Since J hadn’t been down to the south, we decided we should visit two of the big ticket tourist attractions: Abu Simbel and The Valley of the Kings. Instead of flying, we took the sleeper train south. The compartments felt a little smaller than the ones in the Turkish trains for example, but the beds are relatively comfortable, and you actually get fed edible food in sleeper class.
Category Archives: Egypt
Alexandria day trip
I am a giant! In front of the library model.
We had a lovely day trip to Alexandria with tour guide Nibal. We had decided on a more relaxing day, so instead of the fortress and catacombs, we visited the library and the palace, and whiled away a few hours on the beach.
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Cairo – warning: dance and costume discussion ahead!
J and me on Yasmina’s roof terrace, with the pyramids in the background.
When I first visited Cairo back in 2005, it was pretty overwhelming. Now a slightly more seasoned traveller, I took things a little more slowly and without having to keep to the schedule of a tour group.
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Sinai
We boarded our bus and headed our past the Suez Canal to the Sinai.
Our destination was St Catherine, the tiny town at the foot of Mt Sinai, which we were to climb to see the sunrise.
It was absolutely freezing at St Catherine. It had dropped to zero degrees Celcius by the time we arrived at 6pm! The rooms in the guesthouse weren’t heated, so we piled on the blankets (thank goodness there weren’t many people in each dorm so we could nab the spare blankets!) and layered our clothes multiple times when the time came to set out for the climb. I ended up wearing:
- jeans
- two pairs of socks
- 2 sets of thermal underwear
- 1 tshirt, 1 singlet and 1 shirt
- 1 polar fleece vest
- 1 jacket
- 2 scarves
- gloves
Even with all that, it was icy on the mountain!
We were told that there would be camels to transport us part of the way up if we wanted, but by the time we got there, they’d all been taken. I was a bit anxious about this, since I’m not the best mountain-climber! We kept climbing slowly though, and managed to snag an early returning camel for a lift for half an hour or so. Even with that help, it was really hard going after three hours of climbing! By the time we got to the Steps of Repentance, I was dead, and avowed my intention to stop. After ten minutes of rest, though, I managed to keep going, and met the others at the peak, just in time for dawn!
Daybreak was gorgeous, but with hundreds of people all perched on the top of the mountain it wasn’t really the spiritual experience people talk about. Nevertheless, it was an experience I was glad I managed.
The walk downhill was much easier on the legs, but very slippery. Now that we could see, it was a pretty impressive climb!
After leaving St Catherine, our last trip was on the bus to the port of Nuweiba to catch the ferry to Jordan. Goodbye Egypt, and goodbye to Hamam, our fabulous tour leader!
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Cairo – Khan El Khalili
We stopped in Cairo for one more night before heading off to the Sinai and Jordan. That morning we awoke to frantic messages and texts from home – apparently there had been a bus crash on the road to Alexandria yesterday and some Australian tourists had been involved. Our families were understandably very concerned to make sure we were all okay!
On our last day in Cairo we spent more time in Khan el Khalili, having tea and shisha in El Fishawi. Not many shops were open, as it was the holidays, but we still managed to pick up a few things 😉
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Alexandria
In Alexandria we stayed in a big hotel right on the beach! The view from our balcony was the Mediterranean… and the multi-lane highway right in front of it!
Apparently Alexandria was founded when Alexander the Great convinced the high priest at Memphis to crown him pharaoh of Egypt. Quite a persuasive guy, once presumes! While here we started by visiting the National Alexandria Museum which is housed in the building that used to be the US Consulate.
The Catacombs were next – a deep underground tomb like a reversed tower. The people took picnics down to have celebrations with their dead relatives, which was pretty spooky.
Another big attraction in Aexandria is the Fort. Supposedly using stone from the ancient Lighthouse of Alexandria, it’s an awesomely restored edifice. We walked around the bay along the beach to get to it – and there were heaps if kitty cats enjoying the sun (and the fishing).
The Cecil Hotel was another attraction – where Noel Coward and his cronies used to write. Very civilised.
We ate very well in Alexandria – fabulous seafood chosen live at the shop across the road, and prepared as you like it, and where I first experienced sahlab (yummy drink/dessert that’s kind of like milky custard/rice pudding with coconut, crushed nuts and dried fruit on top) and the ubiquitous sheep’s testicles! I didn’t order this by the way – one of the girls was feeling adventurous, but we all had a taste!
The Eid celebration took place while we were in Alexandria, which meant that a lot of people were buying animals to butcher and feast on. It was a bit strange to see people cutting a sheep’s throat on the side of the road before loading it into the boot of their sedan to drive home with!
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Back to Cairo
We caught the train back up to Cairo – on my birthday!We celebrated by going to lunch at the Columbo Cafe and having fruit juice mocktails (this one is a mint and lemon juice – so refreshing!)
The Egyptian Museum was our next stop for the day. There was just so much stuff here, it got really overwhelming. We look at the Tut Ankh Amon exhibit, the Jewellery Room, the Tombs of Tanis and Ankhenaten. Most of us didn’t bother going to the Mummy Room – there are lots of mummies throughout the rest of the museum, so we didn’t think it was worth paying extra to see more! We stocked up on tacky souvenirs in the gift shop (not the cheapest, but they had some good stuff).
