Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

We've now been in the UK for a few very peaceful, hassle-free days and are now on a train en route to Edinburgh, Scotland (hooray for Wi-Fi on trains!), but I realize we have some catching up to do! Our last week has been pretty busy, with us moving ourselves and our bags around to several different spots in order to see everyone we wanted to see (thanks for the couches, Rebecca, Andy and Helen!), so this is a good opportunity for me to catch my breath.

Back in Egypt, we spent our last full day in Luxor in a very Western style restaurant called "Snak Time," which offered air conditioning and free Wi-Fi, not to mention overpriced ice cream and coffee drinks that were delicious, so since we couldn't easily return to our hostel and the site of the argument, we embarassingly spent a few hours there despite the wealth of archaeological treasures around us. We really had seen all we wanted to in Luxor, and it was nice to catch up on a few things and stay out of the oppressive heat for a while. Once we decided to venture out, we grabbed a few falafel pockets for dinner and walked with our bags up to the train station to catch the 9pm to Cairo.

This being Egypt, of course the train arrived closer to 11pm, but we were grateful that it came at all, and as described. We had booked First Class, which is only available to tourists, so it turned out we had an entire carriage to ourselves and the 3 other travellers that we had befriended on the platform. We didn't see anyone else for the entire 10 hour ride, which while being quiet and relaxing, was a little bit strange given how crowded the rest of the train was. Much of the country operates this way. In our conversations with the Egyptians we met, we learned that if an Egyptian is seen walking around with tourists (interpreted as white people), he can be questioned and fined if he doesn't have a tour guide permit, even if all parties insist they are all friends. There is a specially dedicated Tourist Police force, and they are everywhere and very visible in white uniforms, enforcing this and other laws. Certain areas, like popular markets and dining areas, require Egyptians to pass through metal detectors and have their bags searched, while Ben and I waltzed in without a word every time. It felt strange to be separated by law from the people that walked around us. Despite the harrassment, we always felt physically very safe in Egypt, and while I'm sure this is due to the heavy police presence, I did feel more than a little guilty about having more rights than the Egyptian citizens.

Our train arrived as promised in Cairo in the early morning, and we walked directly to the hostel where we'd stayed before, dropped off our bags, and took off to see the Citadel, which had been closed the last time we tried to see it. It's really an enormous compound composed mostly of 12th century fortifications and the extremely impressive 19th century Mohammed Ali Mosque.

We wandered around a bit and poked into the Police Museum, which contains a very interesting collection of old weapons, counterfeit money, and evidence from past political assassinations.

After stopping for a quick tea at the historic Feshawi's coffee house, we headed back to the hostel to nap and get our things together for the next day's flight to London. Once dinner time rolled around, we decided to forgo our guide book and intuition, and followed the Egyptians instead. The most crowded restaurant in our neighborhood was a pizza place, completely packed with families, so we tucked into a very good pizza, followed by an incredible dessert of Egyptian pancakes - very thin baked dough covered in honey, sugar, nuts, and cream. It was our best meal in Egypt and a lesson learned: Follow the locals.

Once back in the UK, we settled into a pattern of drinks with friends, outdoor strolls, and crashing on couches. It has been a wonderful break from the Egyptian culture shock. The weather has been absolutely gorgeous, so we've spent most of our time outside: playing softball with Rebecca and her friends in Regent Park, running along the canals in Camden, and exploring all the colleges in Oxford.

One highlight has been visiting Ben's grandma in Chard, Somerset, as I hadn't met her before and was also eager to see some English countryside. She was completely charming and sweet, an impressively active and vibrant octogenarian who cooked us delicious meals and drove us around the county. Her local church, in which she's a very active member, still uses a chalice from 1574, which she showed me, along with family photos and old birth certificates. Her memory is amazing, and I loved meeting her. In Chard, the best known local site is the Forde Abbey, a gracious estate still in use as the owners' home and doubling as a museum of tapestries and antique furniture. The gardens there are spectacular, and it turns out the tallest powered fountain in England is in their pond. Fun and very British.

