EGYPT!!!!

Oh my god!!! I just went to Egypt. It was amazing, incredible, wonderful…. I still can’t believe I just had the opportunity to actually live out one of my elementary school dreams!

We sailed into Egypt through the Suez canal, which was a really fun experience. We had the day off of classes and instead had the Sea Olympics (we’re all in seas… like teams depending on which deck we’re on) and we played lots of dumb games to win the ultimate prize of who gets to get off the ship first in Miami (my team came in dead last L). Sailing through the suez canal was beautiful, and it was so incredibly nice to see land after ten days of pure ocean.

We got into Alexandria the next day, and as soon as the ship was cleared, I left on my four day Cairo/Luxor trip. The bus ride from Alexandria to Cairo took about 3 hours, and I was tired so I slept most of the way. I woke up in Cairo when my tour guide started pointing out important sites to us, and it was amazing to see the pyramids (THE PYRAMIDS!!!) rise up behind all the high rise hotels. They’re right there, they’re just right there on the edge of the city!!! We had a delicious lunch at a fancy restaurant and I basically ate tomatoes and dessert because right now the tomatoes are in season and the dessert buffet was incredible.

After lunch we hopped back on the bus and drove to Sakkara to see the step pyramid. It was so cool, it was huge, and … steppy. We then drove back into Cairo as the sun was setting to see a light show on the pyramids (the big three). The light show was horribly hokey, but also really cool, simply because we were at the pyramids. The talking sphinx told us, and I quote, “the world fears time, but time [pause] fears [pause] the pyramids… bum…bum. .bum…” it was hilarious. Then we went to a night bazaar (the second oldest bazaar still in existence in the world) and in the process of buying a couple scarves, and Egyptian woman showed us the correct way to actually wrap a veil on. It was pretty cool. The Egyptian men are very loud and… affectionate? That’s not really the right word… but anyways, they really enjoy cat-calls so we got lots of “senorita, I love you’s” , whistles, and “I have what you looking for” (though I think that time he was just trying to sell me a shirt). We got back to our hotel around 11:00, ate dinner (again, absolutely delicious food – it was more Mediterranean than I was expecting: hummous and pita, tomatoes, eggplant, good olives, lots of fruit, and many many desserts), and then we went up to our rooms. I was rooming with my friend Sam and we had fun bouncing on our incredibly fluffy beds and watching the news (in English!!) to catch up a little bit on what been going on in the world.

We had a wake up call at 4:00 the next morning so we could drive to the pyramids to see them at sunrise. Normally the area doesn’t open to the public until 8:00, but somehow semester at sea got special permission to be there two hours early to actually see the sun rise. It was incredible. Beautiful. Wow. I saw the sunrise at the pyramids – that’s just insane. But I did it. It was really cool (temperature) that morning before the sun was the whole way up, which surprised me after how hot it had been the day before (I guess what I’ve heard about crazy temperatures in deserts is true). We were at the pyramids for a long time, we went on camel rides, and had the chance to actually touch them and climb on them and take lots of amazing pictures. It was awesome, and then we saw the sphinx and that was also unbelievable. We drove from the pyramids to Memphis (the first capitol of Egypt) and wandered around there. There’s really not a whole lot at Memphis anymore except a couple statues and men trying to sell you stuff, but it’s cool to be able to say I was there. From Memphis, we drove back into Cairo to have lunch on the Nile. We had lunch on the nile. The NILE!!! We were on a big boat which served us a buffet lunch and we had live music by three guys on crazy traditional instruments and there was a belly dancer and a whirling dervish and it was very very fun to see.

After lunch we got back on the busses to see the Citadel of Saladin and the Alabaster Mosque. The mosque was built for Mohammed Ali (not the boxer) a long time ago and it was the most beautiful example of Islamic architecture I’ve ever seen (though istanbul is next, so maybe that’ll win). The ceiling was a huge round dome with dangling glass lights and super-intricate designs in metal and wood and carpet. It was beautiful. We were there during a call to prayer, so we were able to watch the Muslim men actually praying toward Mecca. We went from the mosque to the Cairo Museum (the official Egyptian Archaeological Museum) and it was marvelous too. We didn’t have nearly enough time to be there (as you may see, we had packed quite a lot into one day), but Sam and I did manage to make it through pretty much the whole place. We saw rooms full of sarcophaguses, jewelry, ancient tools, statues, the king Tut collection (his gold mask!!!!), the only thing we missed were the mummies, because it cost extra to see them and we didn’t have time for that anyways. The museum was insanely crowded, there was just so much of everything, so much history just laid on in front of us, on shelves, in cases, everywhere. It was wonderful, I felt like I could have spent days there.

