Chug-a-Chug-a-Choo-Choo

Sad Christmas wine

That night, Christamas Eve, we hopped on a night train towards Luxor. I was definitely not going to leave Egypt without seeing Luxor, the Valley of the Kings or Abu Simbel. The train left at 8pm so we made sure to get there early to find our train car and our room (is that what it’s called on a train or is it a cabin or a room?) Whatever it was, it had a bench that changed into a bed, another bed that folded down from higher up. A sink, mirror, two eating trays and a widow with curtains.  We spent a bit of time exploring the cabin. (Leading to us pulling down the top bunk and then having a hell of a time trying to put it back up again.

Shoving the bunk back up.

Dinner. Womp womp.

To celebrate Christmas, since we were away from our families and sad about it, we snuck a bottle of wine on board and then managed to drink it between us within 15 minutes. Then our dinner arrived. We weren’t particularly impressed but we ate what we could. After that, the steward (train attendant?) came to set up our beds for us. We climbed into bed and I read for a awhile before trying to drift off to sleep. It was not happening. The train was LOUD (wheels screeching, people outside making noise) not to mention the train car was shifting all about, and worst of all, the stupid window would not stay closed. It kept blowing open, sending icy cold wind straight into my bed and amplifying the noise by a thousand. It was a long and exhausting night. We were woken up at around 4am for breakfast and arrived at the station in Luxor at 5am. 

Khan al Khalili

One of the places we definitely did not want to miss during our time in Cairo was the Khan al Khalili. This is a massive marketplace selling things from cheap tourist souvenirs to expensive alabaster, spices and anything else you could possibly need. It’s a massive maze of tiny crowded shops and a cacophony of hawkers.

We wandered in and around for a long while. My favorite things were the metal lamps, leather slippers, camel boffs (leathery pillow things you can sit on), and the alabaster. We ended up buying a whole bunch of things to take back with us. I purchased two boffs for my porch, a dyed alabaster soapdish, and a gorgeous pair of red slippers. Kp bought like 6 pairs of leather slippers (she was in love). 

Trouble in Paradise

KP and I usually get along really well. But three weeks with one person is bound to create some conflict. One afternoon we went for a walk to the shops right around Ryan’s apartment. At one point I started to get grumpy but we kept on going. Then right outside of a supermarket, Kelly said something (I don’t remember what it was but I’m sure it was just a normal statement) which I took offense to. So I returned with something not so nice. At which point Kelly returned with something not so nice. We both stalked back to the apartment, neither one looking or talking to the other, until we were climbing up the never ending stairs to Ryan’s apartment. At which point I couldn’t take the utter ridiculousness of the situation anymore and burst out laughing. And so the argument ended. 

Citadel and Al-Azhar

The next day we stayed in town and visited the Citadel and Al-Ahzar Park.

The Citadel is a walled in city/mosque in the middle of Cairo that served as the seat of power for many medieval Islamic rulers. Today it’s a walled in museum and mosque complex. We wandered into the Muhammad Ali Mosque first. (After shooing away some pesky, flirtatious men trying to sell us stuff) In order to go in we either had to take off our shoes or wear booties overtop of them. We entered the courtyard to begin with, it is massive and has a fairly garish pagoda in the middle which, I believe, was gift from the French. I really liked the latticed windows that dotted one wall of the courtyard.

My favorite part of the entire Citadel was the interior of the mosque. It was absolutely beautiful. Carpets overlapped all over the floor, which despite the massive interior, muted and hushed the sound of the people. Hanging down from the ceiling were lights in glass globes. Far above them was a gorgeously painted ceiling. The lights almost gave off the appearance of being stars, with the heavens high, high above them. It was incredibly beautiful and peaceful.

The rest of the Citadel wasn’t too interesting. I forget what day of the week it was, but whatever day is was none of the museums were open. We wandered into the prison part of one museum and one of the guards cleared away some debris that was blocking off the prison corridor. They had some roughly made dummies locked in the cells, but the guard was making me nervous because we were the only ones down this corridor and I was convinced he was going to shove us in one of the cells and do god knows what to us. Luckily he didn’t.

I thought we were going to end up like him!