The day trip to Oxford was also really interesting and a lot of fun. The town itself is quite old (although I should be more careful throwing that word around now, having been to Egypt) and very medieval looking, with church spires and university halls lining every street. The gardens of Christ Church College are gorgeous, and our climb up Carfax Tower rewarded us with impressive views. We wandered around the old walls and green fields, enjoying looking at gargoyles and rowboats, before entertaining ourselves at a couple markets and heading back to London.


We are still happy and rested despite all our running around, and we wish we could intersperse England between all our future stops on the trip in order to do laundry and eat a variety of familiar foods. However, once we've left the UK next week we'll be officially in foreign territory for the next 5 months, so we remain excited if a little nervous at the prospect. At the moment, rolling along to Scotland, things couldn't be better.

In de Nile - Hurghada to Luxor

...or rather we sat and waited in the fly-blown local bus station for the long hot bus to Luxor which finally pulled in from Suez about two hours late. This coach was definitely not "VIP" but at least the stereo was among the long list of components (A/C, door, brakes...) that did not appear to work allowing us to swelter in silence but for the tuts of the old ladies unimpressed with our sitting together.

We followed the Red Sea south for a while but then turned west and the change in scenery was immediate. As far as we could see the landscape comprised nothing but hills, valleys and endless plains of dusty yellow rock devoid of any vegetation whatsoever, the monotony only broken by the occasional military checkpoint. When we finally hit the Nile Valley a couple of hours later the change was even more dramatic with 50 yards separating desert from lush farmland divided into small fields and fringed with palm trees and bright flowers. We'd made arrangements at the New Everest hostel in Luxor as it was run by a friend of a guy we'd met in Hurghada but we were still pleasantly surprised when we reached the bus station to find our host stood, car waiting, with my name spelled correctly on a waiting card! Half an hour later we were showered and stood in front of a working air conditioner with the grubby 50 degree bus a fading memory.

Our slick arrival set the tone for a great few days in Luxor which is very manageable compared to Cairo but without the generic tourist friendly trimmings of parts of Hurghada. The main draw of the area is the huge variety of pharaonic temples and tombs both in Luxor itself and over the Nile in Thebes so with only two full days in town we were keen to hit the ground running.

The next morning we walked up to the sprawling Temple of Karnak to the north of town which was built over a 1300 year period by successive dynasties and for the variety of styles it contains is considered one of the most important sites in Egypt. Completely buried until the mid 19th century the mammoth task of excavating and rebuilding the temple continues but the current structures, coverned in hieroglyphics and with much of the original paint intact, are more than enough to convey what an awe-inspiring place this much once have been:

The temple is so huge they have installed tele-porters to help you get around:

After a siesta and dinner in a local restaurant we allowed a local guy to show us around the ancient Abu al-Haggag mosque built within the ruins of Luxor Temple in the center of town. From the top of the incredibly narrow and supposedly off-limits-to-tourists minaret we got some fantastic views of the ruins and the town:

This being Eygpt, and despite the fact mosques are supposed to be open to curious visitors, our inability to shake off our guide meant that when we finally made it back down we were in for some more baksheesh and another argument. Tips are a way of life for as many people in New York as Eygpt but whereas the US conventions are quickly learned and tips generally graciously received, here the only rule seems to be that whatever you just gave was insultingly inadequate and the only thanks you are likely to get is a moan of indignation and an aggressive demand that you try again (with US$ this time). Alongside the lack of respect shown towards Western women (which having spoken to some other couples we now know is a universal experience), the fact that we are clearly viewed as walking cash machines has been our biggest disappointment in Egypt. The mistaken impression that all Westeners have money to burn is not endemic to Egypt but any romantic ideas that we may have had about spending leisurely afternoons haggling in souks, or befriending trustworthy locals (of which more later), have been thoroughly disabused.