Dinner was a “5-Star Extravaganza”! We had dinner on another cruise boat on the Nile: one that just does a loop for a couple of hours from the Cairo docks for lunch/dinner cruises. The buffet wasn’t anything special compared to the other meals we had, but the desserts were much more expansive! The entertainment was great though – the usual show of a Sufi dancer, solo bellydancer, a small group of male dancers, and the bellydancer joined them before inviting the audience to come up and dance. Because it was my b’day, I was invited up to have a shimmy or two, which was fun.
On our way back to the hotel we saw some of the contrasts of Cairo: on one side there was a wedding party, and on the other a cow was being strapped to the back of a car!
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Aswan & Abu Simbel
After arriving in Aswan, we visited more temples – this time the Philae group of temples, which were painstakingly relocated when the dam was put in place to create Lake Nasser.
We wandered the bazaar near our hotel, bargaining for jewellery, scarves and clothing. One negative in Aswan – I got scammed by some guys selling water bottles on the waterfront. When I gave them a 5LE note to pay, then did an amazing sleight of hand and replaced it with a 1/2 LE note. I fell for it the first time, but it was hard to miss them trying the same trick when I gave them a 20LE note, and they switched it for my original fiver! I had to squawk a lot and start calling over the tourist policeman on the other side of the road to make them give it back. I only realised they’d done it twice when I was checking my pockets later, as I’d put a fiver in one pocket specifically to get water with… How annoying.
Lord Kitchener’s Island was a quick ferry ride away, an amazing botanical park in the middle of the Nile. It was strange seeing such contrasts – lush vegetation, water, then arid desert within metres of each other! There were hundreds of stray cats there, who were very playful.
We had to get up veeeery early to catch the bus to Abu Simbel, a 3-hour trip, but it was definitely worth it! The Nefertari and Ramses II temples were also moved when the High Dam at Aswan was built to create Lake Nasser, and it must have been an staggeringly huge effort, as every piece was catalogued, moved and put right back in the right place.
It was great to see some female gods predominantly presiding in the Nefertari temple, although it was much smaller than her hubby’s! Ramses II’s temple was huge!
On our last evening in Aswan we took a relaxing felucca cruise down to a Nubian village to have a “traditional” meal with henna tattooing, shisha and relaxing on the rugs out in the open air.
On our ferry trip back, some of the motors had broken down, so the drivers tied the boats together in a convoy and we floated back, dancing to some of the guys accompanying us with tambourines and tablas.
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Cruising – Edfu, Komombo
From Luxor we cruised down the Nile to Aswan, over two nights. During this time we visited the Temple of Horus at Edfu and the Temple of Sobek at Komombo.
The riverboat was comfortable, but the rooms were pretty cramped, especially the bathrooms! While cruising, we shopped for silver at the on-boat jewellery store, sipped drinks and played cards to pass the time.
The Temple of Horus was fabulous. Apparently it’s the only intact temple left, with its roof in situ. The guide said it was used by the Christians hiding out during Roman times, so the faces of a lot of the carvings are chipped off. The usual hawkers were out the front, with the ubiquitous clothes, jewellery and souvenirs.
We stopped at Komombo just as dusk was falling, so we got an eerie visit to the temple. Amongst the usual ruins, there was a mummified crocodile on display.
We settled down for dinner, coffee and shisha after visiting the temple, then wandered around the area, seeing a baby camel!
Back on the boat we had the obligatory Galabeya Night where we dressed up in the clothes we’d bought on our travels so far. There were games and music and much laughter – bellydance to the Macarena, anyone?
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Luxor Day 2
We got up at some ungodly hour this morning to hitch a ride in a ferry across the Nile to the West Bank to go to the Valley of the Kings. We rode donkeys from there for about an hour – wow they were competitive! If they saw a gap in the donkeys ahead they’d race to get there! At one point my donkey decided to make a run for it, slipping past someone else and leaving confusion in our wake. Apparently I was clutching it so hard it looked like my legs were wrapped completely around the donkey’s girth in an effort to stay on! No stirrups, we just had to rely on our thigh muscles to hold us on.
The Valley of the Kings was fantastic! We visited three tombs: Ramses I, Mermeptah and Ramses IV. Gotta love those Ramseses! They’d apparently just reopened Mermeptah’s tomb, and it had lots of vivid colouring on the wall, unlike Ramses I, whose tomb was really plain.
Then we headed off to see Queen Hapsetshut’s Temple. Amazing view – imagine being queen of all she surveyed!
Instead of donkeys, we took a taxi bus back to the banks of the Nile. The drivers were no less competitive than the donkeys, overtaking tour buses on blind corners and making us generally fear that we’d be joining the pharaohs pretty soon! But we made it back and took a ferry across, before moving our stuff to the riverboat for the next few days.
Before leaving Luxor we treated ourselves to afternoon tea at the Winter Palace. Apparently it costs $1500US per night to stay there! And they knew it too – the waiter looked askance at our jeans, so W got his own back by slurping his Coke from the bottle. Take that!
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Two Weeks Away 