Friday - Red Sea

It was wonderful to sleep in this morning. We decided to have a late breakfast in our room. I opened the door to the verandah and noticed how warm and sunny it was and we were going through the Red Sea. I couldn’t wait to get up on deck to enjoy the weather. After breakfast we changed and went up to Deck 11 where we found lounges in the sun. The Commodore cam on at noon to let us know that we had just passed the Tropic of Cancer and were now officially in the tropics. About 7:00 pm tonight we are to pass about 70 miles West of Mecca. The weather was in the 70s, but without any wind it felt much warmer. We spent a lazy afternoon reading and just enjoying our surroundings. We went in after a few hours as we did not want to burn. We had skipped lunch so when Prakasan brought in some sushi it was a most welcomed sight. I think we both caught a cat nap after that, but then it was time to get ready for formal night. We dressed and went down to the dining room about 8 pm and had a wonderful dinner. Mom had the orange roughy and I had the risotto with mussels, shrimp and clams. We cannot seem to make it to a show, but we did go down for the Egyptian Ball.

It was a lot of fun to dance and they had the ballroom decorated for the event. We stayed until midnight, which is really 1 am since we are losing an hour this evening. As of tomorrow it will be 8 hours ahead of EST.

We came back to the room and it was decorated with Happy Birthday signs and balloons from Prakasan and Richard – I was so excited. Even though my birthday isn’t until February 12, you are able to pick a day to celebrate on here as long as it’s within 60 days. Even though we haven’t accomplished much, we are both tired. We are hoping for nice weather again tomorrow.

Karnak and Luxor

Today was another early morning and a very long day, though I was the only one going on the trip to Luxor. The meeting time was 7:00 am and we had a 3 ½ - 4 hour bus ride each way. The weather was noticeably warmer and clear blue skies. We both noticed the distinct landscape out of our window – very craggy mountains. Mom stayed on board ship and enjoyed a very relaxing and quiet day – reading, napping, etc. I met up with Bob and Marsha so that we could be in the same group. Mom had asked them to look out for me on the trip. Marsha sat with me on the way in and I really enjoyed talking with her. Our guide Noha filled us in on much of the history that we had heard the day before.

We drove through some of the most desolate areas I have ever seen, first through the mountains, then the desert and into the first small town of Kena and finally on to Luxor. It was a relief to see that this part of the country was much cleaner than Cairo. We must have gone through 20 or more check points in a convoy of 20 buses so it took almost 4 hours. We passed many fields where they were growing alfalfa (for feeding livestock), sugarcane, and tomatoes.

You noticed most of the farmers were doing all of the harvesting manually as very few have enough money to buy machinery. Again, it makes you very thankful for all we have in the States. I will say that there is one down side of being on a ship this large – too many people at these sites. We had over 1000 people all converging on the monuments and it was difficult to maneuver through the crowds.

Our first stop was the Temple of Karnak which is probably most well known for its hypostyle hall with 134 pillars. The sheer size and scope of this site was a lot to take in as it covers 60 acres.

There were lots of statues, hieroglyphics, and so on.

You could even still see the colors on many of the pillars. The temple was constructed over the course of 2000 years constantly being added on to bit by bit. We had just over an hour here which was barely enough time to take some photos while still trying to listen to our guide. It was sunny and hot and felt more like Egypt should feel, even in winter.

After Karnak we made a brief, as in 2 minutes, stop at Luxor Temple just to take a picture and finally it was on to lunch. We ate at the Nile Palace which was a very nice hotel located on the Nile. En route we passed about 25 different river boats that take multiday cruises down the Nile. We also saw a number of feluccas which are a type of Egyptian sail boat. Our lunch was similar to the day before and quite good. We even had a whole hour to eat lunch which was welcomed by all.

It was then time to get back on the bus to go to the Valley of the Kings which dates to the New Kingdom. Sadly, you were not allowed to take photos or videos inside of the complex or in the tombs. In fact, we were not even able to bring our cameras inside.

All I can say is that the tombs look as though someone painted them yesterday. The colors are so vibrant. We went into the tombs of Ramses I, III, and IX. Ramses the III had a tomb that seemed to go down and on forever. It is not easy to get down into the tombs as the shaft is very steep and you only have a wooden ramp with slats across it to help you down. There were small rooms off of the main shaft, some decorated, others not. The tomb of Ramses I had the most brightly colored tomb and it truly looked like the paint was still drying on the walls. It also still had the outer stone “vault” that held the sarcophagus. However, you had to go almost straight down 50+ steep steps in order to get to the chamber. It’s hard to imagine how these tombs were created with the tools that were available to the ancient Egyptians.

It was nearing sundown and time for us to leave. We did make one final stop at the Colossi of Memnon – two giant stone figures. It was then time to make the very long trip home. I did take that time to call my Dad and Hunter to see how things were going. I had hoped to take a bit of a nap, but that didn’t happen. I did chat with a nice gentleman from NY who is going on the full world voyage with his wife. We discussed the day and our thoughts on Egypt and the ancient Egyptians. I managed to use the light from my iPhone to read for the rest of the trip. I have never been so happy to see the lights of the ship as I was tonight! I finally returned to the room about 9:15 and was tired and hungry. Prakasan had already told my mom to give him a call as soon as I got in so that we could get some dinner. Mom had the canapés a little earlier, but had not gone down to the dining room for dinner. She had dined alone at lunch and that was enough for her. She was able to enjoy the sun on our verandah and had even gotten a little pink. We ordered some dinner and had to catch up on the day. This was the longest we’ve been apart in weeks! I am exhausted but really want to take a shower before going to bed as you do get quite dusty going into these sites. It will be 1:00 am before I get to bed, but can sleep in tomorrow!