On our second day we wanted to cross the river and explore Thebes and, while I know this is becoming a theme in my posts, we decided to forego expensive air conditioned vans and, you guessed it, rent bikes. Before we could start pedalling we had to contend with our hotel staff trying to sell us fake ISIC cards (guaranteed to halve all our entrance fees), concerned tour guides and taxi drivers assuring us we'd be unable to complete such an arduous journey and motorboat owners telling us the local ferry wouldn't take bikes and/or wasn't running. Fortunately we can both be pretty bloody-minded when we want to be and undeterred we set off on what proved to be a very pleasent ride across the Delta.

First stop was the Colossi of Memnon which were impressively colossal:

Followed by Medinat Habu which we visited on the recommendation of one of the guys from our hostel and which we had almost to ourselves:

From there we rode around the foothills of the Western mountains to Hatshepsut's Temple which is most famous for its spectacular facade set into a sheer limestone cliff. As we didn't actually want to go into the temple we didn't buy tickets knowing (correctly) that they were not required until we were half a mile closer in. Unfortunately we ran into an extremely irate member of staff who claimed we were not allowed to take photos from the car park before we'd paid and then as we did so threatened to have us expelled from the country! We almost felt sorry for him as he kept appealing to the tourist police who are a constant presence throughout Egypt but who could not have been less interested. The poor chap was reduced to shouting "You Stupid Man! You Stupid Man!" as we then decided we'd get to our final stop, the famous Valley of the Kings, by hiking up a narrow flinty path over the intervening mountain.

The steep path and heat combined to make it a pretty tough climb but we did not seriously consider whether we'd made a mistake until we reached the top and realized we didn't actually know what the Valley of the Kings looked like:

Fortunately we saw the top of a tour bus glinting in the distance and so scrambled down in that general direction.

The tombs in the valley (and in the nearby Valley of the Queens) were built after the pyramids in an attempt to prevent the treasures they contained being stolen by grave robbers. Despite their hidden location and entrances they were generally unsuccessful (Tutankhamun being the famous exception) but protected from the elements the wall paintings and hieroglyphics look as though they were completed yesterday and are a dazzling sight. Unfortunately photography is not allowed in the tombs but here are a couple of images from the four tombs we visited (Ramses IV, Queen Tawsert/Sethnakht, Tuthmosis III and Ramses I):


When we'd finally hiked back over the mountain and ridden back to town we were exhausted and so took a three hour sunset cruise on a felucca with a lovely couple we'd met at the hostel called John and Christina (Christina's blog will be appearing on the right very soon). Other than a bizarre detour to "Banana Island" the only interruption was when a local girl, maybe seven or eight, started chasing us in a row boat and shattered the peaceful evening by screaming at the top of her lungs; "GUUUUYS, GIVE ME MONNEEEEY!" Fortunately we caught a breeze and were able to escape but I had to admire her ingenuity.


Having decided to catch the night train back to Cairo we had very little to do on our third day and exhausted from our adventures had a loose plan to check out, park our bags and wile away the day strolling around town and catching up on email. Sadly, as we hung out with John and Christina in the hostel lobby, things began to unravel. One of the hotel staff appeared with two new guests and sat them down in a far corner for a version of the spiel we had all been given on arrival about how impossible it is to do any of the things you might want to do in Luxor unless they are prebooked with friends of the hostel (who of course pay commission to the referee). The four of us rolled our eyes at each other and when the guy finally finished John and Christina introduced themselves in order to quietly correct a few of the most egregious lies we'd overheard. Unfortunately this did not go unnoticed by the other staff members and when we left to walk into town the guy who had brought the new arrivals in confronted us and began to scream and shout about how we were damaging his business. He was sufficiently threatening that we decided to turn around and pick up our bags immediately but we couldn't escape an ugly argument with the other staff which was a very unfortunate way to end what had been a decent stay.

For all the hassles Egypt has been a wonderful stop and given us both some incredible memories. There is nowhere else in the world where you can see the pyramids (except Vegas and they only have one), nowhere else you can walk though chambers carved and painted by a 5,000 year old civilization and very few places where there are streets, alleyways, doors and windows which have been in continual use by everyday people since before the Crusades. The culture shock has not been insignificant but is in a sense why we're travelling.