Before we left, we got a really good view of the city from one of the viewing areas. 

Then we headed over to Al-Ahzar Park. It has a super interesting history. Years ago the spot where the park is, was a huge trash heap. Everyone threw their trash there and it eventually built up into a massive hill. Then someone got the bright idea to repurpose the trash heap. Over time they turned it into a beautiful park. There is a fee to enter, which goes to the upkeep. Inside there are green, grassy fields, playgrounds, a few ponds, trails to bike or walk on and a restaurant. We ate at a little café with beautiful views of the city, then went for a little bit of a wander. A park dude in a golf cart picked us up and gave us a tour of the park as well. 

Pyramids of Dashur

After a seriously looooooooong time Kelly came out of the building. I (miraculously) was still alive and unharmed, no thanks to my embassy friend. We hopped back in our taxi and rode across town to the Dashur pyramids.

See the airhose?

 The pyramids of Dashur are a group of three pyramids clustered in roughly the same area. There is the red pyramid, the black pyramid and the bent pyramid. The bent pyramid is the oldest and is bent because they realized while halfway through building it that the incline of the sides were too steep and that it wouldn’t be stable. So instead of scrapping the whole project, they just changed the angle of the pyramid halfway up. The red pyramid is called red because of the reddish color of its blocks (didn’t used to be that way. Originally it had limestone on the outside but that was taken off and used for housing materials a while back) This is also the largest pyramid in Dashur and the only one you can go in. The third pyramid is the black pyramid. It’s called that because it was made with mud and clay instead of traditional stone. It always had issues but once the limestone was gone its disintegration accelerated. It now kinda looks like a falling apart hill. The funny thing is that this is the youngest of the pyramids of Dashur. Shows what happens when you cut corners.

Corbelled Ceiling 

Red Pyramid

We visited the red pyramid first. It is BIG. It’s actually the third largest pyramid there is, after two from Giza. We climbed up the steps outside the pyramid (not original). It’s fairly perilous; very steep. We then entered the pyramid. The corridor is extremely tiny.  I was bent in half the whole way down. The stairs are also incredibly steep (Thank god there’s a handrail). They have to pump air inside to make it breathable; but still it’s incredibly muggy/humid and the air feels thick and smells awful. Inside there were two chambers separated by a low hallway. Then we climbed up a wooden scaffold to a smaller chamber. There might have been other rooms inside, but that was all we could see. It was empty, naturally, and the most interesting part for me was the ceiling. In order to keep up the structural integrity, the roof had to be corbelled (I remember all this from my ancient art history classes) 

                                        

On our way out, we stopped at the entrance (which is pretty high off the ground)  and we could see the pyramids of Saqqara in the distance. (We didn’t end up going there, unfortunately) Next we walked over to the Bent Pyramid where we had the most fun taking pictures. In the distance we could see the Black Pyramid but couldn’t get any closer because that is a militarized zone.

Black Pyramid

On our way home we stopped and bought some dates and veggies from a guy on the side of the road. Delicious. 

Embassy Issues

After we got back to Cairo, one of the excursions high on my list was to go visit the pyramids of Dashur. But first, Kelly had to go to her US embassy appointment.

Kelly Pierce may tell this story a bit differently than I do, but believe me, my story is the right one. So the US embassy is about two blocks from Tehrir Square (It was all in an upset that day as well) Half the roads are blocked off because of the raging protests so our cabbie drops us a few blocks from the embassy and tells us how to get there. We walk, and walk past some shops and past the riot police, with guns, hiding behind rolling metal shields. You know, no biggie. So we get to the embassy and the guy outside looks at us and this conversation commences:

Embassy guy: You have an appointment?

Kelly: Yes! Here’s my paper.

Embassy guy: Ok, you can go on in.

Kelly: Can my friend come inside and wait for me? She’s an American citizen.

Embassy guy: no

Me: I have my passport. I can show you.

Embassy guy: no

Kelly and I then convene about my safety if I waited outside for her. I reassured her, though I was pretty unconvinced myself.

Kelly: Ok, I’m going to go in. (To the embassy guy) But you HAVE to watch out for my friend.