We went back to the hotel for a late dinner and then I headed out for an evening in Cairo with three of my friends. We had a wake up call at 2:15 the next morning, so we figured there was really no point in letting it be a wakeup call, we might as well stay up all night. So after dinner, Sam, Erin, Lauren, and I found a shishah bar (which is where EVERYONE in Egypt spends their evenings) and we hung out there for a few hours and smoked and drank yummy mint tea and mango juice. We made friends with the other customers and the guys running the place, and I think they all got a big kick out of our being there. We left the bar around midnight and spent the next hour and a half strolling along the Nile enjoying the cool breeze, the lights on the riverboats, and the fact that we were strolling along the Nile. Cairo really is a city that never sleeps, there were crowds of people around the whole time we walked, I guess it makes sense to try and be awake when the temperature is most agreeable.

So Sam and I got back to the hotel in time to shower and repack our stuff before we boarded the buses to drive to the airport for our 5:00am flight to Luxor. The airport was a crowded mess and it was pretty hectic trying to get on the plane in time. The power on the plane shut off moments after we got on (before we flew) which was sortof scary, but by this point I was pretty exhausted and it didn’t really bother me as much as it probably should have. My sleep-deprived self actually found it more annoying when the lights finally came back on and woke me up. The flight was only about an hour, but I really don’t remember anything between the lights coming on and the announcements that we would soon be landing. The view out the airplane window of luxor and all the sandy desert was wonderful.

We went from the airport to the Valley of the Kings, where I saw the tombs of King Tut, Ramses IV, Ramses VI, and some other famous dead guy. The tombs were (like everything else) incredible. King tut’s was packed full of people, and hot and humid (you understand how that paintings are being destroyed by the humidity the moment you walk in) but I was about 4 ft from his actual mummy, and that is just so unbelievable. The paintings in Tut’s tomb weren’t actually that spectacular, but the ones in those of the rameses’ were. It’s almost impossible to believe that we were seeing paintings that are literally thousands of years old – they’re still carefully detailed and colorful. I really wasn’t expecting them to still be that colorful.

We went from the Valley of the Kings to the Temple of Queen Hatshepsut which is this huge columned complex that is basically carved right out of the cliff face in the desert. Then we saw the Colossi of Memnon which sounds a lot cooler than they actually were. Just two big statues in the middle of the desert, but again, its good to be able to say I saw them. We drove back to Luxor for lunch and afterwards while some people went on an optional (ie pay more) tour of the city in horse drawn carriages I finally had the chance to fall asleep (which after about 34 hours of being awake, I think was a justified choice). I got a good 2 and a half hour nap in before we left to go to Luxor Temple and see it all lit up at night. Luxor temple was one of those huge columned places, where there’s no longer a roof, but there are lots of a awesome statues and carvings and the columns are absolutely massive. After the temple, we went back to the hotel for dinner (mmm…. More delicious food! But I wondered how truly Egyptian it was, if it was served in a fairly westernized hotel. There was pita, but there was pasta too – still, it tasted good) Once we’d finished off a big plate of chocolate mousse Sam and Karen and I explored the area around the hotel in search of an internet café. We finally found a nice cheap one where I had the chance to figure out my spring course schedule and what was even more exciting was that Sam let me borrow her Skype account and I called home and got to talk to Mom. That was really awesome, she didn’t know who I was at first, but she figured it out.

I got to sleep in the next morning till the super-late hour of about 7:00 am and we broke our fasts at the hotel before driving to the Karnak Temple. It was the same concept as the Luxor Temple, except even more complex and massive. I had thought the columns the day before had been huge, no, these were ginormous. The thing with the temples, is that each pharaoh would try to leave their mark by adding something onto the temples, so over time, they just got huger and grander. We had lunch after that and then had to head back to the airport to fly back to Cairo to drive back to Alexandria. That took awhile. I somehow couldn’t sleep, so I spent the travel time zoning out with my music.

The next morning, Sam, Erin, Lauren, and I spent the day enjoying Alexandria. We shopped, and saw some of the touristy places (the library, the fort where the famous light house used to be…) but we mainly just relaxed and shopped. We all needed stamps and there were a couple packages that needed sent home, so we ended up spending a good part of the afternoon searching for a post office and when we finally found one, they would only ship things express (re. expensive). The nicest man in the world led us from that bank to another branch where they would ship things for us (he worked at the second branch, and he spoke excellent English, so he was very helpful). By the time we got there, though, for some reason they couldn’t ship things out that day, so our new friend offered to mail the packages out for us the next day – it was so incredibly nice of him. In all, we probably took up almost 2 hours of his day, and he still invited us back to visit him the next time we were in Egypt so that was wonderful. After lots of Egyptian men who just wanted to whistle at us or sell us stuff, it was really nice to find one who was simply willing to help us. Actually, that’s something about the entire trip that’s been amazing, there’s almost always been someone willing to help us, or try to help us. I think I’m going to have to be nicer to tourists when I’m back home. Even just saying “welcome to the U.S.!” or something like that, because we heard a lot of “welcome to egypt’s!” and that was really nice, very friendly.