Suddenly I Sea

Looking for a change from Cairo, we decided to head south. Luxor is known for more fantastic tombs and ruins, but we wanted a sunny, beachy part of our Egyptian adventure, and with the Sinai too far out of the way, we settled on taking a bus to Hurghada with the intention of continuing on to Luxor. The overnight "VIP bus" seemed like the best choice and while being comfortable enough, it was difficult to sleep during the Islamic prayers being blasted throughout the bus for the first two hours of the drive (which began at 1am - nice). Once we arrived at 7, we showed up exhausted at a hotel that we knew from our guide book, but had not yet contacted. Luckily they had a room for us at a reasonable rate, so we began calling the 4 Seasons Hotel (no, not that Four Seasons) home.

Hurghada is a Red Sea resort city strung along the east coast of Egypt, near fantastic coral reefs for snorkeling and scuba diving. One of the first things we noticed as we rolled into town was all the Russian. All the shop signs and restaurant menus are in Russian, and we heard it spoken almost exclusively in the streets and on the beaches, a language that we agreed sounds like a record being played backwards. It turns out Hurghada is a quick, cheap flight from Moscow, making it a prime destination for Russian beachgoers. The biggest benefit to us was the fact that the street vendors hassled us in Russian rather than English, making them easier to ignore. At the same time, the Russians weren't always pleasant to vacation around. More than once we saw them display the most appallingly rude, hostile behavior toward waitstaff over really trivial issues. I hate to make such a sweeping generalization (apologies to the many Russian fans of the blog!), but we were a little scared.

The other defining features in town are the blocks and blocks of unfinished hotel and condo construction projects, with staircases leading to nowhere and naked pillars reaching upward, awaiting the next floor. The whole effect is kind of spooky, like everyone left the city in a hurry. In fact, that's close to the truth - our snorkeling guide whom we befriended told us tourism to the area has been cut in half, owing to the recession, so all construction has been halted for the time being. The builders literally stopped where they stood and haven't returned to work since. It's strange to see the state of the world economy illustrated in such a tangible, visible way.

Despite these idiosyncracies, Hurghada remains a cute beach city with a lot to do, although I have to admit we didn't do much. For a complete switch from bustling, noisy Cairo, we chose to slow way down in Hurghada, spending 3 full days on the beach and the 4th day snorkeling. We learned that Hurghada is very much a clubbing town - the Egyptian spring break destination - but since that's not really our scene, we slept late, brought a picnic lunch to the beach, read our books, and enjoyed seafood dinners. Ahhhhh. We've got sunburns on our sunburns but it has been really nice.

The snorkeling on the Red Sea reefs is spectacular, and if we'd had more time I would have been interested in getting scuba certified. The water is crystalline and so many shades of blue, and the reefs appear to be pretty healthy. We made two stops on our snorkeling trip, and at both saw hundreds of different kinds of fish, urchins, anemones, and some other weird things we couldn't name. Our last stop was on Gifton Island, just off the coast of Hurghada, where everyone else sunbathed but where our sunburns forced us into shade - we're still at the beginning of the trip and learning to moderate our sun exposure!


Hurghada was gorgeous and relaxing, but our time in Egypt keeps ticking away, so we couldn't stay on the beach forever. Once we'd had our fill, we boarded another bus for the long, hot trip to Luxor...

Walk like a Brit

This update covers Cairo part 2 and, while we became somewhat accustomed to the place, most of our favorite things (and the minor irritations) remain as Megan described them. Fortunately though this post should be saved the usual fate of sequels, at least as far as photos go, because Tuesday was PYRAMIDS DAY!

We took a taxi bright and early and for 45 minutes sped through the sprawling Cairo suburbs on our way to the Giza plateau. From the elevated roadway we could see mile after mile of rough concrete and mud brick apartment towers but it was not until we were close to Giza that we finally saw the great pyramid in the gaps between the modern construction. Not even our taxi driver's love of the Vengaboys could take away from the shock of seeing such an iconic structure for the first time and the size and stillness of the pyramid was an amazing contrast to the teeming streets below.

