Thank Zeus...

We couldn't have visited Athens at a more perfect time - both in the context of our vacation as well as the season of the year.

Greece is a fitting chaser for our double-shot of blistering-hot Middle East desert. They have calm breezes, birdsongs, green grass, wide pedestrian-only boulevards, mixed salads, and mmm-azing olives and feta cheese. Had we visited Athens first, we may not have as fully appreciated the fresh cuisine, temperate climate, and the fact that we're not readily identifiable as foreigners by our skin and features alone. That said, we've designated this city and the next two (on Crete) our actual "Honeymoon" spots.

The evening we arrived from Cairo we spent on foot, visiting the cafe neighborhoods of Thisso and Plaka, bordering the ancient acropolis.

We dined at a traditional restaurant in Plaka and shared our first carafe of wine since leaving the USA (not including the one Rebecca and Sara split in Ha Long Bay). We were finally able to "unwind" in this more familiar, decadent country after our seven-week nomadic bustle through less-familiar cultures involving asceticism, national religious fervor, zen, or precarious authoritarian rule.

We're amidst a much-needed laundry errand - Plusimo is the Greek pronunciation of Washing. Use it well.

Luxor

Luxor stems from the Arabian word for palaces for which the Arabian invaders mistook the plethora of Egyptian temples. The Greeks called it Thebes, but the proper ancient name was Waset.

All this and more we learned from our private tour guides at the Nile-side temples and Valley of the Kings.

In our first 24 hours in Luxor, we hired a car to visit the Temple of Luxor as well as the West Bank, a sprawling desert necropolis containing the Valley of Kings, Valley of Queens, and Valley of Nobles. These burial chambers were carved out well after the pyramids, and are much more descretely situated to thwart tomb robbers.

...In fact, when they opened Tutankhamon's tomb, they had to let the poisonous, stagnant air escape for a whole week before entering - and even after that, Howard Carter and fifty servants died of lungh problems. It sounds one step worse than a road trip with Trevor.

The tourist hassling here is pretty bad; you need to be parmed with patience, humor, and "la shu-kran" - which means "no, thank you" in Arabic.

---

A man siting on a ledge hops down to and begins following you as you walk by...

"You want felucca ride?"
"La, shu-kran."
"Is good price. You want to know how much?"
"La, shu-kran."
"Twenty pounds Egyptian. Good price!"
"La, shu-kran."
(His arms flail, his voice with some anger...)
"Why?! Is good price!"
(You quicken your pace, he stops walking.)
"You lucky man - sex lady! Woof-woof!"

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Two-out-of-three times, the man will shout: How many camels for your wife?!?

So that's all good for a chuckle, but it's frustrating if you're amidst an intriguing conversation or romantinc Nile sunset stroll, since this occurs every five minutes as men offer taxis, carriage rides, cigarettes, and cold beverages.

Additionally, it's extremely hot here. We don't have the exact figures, but we know it's well over 100 F, and it's sometimes even hot enough to wilt our ambition and make us say "let's just go sit in the shade for a bit." We've each drained over three liters of bottled water per day, and we're still suffering from mild dehydration. It's almost as bad as a St. Louis Summer.

Our favorite Luxor sight is the Karnak Temple complex, the largest Egyptian religious monument, revised over 4000 years by the Egyptians, Macedonians, Greeks, and Coptic Christians (the latter was unfortunately quite destructive). Some of the temple ceiling is still supported by the forest of massive columns that dominated the temple interior, and portions of original paint still adorn the carvings and the blue-with-yellow-asterisk-stars ceiling.


One wall carving (at left) appears quite frequently on the temple's outer facade - the reigning king holding a dozen foreign prisoners by their long hair - with one hand, simultaneously - and beating them ferociously with a club. Oh, and the king is smiling, too. It must have served as an effective welcome mat to neighboring civilizations.

Having viewed all of our target sights we're going to walk the Luxor streets for the remainder of the day until tonight's "sleeper train" to Cairo, and tomorrow's flight to Athens, Greece.

Care to spend a few thousand on last-minute airfare and meet us there? We'd love to have you.

(This is where you say "La, Shu-kran.")

