaics on the walls near the sea. They were pretty impressive. The weather was cooler there too!

Pyramids

While in Cairo, we visited the 3 huge sets of pyramids in the area: Giza, Saqqara, and Dahshur. I really had to pick and choose which pictures to post because I took A LOT! This is actually true of all the posts from this trip.

The day after we got home from Israel, we headed straight to the most famous pyramids of all - Giza. Our claim to the fame for the day was that we were the first tourists inside the complex. We went early that morning to try to avoid the heat of the day. Susannah is standing here in front of the "Great Pyramid." It was the tallest man made thing in the world for over 3,000 years.

Our second claim to fame was that we were also the first ones to go inside the Great Pyramid that day. We weren't allowed to bring cameras inside, but after we came out, one of the workers there had us go back down the tunnel for a bit and he snapped this one for us. There are 3 burial chambers in the great pyramid. There's currently only one open to the public. It was quite the climb up there!

Here we are standing near the bottom of the Great Pyramid. Some tourist police were kind enough to take this picture . . . for a small sum of money.

We decided to be ultimate tourists and do the whole camel thing. We each had our own camel, but Katherine and I each had a little boy on the camel. Susannah's camel was tied to the back of mine. These boys were amazing at getting on and off the camels. They would also swing down off the saddles and take our pictures like this!

The boys were also our photographers when we were on the camels. They were so funny. We really like this slanted shot.

We were trying to appear to be looking at something in the distance. The boys were really concerned that we weren't looking at the cameras. It was pretty funny.

The pyramids at Giza were completed around 2560 BC but are the newest of the three sets we visited. I love this shot. We rode the camels all the way around to the desert side to get this shot. The one furthest back is the Great Pyramid.

I love this shot as well. There was a man who kept following us around and trying to give us soda and these head things so we'd pay him but it didn't work!

We wanted to take a quick shot of the boys and the camels.

Getting on and off the camels was a bit frightening. I wish I had been a second sooner on this shot of Susannah trying to dismount. Those camels are tall. They all of a sudden drop to their front knees and then start lowering their back legs.

The Sphinx was really cool as well. It's a lot smaller than I thought it was - it's still huge, just not anything close to the size of the pyramids. When the locals said Sphinx in English, it came out sort of funny - like Sphinkus.

The guards near here told us about this shot. I think it's pretty funny. This is the last shot I'm posting from the Giza Pyramids. Next is Saqqara.

In this shot we are with Dorothy Knapp. I'll do a post a little later that talks about the Knapps. She was our tour guide to these pyramids. Her driver, Ahmed, suggested this pose for us to do. He actually suggested it several times. He was funny.

This pyramid is called the step pyramid. The complex at Saqqara are the first set of pyramids built in Cairo. I found a good explanation for how cool these pyramids are in Wikipedia: "[Saqqara is] the oldest complete hewn stone building complex known in history." These were built starting around 2667 BC by Imhotep. There are still parts of the complex that are being excavated.

I like this shot from a structure across from the step pyramid because it has the cobra wall in it. I didn't even notice the cobras until someone pointed them out.

Of course, we had to get our picture by it.

One of the most awesome things about Saqqara was the huge amount of heiroglyphics that were there. This is the first one we really saw there.

This is a good example of some of the ones we saw. This came from a pillar of what is thought to be a mortuary. Okay, this is the last one I'm posting from Saqqara.

This is the Red Pyramid at Dahshur. This pyramid is also huge and was the world's first smooth sided pyramid. The pyramids at Dahshur were the second ones built. We actually got there right as it was closing so we just took some quick photos before they kicked us out.

This is the bent pyramid. Something went wrong when they were constructing this one, but it's still really cool. There's another big pyramid called the black pyramid, but we were so far away that the picture looks tiny. I loved the pyramids. I couldn't believe how old these all were. Someone put it in perspective when they said that Christ lived closer to our time than he did to the time when the pyramids were built!

Daily Life in Egypt

Most of our trip was spent in Egypt. I have so many pictures that I've decided to split them up a bit. This post will show mostly random pictures or common sights we saw nearly everyday while we were there.

Susannah and Katherine are in front of the Cairo Museum. We visited this museum our first day in Egypt. It was incredible! They have tons of stuff there. My favorite was the mummy collection. We saw Ramses II, III, IV and a whole lot more. We also saw Seti and several queens.

There were lots of vendors with shops or walking around with their merchandise. This guy was selling bit soft pretzels. We all thought it was cool the way he was carrying them around.