Embassy guy: Don’t worry! I will watch out for her and keep her safe. No problem.

Kelly enters the building. Embassy guy looks at me with dead eyes.

Embassy guy: You have to wait across the street.

Me: Um, what?

So I trucked my sorry butt across the street, sat on the curb and glared for a bit. It was cold and my butt went numb. I amused myself by counting the number of trucks that went by filled with military men and ak-47’s. End number: lots. 

Camels and Sand

One of our last days in Dahab I really wanted to go on a camel ride. (I mean, we were in camel country) So we picked a day trip involving a camel ride, a hike through White Canyon, lunch at a Bedouin village and then a camel ride to the pick-up point.

I was super psyched about the camel ride, although KP was not. She chose to walk. (A decision she later regretted as her feet sunk in the sand and made hiking twice as hard.) I loooved riding the camel. The camel lies down and you kinda have to hop on. (My jeans were in the process of ripping a whole in the crotch so climbing on and off the camel was especially perilous) Then to stand up, the camel unfolds its back legs first and then the front legs. So you do a kinda slow motion bucking bronco move. I almost fell off one time. As we started our hike through the desert the guide held onto the reins of the camel. Later he let me do the steering. Not really the brightest idea because I had no clue where we were going and the camel was a bit confused.

Rode the camel for maybe 45 minutes before hopping off and drinking some Bedouin tea at a little Bedouin hut. It’s basically some sticks in the sand with big palm looking leaves on top to create shade and then carpets spread over the sand. It was actually quite nice. Then we had to climb down the side of a cliff (I kid you not; it was a 25 foot vertical drop. But there was rope! Safety first.) Also I was trying to climb down it one handed. KP was being very amusing and I wanted pictures.

So then we trek through this massive canyon that literally appears out of nowhere in the middle of the desert. It’s called the White Canyon because some walls are entirely made of white sand. Very pretty. We hiked for an hour and a half or two hours through sand canyons and then climbed to the top and looked out over the rest of the canyon before heading towards an oasis next to a Bedouin village.

We got there and settled down into a sturdier Bedouin hut. Same carpets but this one had a decent roof. One of the Bedouin ladies and her kids cooked us an amazing lunch.

I then hopped back on my trusty camel for the last bit. At one point we literally scaled yet another cliff face; this time going up. Really hard; we got off the camels because they were not too happy about it either. Then we saw some rock. The guides seemed to think it was really important. Something about it being old and having early Christian graffiti on it. I couldn’t see anything old through all the modern graffiti. (It’s great that DH loves MB but I don’t particularly care) I rode the camel for only a bit more back to the road before being picked up by the shuttle back to Dahab. And thus ended our last Dahab adventure. 

Relax Time in Dahab

We only had a little bit of time left in Dahab before heading back to Sharm and then Cairo. We spent most of that time strolling the boardwalk and eating delicious food (while fighting off over friendly, conniving cats), smoking shisha and lounging on restaurant cushions. This was also when Kelly went through her white food phase. Something had upset her stomach so, for days, all she ate was white stuff in an attempt to soothe her digestive system. That ended up being yougurt, pita, and hummus. I on the other hand was scarfing down calamari soups, pita bread sandwiches, tuna pizzas, ect. The food was good. I also especially loved the bedouin tea. Suuuuper tasty. 

Climbing Mt. Sinai

We absolutely loved Dahab. The hostel we stayed at (Dahab Dorms in The Red Sea Relax Resort; highly recommended)  was cheap and really nice and right on the boardwalk. Dahab didn’t really have any beach but it did have beautiful Oceanside restaurants. At most of these you ate sitting on low benches or cushions on the floor. I loved the atmosphere of Dahab. It was great.

One of the things that Kelly was really excited about was climbing Mt. Sinai. Our hostel was able to book us an excursion there and even packed us a pretty good breakfast. We hopped on the bus to the foot of the mountain at roughly 11pm and then met a semi-drunk Asian guy who was travelling around the world. (If I remember correctly, he had recently biked all the way through Spain or something) We slept for most of the ride until we reached the foot of the mountain around 1 or 2 in the morning.