Float like an Egyptian

The ancients mined granite from the southern province of Aswan and floated it northward on the Nile via "feluccas," small sailboats with massive, curved sails. We signed up to sail from Aswan to Luxor (ancient Thebes) up the Nile. The trip includes meals and two nights of sleeping under the starts on the Nile. We weren't sure how many others would accompany us on our trip, what we'd eat, or what sort of service to expect, given the inexpensive price.

We spent our pre-felucca morning in Aswan, visiting the Temple of Philae and the Aswan High Dam, the third largest dam in the world, behind Brazil and China. Egypt only uses the power generated by one of the two turbines - it exports the rest of its power (hope you're taking notes, Mr. Spottiswoode). That's a whole lot of dam electricity!


As it turns out, there were eight passengers on our felucca, ourselves included: three non-native Londoners, two Argentinians, and an Aussie pilot working in Chad. Yeah, these eclectic tour groups all start to sound like the beginning of a joke.

A felucca is more of a floating sofa than a sailboat - instead of benches or tables, there's just a massive mat and pillows, with a canopy to shield you from the 45 C (that's 123 F) degree sun. At times, however, the mat isn't quite massive enough, especially when you're sleeping eight adults. That's our boat at left.


We had a lot of Nile to cover, a deck of cards, and several cases of Egypt's own Sakkara lager. The next day slipped away amidst some Euchre, Kings, camel meat, falafel, and lots of pita bread.

Sorry, it looks like we lost you at camel meat. We passengers were faced with the decision of whether the crew should cook camel for the second (final) supper, and the unanymous decision was "uh, sure." We ate it stewed with rice in its own broth, and it tasted like mutton.


Sara's reaction: Eh, too gamey.
Scott's reaction: Scr-hump-tious!


Packed full with camel and Sakkara, we and the crew prepared a bonfire, broke out the drums, and cut loose to some rip-roaring Egyptian song-and-dance. Another felucca's crew joined in, and we had three generations of Egyptians singing their folk songs with enthusiastic Arabic arm-waves and robe-ruffling kicks. For certain, their performance was as much for their own entertainment as for ours, but it was nonetheless a delightful cultural exchange. Plus, we learned how to sing She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain in Arabic.




The next morning came a little too soon. We disembarked at Kom Ombo (once famous for its massive crocodiles) and explored the Temple of Subek, the Egyptian crocodile god. On the police convoy (the only way for tourists to drive intercity) northward to Luxor (Thebes), we stopped in Edfu to visit the incredibly well-preserved Temple of Horus.


Luxor awaits us now with its expansive desert and its "Valley of the Kings." There's a lot of negative tales of the hassling and frustrations of Luxor, but we'll grit our teeth and smile again, and get back at you with the news.

Sorry for the delay in posting stuff - we really appreciate that you all are keeping abreast with our travels. Congrats on the apartment, Anne & Steve - keep your eyes peeled for a Friedman pad!

Road Trip!

A handful of Cairo's most impressive ancient sights lie a few kilometers outside the city's borders. We decided to hirs a van, blast some of our favorite tunes with the windows down, and pick up all of our friends for a wild Egyptian sightseeing time.




Well, not really - but we did have a van, an Egyptologist guide, and a driver. And it wasn't wild, but it was delightfully educational.


On our exursion, we laid waste to the ancient sites of Dashur, Memphis, Giza, and Saqqara - and by "laid waste," I mean we politely paid entry fees and asked lots of difficult questions.


All of the structures and statues we saw were dated 2750-2540 BC - among the impressive sights:

• The first pyramid (60m tall) at Saqqara composed of six stacked "steps"
• The "bent" pyramid (above, 105m tall) at Dashur, which still has some of its smooth casing. Its angle was altered from 54 degrees to 49 degrees mid-construction due to initial [mis]calculations.
• The "great" pyramid (146m tall)
• The sphinx, whose nose is missing due to either Napoleanic target practice or some malicous Turk
• The best falafils we've had, for less than $0.25. Worth the airfare alone.
• The world's oldest stone-brick building at Saqqara

We concluded our sightseeing with the evening "Sound and Light" show at Giza, a laser and projection show that explains the history and mystery of the pyramids and the sphinx. While it did bear some educational value, the projected face and pompous British accent of the sphinx (our narrator) cheapened the site's mystical ambiance. You can imagine.