Another of our favorites was the mango juice that many shops and restaurants had. It was SO good. It was just like they took all of the good parts of the mango and blended it for a couple of seconds. It had tons of mango chunks in it and I don't even think they added water. If you love mangoes, this is the drink for you!

Cairo is HUGE and everything is so close together. This shows one of the smaller streets.

I can't even recall what theses little cars were called, but we saw them around the less busy parts of town. This was taken in more of a suburb of Cairo. It has only 3 wheels.

Another common sight that we LOVED was the Nile River. I liked it so much that I even brought some of the water home in a bottle. It's definitely not the cleanest water I've ever seen!

We were pretty amazed with this bread vendor. I have no idea how he could carry so much bread without dropping it, let alone riding a bike.

Just outside of Cairo, there's tons of farmland. The most common crop we saw was corn. I loved the corn fields with all the palm trees around them. Most of the palm trees were date trees.

Katherine has family in Egypt. Her grandfather is Egyptian. He now lives in Houston, but his family is still over there. The woman on the left is Katherine's grandfather's sister, Nadia. I only met her once. The one on the right is her grandfather's cousin, Nazli (Zizi). These ladies accompanied us to the Khan el Khalili - the biggest market in Cairo. They bargained for us and told us when the prices were good. It was awesome having them there.

After the Khan, Nazli took us out for lunch at this restaurant by the Nile. She's so cute! We actually owe her so much. Katherine stayed with her the whole time. In Nazli's apartment building, on the floor above her, is an apartment that belongs to one of her friends that teaches at the University. The university provided her with the apartment. Her friend's husband also has an apartment and she lives with him, so her university apartment is vacant. We were able to stay there for free. It was so great and saved us a ton of money. Katherine also stayed there with us when we got back too late to get into Zizi's apartment.

It was fun to use the little elevator in the building. By the way, Nazli also cooked for us for many meals. She was fantastic!

The scariest thing in Cairo is the traffic. I would NEVER drive there and crossing the street is a dangerous endeavor. Cross walks mean nothing, and people may or may not stop for you. You had to cross the street one lane at a time. This isn't the best video - I was afraid for my life, but it gives you a small idea. In retrospect, I should have let everyone cross first and then crossed myself. Now you see a lot of Nazli's back. She was a pro!

The Dead Sea

After we finished in Jerusalem and were heading back toward Egypt, we made a stop at the Dead Sea in a little tiny town called Ein Gedi. That place is famous because in 1 Samuel 23 & 24 it's where David was hiding from Saul. In the Bible, it's spelled En-gedi.

We were actually surprised to see how clear the water looked at the Dead Sea and also how big the Dead Sea was! The Dead Sea is the lowest point on earth - it's 400 meters below sea level.

It was ridiculous how much salt there was. In some places there were little islands of salt. It had really built up on some of the rocks and even on this boat.

Susannah and Katherine found the Dead Sea mud and covered themselves with it. I really liked this shot of Katherine and the coast behind her.

I was content to be the camera person on this one. The mud did make their skin very soft as did the water itself. I don't have many pictures of us floating on the water. It was amazingly buoyant. Katherine has some on her camera. When she gets back I'll have to snag her pictures and update this post a little. We also took some video that I'll see if we can get on here.

They're actually not looking lovingly into each other's eyes. We wanted a back shot, but I thought it would look nice with some profile. It turned out a little humorous.

This was a shot from our hostel balcony. You can see Jordan across the sea.

Here we are on the balcony as well. It was so hot there in Ein Gedi.

These two Swiss men were in the room next to us. The one in the middle LOVED Susannah. He was really cool. They kept bringing us food and we had some great conversations about Israel and even about the Church.

I liked this shot that Susannah took with the road signs. Eilat is the Israeli city at the border with Egypt where we crossed.

Susannah got this shot of Katherine and I at the bus stop waiting for our ride to the border. I like the valley behind us. That's where they say David hid - somewhere around there anyway.

We did have reservations for the bus, but when we got on, there were no seats so we were on the floor for awhile. Seats would open up gradually as people got off at different stops. I got the first open seat so I snapped this picture of the girls on the floor. We drove right by Masada. It was a pretty tall hill. I'm not exactly sure why I didn't take a picture of it! Oops! Another thing I don't have a picture of is the Red Sea. It was beautiful! The most beautiful areas I saw were right at the border and pictures aren't allowed at that point.

Memories

I had to interrupt my trip picture for this quick little bit of fun. I got this idea from a couple of my friends' blogs I was surfing.

What you do is write a favorite memory you have of you and I in the comments of this post. Then put a post like this on your blog so your friends can write about memories of you.

Sounds like fun to me!