The plateau itself is higher than Giza and while it's an enormous area it is heavily secured and joins the desert in every direction other than north east. As a result, once we'd escaped the tour buses and eluded the trinket sellers and camel ride touts, it was actually very peaceful and at some of the less well marked areas including some fascinating tombs we were completely alone - which may not have been a good thing:

While it's not always the case it was possible to go into all three pyramids when we visited and we chose to visit the second (built by Khafre the son of Khufu who built the great pyramid) which, while slightly smaller, actually appears much bigger by virtue of being on higher ground and having a small part of its limestone case still in place. There isn't much to explore inside any of the pyramids as a tourist or otherwise and your entrance fee now gets you a stifling and extremely tight clamber down into the burial chamber and back up which even for the non-claustophobic would not take more than ten minutes. Despite most of the treasure now being in various world museums or lost to grave robbers the experience is still worth it to imagine what it must have been like for the early explorers - venturing into these same tunnels without the benefit of electic lights or climbing boards.

The other big draw on the plateau is the Sphinx which is best viewed from within the ruins of the temple built to hold Khafre's body prior to its final journey along a massive causeway to his pyramid. The temple was overrun with dancing camel and alabaster pyramid sellers but they didn't take much away from the extraordinary view - it's mind boggling to think that only last week I was marvelling at the craftsmanship of a 10 foot long 1200 year old church in Dingle while the Eygptians were building these structures 5000 years ago. My favorite guidebook statistic is that the 230m long sides of the great pyramid are aparently within 4cm of equal length at every point!

Baksheesh?

After taking it very easy for the rest of Tuesday we woke up with big ambitions of rounding of our time in Cairo with a trip to the Citadel - a walled city within the city founded by Saladin (of fighting the Crusaders fame) in 1176 AD following his defeat of the Fatimids. We had originally planned to visit on Monday only to find the whole area shut for a visiting dignitary and unfortunately the fortifications were to prove impenetrable once again though this time it was entirely our fault. Sidetracked when we woke up by the arrival of our wedding photos (some of you will have got an email already otherwise there's a link below if you're interested) we got a very late start and by the time we'd meandered through Islamic Cairo yet again and arrived at the ramparts it was close to 2pm. Spoilt by New York's ATM obsession we keep forgetting to stock up on cash and realizing yet again we didn't have enough to pay the entrance fee we set off on a bank hunt that took us almost back where we started. Sweaty and disheartened we finally got back to the ramparts around 4pm only to find that our "guide"book's dot for the citadel, while technically within its boundaries, was a good 4 uphill kilometers from the actual entrance which we proceded to hike just in time to see it shut.

Facing the prospect of a complete strike out we consoled ourselves with a relaxing cup of tea, a bit of souvenir shopping in one of the more relaxed areas of town and the thought that even the bad days are 'good blog material'. Little did we know however that the evening was about to provide the highlight of our trip so far.


Chastened by our earlier failure we made our way to the wikala of the Al-Ghouri Complex well in advance for that night's performance by a Mawlaiyya sect of the Sufis - more commonly known as the whirling dervishes. Megan and I had both seen low key performances of this type before in Turkey and while we'd found the dances entertaining we both wondered how the performers would fill the announced 90 minutes running time. Things started gently with a line of musicians playing traditional instruments warming the crowd up before building to a riotous crescendo which dispelled any misgivings we might have had. Soon afterwards the first of the true dancers appeared and spun for 45 enthralling minutes with his bright woolen skirts creating hypnotic, kaleidoscopic patterns which left the whole audience dumbstruck. After a brief musical respite three more dancers took the stage and I'm not sure we blinked for the next half hour! Photos will never be able to do the performance justice suffice to say we left the venue in stunned silence unable to digest what we'd just seen:

Having rescued the day we found a decent restaurant for a delicious koshari-free meal before heading back to our hotel for our bags in time for our night bus to Hurghada.