The Pyramids - At Last!

Today we awakened at 5:30 am in order to get ready for heading into Cairo. We could tell by the crowds that most everyone would be doing a tour of some sort. We were going to Sakkara and then the Giza Complex to see the Pyramids and the Sphinx. Since we were docked in Sokhna we had about a 1 ½ hour bus ride before starting our tour. As we left the ship we were greeted by music and roses - and of course bomb sniffing dogs and guards with machine guns!

We boarded the motor coach and met our guide, Ghada, who would be with us the entire day. We had to wait until all of the buses were loaded since we were traveling in a convoy with security. We had to stop at several check points as we entered each town. We finally reached the outskirts of Cairo and eventually got on the “Ring Road” which runs around the city. We soon realized that the stories about driving in Cairo were true and the most significant thing that struck us was the fact that there are not any traffic lights!! Most of the buildings that we passed looked as though they were unfinished even though the bottom stories were already falling apart or already occupied. I think we were also shocked to see how dirty the city streets and the canals were. I don’t believe you can truly grasp this unless you are here. The canals were full of various types of trash, rotting food, and even dead animals – then a few yards away you would actually see men fishing in these same waters. We decided then and there we wouldn’t be having fish for lunch.

After crossing the Nile, we soon arrived at “Step Pyramid” built by King Zoser 5,000 years ago and is basically 6 mastabas stacked on top of one another.

We were also able to go into a small mastaba at this site and see the wall reliefs and even traces of the colors.

We spent some time admiring the view and from this vantage point you could see all of the way down to Dashur and the “Bent Pyramid”.

From here we went to the hotel Mena House Oberoi for lunch and were greeted by several men and women dressed in pharonic attire and a man playing a bagpipe of all things! Lunch was in a rather opulent ballroom and the food was quite good although we had a mere 40 minutes to get through lunch. Note my "Coke Light" below!

As we were walking out of the hotel we had our first really great view of the Great Pyramid in the background. We first drove up to the upper area for a complete view of the Giza Plateau – it really takes your breath away. This is the view you’ll rarely see in photos as you can see the city of Cairo goes right up to the plateau.

We really did have a great day to view everything, blue skies and no smog. We then drove down to get a closer look at the Great Pyramid (Cheops) and the smaller pyramid of Cephran. The pyramid of Cephran is the only one that still has the outer casing blocks (at the very top) which created the smooth look on the exterior of the pyramids. These outer stones were taken long ago to build other temples in the area. It isn’t until you are right in front of the pyramids that you realize the size of these stones that were used.

In total they believe more than 3 million blocks were needed to build the pyramids. It is at these sites where you find Egyptians trying to sell anything from postcards to scarves and they are very hard to get rid of – they will follow you if you even look at them. We learned a phrase “la shukran” which means no thank you in Arabic. Generally they will leave you alone if you say this to them with some authority, at least we found this to be the case. We took one more short drive down to the Sphinx. It is a real shame that this moment was used for target practice during WWII and of course some other damage was done during the Napoleonic conquest. Nevertheless, it is still an impressive figure with the pyramids just behind.

It was hard to spend so little time at these areas because we just would like to have sat there and taken it all in. We were then off to the Papyrus Institute where they demonstrated how they used to make paper out of these plants. It was quite interesting to see the process and how durable these papers were. After this short stop we were back on the bus heading “home”. We were very glad to be back in the comfort of our room and even more appreciative for what awaits us back in the US. We were not as tired this even, so we did go down to the dining room for our dinner. It was good to see our friends and find out what they did during their trips. We are both pretty tired and I will have another big day on Thursday going into Luxor, so we are calling it an early evening (for once).

Transiting the Suez Canal

This morning we opened the drapes and we saw that we were in the Suez Canal. It’s fun opening the drapes because you never know what you’ll see each morning. I guess the quote of the day came from Mom with regards to the Canal – she said, “it really is nothing but a big ditch”! She was looking for the locks, which would be typical of a canal except for this one.

Since there is only 1m difference in the sea level from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, there is not a need for locks. We were impressed with the vast desert that was before us. We were in a Southbound convoy with 15 ships, with us at the back. Since we had some time in the canal, Mom and I went down to breakfast around 9:30, not realizing this is when the dining room closes. Oh well, they were kind enough to let us eat. We then went up and sat on our verandah and enjoyed watching the scenery go by.

The Commodore informed us that our transit through the Suez will cost about 500,000 GBP which is equivalent to almost 1 million US dollars. Shortly after noon we were in the Bitter Lakes where our convoy was rearranged and now we were to lead the convoy down to the Gulf of Suez. I managed to sneak in a Waltz class – did much better this year than last. In fact I actually enjoyed it! The rest of the day was spent enjoying the scenery and we even went out on the deck, but after 30 minutes it was just too cool and windy.

We decided to come in and have tea since we had skipped lunch. After tea we went back to our room and called Dad. We have cell service since we are so close to land. It wasn’t long before Prakasan arrived with canapés and an enormous plate of sushi. We figured we didn’t even need dinner, but decided to get dressed and head down a little later. We had a light dinner with a special dessert – Crepes Suzette, one of our favorites. We took a photo of the lovely couples who have been with us since New York.

We came up after dinner so I could download some items and get my camera cleared for pictures tomorrow. Of course we had to go down to the Queen’s Room for a little dancing, but we didn’t stay very long since we have to be up at 5:30 am tomorrow to be down in the Royal Court at 6:45. Our tour lasts about 13 hours, so I am sure we are going to be beat. Best get on to bed.