At that point we hauled ourselves out of the warm van and into the frigid mountain air. The mountain was made entirely of rock; there was very little vegetation. This made it pretty difficult to hike up the mountain in the dark, on shifty rock shards. Especially cause we had to get out of the way of the lazy tourists who were riding camels up.

The hike took a few hours and for the most part wasn’t too bad. We were tired and my asthma was acting up, but it wasn’t until the very end that things got ugly. The last bit involves incredibly steep side of mountain stairs. (I literally had to stop a few times to catch my breath; it was very intense) Then once you survived that the very top was windblown and literally freezing. We still had two hours before sunrise so we rented some overpriced camel blankets (some had questionable stains but we were too cold to care) We settled down against the side wall sitting on one of the blankets and then pilling about three on top of us. KP got the crap seat; the wind was blowing straight at her. I sat down next to her and, luckily for me, the Asian guy sat down on the other side of me, creating a semi-not-freezing sandwich. We hung out in cold-half-asleep-comas and ate some of our box breakfasts.

  The sunrise when it finally came, was amazing. It was still utterly frigid, and I kinda didn’t want to get out from under the slightly smelly camel blankets and take pictures, but it was beautiful. I hardly remember climbing back down the mountain, but we did it somehow. 

   

To Dahab!

The next day we took a cab from Sharm to Dahab. Funny story about the cab; he was a dick. So we pay him the agreed upon price as we get in the cab because ‘he needed’ gas’; it was somewhat expensive because we were taking a private cab. So we get 20 minutes down the road and the cab driver pulls over to the side of the road saying that his engine was overheating. We hang out for a bit and then he starts up again. Almost immediately he pulls back over, saying that his engine wasn’t going to make it. He then tells us his friend is coming this way and that he would just take us the rest of the way. He then proceeds to flash his lights at every single car that goes by. Kelly and I totally called him out on it and then he got grumpy. He manages to flash down a minibus that stopped. So our cabbie skips across the road and then tells us the minibus will take us the rest of the way and not to pay the minibus driver because he already gave him the money. Dude totally paid the minibus driver a quarter of what we originally paid him and then pocketed the rest.

The minibus was pretty much empty and the driver was an Arabian dude who seemed pretty friendly. I was utterly terrified that he was going to drive us off into the sandy hills and then we’d be ransomed or killed. I could see the headlines: (In an ominous voice) Two American teachers on vacation in the Sinai Peninsula get in a cab to Dahab. They are never seen alive again. DUN DUN DUNNNN. But the minibus driver had pictures of his two year old daughter on his dash which made me feel a little bit better and he was a genuinely nice guy. We actually ended up calling him and taking his minibus on the way back to Sharm a few days later.

Sharm al Shiekh

While hanging out with Ryan a few days before, he mentioned that it might be fun to go to Sharm al Shiekh or Dahab, cities on the Sinai Peninsula, for a bit. We looked up flights and found then super inexpensive. So the next day we hopped on a plane to the Sinai Peninsula. After arriving in Sharm we settled into our hotel (It had a few issues, but was under new management and trying to improve.) before heading out on the town.

Sharm is very Vegas like. There is a strip filled with all of the major hotel chains, lots of neon lights and obnoxious people. There were actually not a lot of people at all in Sharm. It was super low season and I don’t think many people were travelling to Egypt because of the whole riots thing.

We ate light dinner at one of the hotel chains and then wandered into their downstairs bar which was deserted. These two very blond Eastern European (and possibly high) women come bouncing in. They were some kind of children’s dance program from the hotel and it was apparently children’s dance time in the bar. (At 9 o'clock a night?) They came over to us, pretended to steal my watch before corralling their children on the dance floor.

After that experience, we decided to go for a walk down the boardwalk. It was fairly deserted and a bit lonely at points.  We wandered down it for a while. We stopped for a bit to watch a whirling dervish show at a restaurant. We also got stopped by some random creeper dude who wanted to chat. We told him we were from Genovia. We export a lot of pears and are a Baltic country. (Made all that up; it’s a Princess Diaries reference) We walked a bit; got hassled some, had a drink at Hard Rock Café and then took a cab back to our hotel.