We waste no daylight - we spent the night in a sleeper train to Aswan where our Nile felucca (sailboat) departs!

Not Enough Hours in an Egyptian Day...

...So why waste daylight?

We left our hotel at 4:30 AM and headed for the camel stables. By 5:00 AM we were in Giza's desert, each on our own camel, with a little sixteen-year-old kid as our guide. Sixteen-year-olds are great guides because they let you control your own camel when it's your first camelback experience and you're clearly not qualified. So that's highly recommended. Oh, and gentlemen: wear a protective cup.

We watched the desert sunrise illuminate the Giza pyramids while our camels made gurgling and smacking sounds, which was in fact partial regurgitation followed by chewing said vomit. One of us found this repulsive - the other one of us captured it on digital media.

We made it back to our hotel just in time to begin our full-day itinerary.

Cairo

This city moves quickly - and the best way to slow it down is with tea and sheesha (hookah).


Cairo is so happy to see us - to know our name, to know where we live, and to know how we like it here. No, it's not our eager smiles and adorable personalities - it's because we're obviously tourists.



Sure, Cairo wants our money, and it wouldn't mind having yours, too; however, if you walk the crowded sidewalks, less than half of the people asking your name actually want to sell you something - the rest just want to ask how you're enjoying their city, point you in the right direction, practice their English with a brief joke, and continue on their way.

Our hotel, the Hormoheb, is equally - if not overly - friendly. It's kinda like we're the protagonists of The Rocky Horror Picture Show walking into Dr. Frankfurter's castle. Kinda.

The hotel restaurant waiters strongly urge us to return on their shift and the front desk receptionists want descriptive accounts of how we're enjoying every amenity. We also received a brief but very enthusiastic tour of the hotel spa - a 1/3-full swimming pool, a fitness classroom (complete with toilet), and a Turkish bath (read: oily bathtub). The spa attendants insisted we return the next day to attend in a personalized, complementary, fitness class.

We spent the morning at the Egyptian Museum which, like the Louve, houses more artifacts (including King Tut's) than you'd care to see in a day. Our self-guided tour was cursory, but we saw a baker's dozen of mummified royalty, their skin oddly preserved and smeared with red ochre, their eyes selectively replaced with monochrome semi-precious stones and mother-of-pearl, like a doll.

The strangest phenomenon is that the majority of the artifacts, reliefs, jewelry, and paintings were never intended to be seen again by living human eyes - rather, it's all instrumental in enriching the recently deceased's eternal life. If their religion holds any water then we, the observers of the entombed artifacts, may spend post-mortem eternity with our hearts gnashed in the mouth of Ammut "The Devourer," a large and beastly goddess. And Ammut has large teeth.

Although the infrastructure can't support the burgeoning population, there's litter on every corner, and parts of Cairo have the Earth's highest population density, the city has its pride, and above all, its ebullient sense of humor.

...Of Bars and Bargains

The next day was the day of several great battles, all fought nobly by Friedmans on one side and arabic shopowners on the other; all ended with smiles and handshakes, and each team probably covertly high-fived each other afterwards. What matters is that everybody thinks they won - on one hand, we paid a great deal less than expected on certified and authentic products, and concurrently, the shopowners made their profit, else they wouldn't have closed the deal.

Ahh, the lovely smell of commerce in the morning!

So we nabbed our hookah, we snatched our carpets, and we just may have found each other some birthday and first anniversary presents in the Gold Souq. We also consigned a shipping company to fly much of our luggage (mostly carpets and Kilimanjaro equipment) to the MSP airport, so now our two bags (and our backs) are breathing easily. For a short while, at least, we'll be traveling light and luxuriously.

So, time for a relaxing drink in Dubai, right? Wrong.

We've learned that Dubai is much more of a "smoke 'em if you got 'em" city than a "round of beers for my friends" city. People sit at "bars" and drink teas and fruit juices, while sucking down Marlboro Reds. The only place to get a bucket-o-suds is at a hotel bar or at the airport's duty free shops.

We hear Cairo has some distinctive local beers and wine, so until then, it's relaxing by the pool with a plastic bottle of the cleanest, quaffable, tap water we've seen in over a month.

Sold. Wrap it up - we'll take it.