Wedding Photos:

http://www.laurenslusher.com/darkroom/proof/#name=&state=&index

The password is Megan's maiden name followed by her new name, no spaces and capitalisation counts

Walk Like an American

We have spent 3 full days in Cairo and have so far learned that walking like an Egyptian entails slowly meandering across 5 lanes of quickly-moving traffic, being harassed by Egyptian men of all ages despite being accompanied by my husband, and turning down 9 out of 10 taxi offers. Still, Cairo is an exhilirating city and we are loving all the dizzying detail everywhere we look. It's not as hot as we had feared, even though today I got the first (and surely not the last) serious sunburn of the trip, nor is it as crowded as Manhattan at rush hour, but the rest of the rumors are true: it's crowded, dusty, and OLD!

We started off Sunday with a visit to the Egyptian Museum, which was really wonderful for placing monuments and buildings in historical context, which came entirely from our guidebook as the museum annoyingly doesn't label any of its items. The things we saw were staggeringly old and beautifully preserved, including intricate heiroglyphic carvings from 4,000 B.C. and the original mask and two caskets of the one and only King Tut. The Tutankhamun items were really amazing - such brilliant gold and gorgeous jewel inlay. Unfortunately, cameras aren't allowed at all inside the museum, so you'll have to Wikipedia everything for yourself. Another great feature of the museum is the Mummy Room - as creepy as you'd imagine but extremely cool at the same time to see the actual bodies - teeth, hair, and all - of the famous pharaohs that I barely remember learning about in school. I now have a renewed interest in brushing up on my world history.

We ended up at the Cairo Tower for the evening - a fairly new tower that's basically empty except for a rotating restaurant and viewing platform at the top. The views were excellent, but the smog prevented us from seeing all the way to the Giza pyramids.


After descending from the tower we searched, and searched, and searched for somewhere to have dinner, discovering that Cairo is not really known for its cuisine... there's this dish called koshari that involves macaroni, lentils, and tomato sauce, and that's basically all we could find for about 5 miles. Once we finally settled for some decent koshari, we swore to never again leave the hotel without our guidebook for suggestions.

We decided to spend Monday in Islamic Cairo, known for its old buildings, elaborate mosques, and sprawling markets. The Khan al-Khalili market really is amazingly dense, crowded, and huge, but there was really nothing there that we cared to buy, which did not take us long to discover.

It appeared to be a better idea to tour mosques instead, which turned out to be fantastic. They're such peaceful structures, designed to drown out the busy city. I loved the graceful archways and lanterns, and the ornate curls in all the Arabic design. I covered my head upon entrance, and was also given a smock and slippers to wear - pretty cute.

The best views in town were those from atop Bab Zuweila - miles of mud-colored apartment buildings and a thousand mosque minarets spread out before us. We stuck around up there for a while, and then dove back in to the amazing marketplace below.

The informal markets that line every street in the Islamic part of town are really spectacular. Every inch is crammed with women in burkas, goats, strange foods on carts, children, feral dogs and cats, you name it. There is so much to look at, smell, and absorb. Unfortunately this also means being looked at, which we were, a lot. This isn't an inherently terrible thing, but the Egyptian men aren't in the habit of keeping their thoughts to themselves, and they tried out their entire vocabularies of dirty English words as I walked by. It was all very non-threatening, but after a while the incessant "Lucky man, how many camels? Very beautiful I love you. (Lots more stuff I won't print here)" just became difficult to ignore gracefully. We managed as best we could, but Ben told a few guys off and overall it ended up taking away from the experience a little bit. A shame, because the markets really are so interesting.

After hours and hours of walking, we looked for a little relaxation, so we headed to the banks of the Nile and booked a felucca sailboat for an hour. Best Decison Ever. It was really such a wonderful hour. We cracked open the beers we'd quietly brought from around the corner and glided over the water at sunset, without a taxi offer, obscenity, or honking horn to be heard. At that moment, I think we'd have chosen to spend the rest of our six months on a felucca, if we could.

But there is no dinner on a felucca, so we went in search once more. This time, we followed the guidebook to a place featuring a "good and varied vegetarian menu, along with traditional Egyptian and international meat dishes." Sounded delicious! However, once we got there, we were given the choice between koshari with meat and koshari without - I am not making this up. 2 options.

In Egypt, we continue to live and learn. But we're having a fabulous time!