Egyptians sure like their shiney

(clothes that is...they bedazzle everything!)

Hi Everyone! Well, we made it back to Cairo after traveling through Egypt for the past 2 weeks. We have seen and done so freakin' much I'm not sure where to begin, so just bear with me a bit.
Let's see...We started our tour by visiting the Egyptian Museum. This place is filled with artifacts from all the dynasties of ancient Egypt. Highlights were King Tut's treasure room and the mummified animals room. It was really hot inside the museum (I was surprised there was no ac, but I guess they haven't done much to renovate since they opened it in like 1900), and crowded. There were so many tour groups and so many languages, it was crazy.
After the museum we drove across the Nile to Giza to visit the pyramids. It's as impressive as you think it is. And hot. (OK, we'll just say that all of Egypt is hot). We saw the Sphinx. I was actually surprised by how small it is. I expected it to be huge, but it was considerably smaller than the pyramids.
That night we took a night train for like 14 hours south to Aswan. That was fun. It was like being in a movie. The waiters in the bar car were belly dancing. They were kind of creepy.
Aswan was beautiful. We rode camels into the desert at sunset. We had dinner on Elephantine Island at a Nubian family's home. And we drove in a police convoy 3 hours to the temples at Abu Sembel. There are 2 huge temples here for Ramses II and his wife Nefetari. In the1960s they embarked on a huge project to move these temples to prevent them from sinking into the lake that was created when they built the High Dam. Ramses II was a narcissistic bastard and after declaring himself a god, he built all these temples for himself. He did love his main wife though, so he built her a temple, too (even though he put 4 statues of himself at the front, and 2 of her). Anyway, the temples are really impressive and the hieroglyphics are really well preserved. You could still see the original paint inside!
After Aswan, we spent 2 glorious days just floating up the Nile on a traditional sailing boat called a felucca. This was definitely the highlight of our trip. We just lounged around all day as the felucca zigged and zagged it's way along the river. We swam in the Nile (it's much bluer and cleaner than you would imagine). And we had a support boat that looked kind of like steam ferry from the Mississippi River where we ate our meals and went to the bathroom and showered and stuff. On one of the days, we stopped at a sandy part of the shore and jumped off the top deck of the support boat into the river. That was the most fun! We spent our nights on the felucca dancing with the crew and Michael bought a drum, so he played with them.
The feluccas took us to Luxor where there are more monuments and artifacts and temples than anywhere else. We rode donkeys to the Valley of the Kings where we visited tombs of 3 different pharaohs. And then we went to the temple of Queen Hetshepsuit. She was the only queen to declare herself a pharaoh, but after she died her successor tried to erase all evidence of her. But her temple survived and it's huge (3stories)! We also visited Karnak temple which is the largest temple complex in all of Egypt. There were these columns there that could hold 400 people standing on the top (just to give you an idea of it's size). When I eventually get our pictures uploaded you'll see what I mean. UNESCO has given like billions of dollars to Luxor to uncover all the monuments that are buried under the city. Right now they are in the process of removing all these buildings from one of the main streets to uncover a lane that is lined with hundreds of sphinxes. The sphinxes lead from Luxor temple on the Nile to Karnak temple.
After Luxor we took another night train up to Alexandria. We weren't too impressed with this city. We spent one day visiting all the monuments: the library (ancient Alexandria was a huge education center and the library held some of the most important books of all time, before it was destroyed... twice, now it's just a really big modern library... I guess more like a symbol of what it used to be). Inside the library they had a couple small museums. There was one museum dedicated to a movie about ancient Egypt that never got made. I thought that was funny. Like why is there a museum for something that didn't happen? Anyway, we visited the Roman catacombs (disappointing since they are now empty), we visited the Pillar of Pompey which is just this really tall pillar that is the only remnant of an ancient temple. And we visited a Roman theater. After visiting Luxor, all these monuments seemed a little less impressive. We spent the afternoon in Alexandria on the beach of the Mediterranean. Not as nice as it sounds. Alexandria (well all of Egypt) is really really dirty. Oh, and it's like 85% Muslim. So you can't just go to a public beach in your bikini (well unless you want to get groped). There's only one beach in the whole city where it's OK and safe to wear a normal bathing suit and that's at a private beach called the Greek Club. It's only like $5 to go in. But the beach was crap. It was a beach in the middle of a marina. There was trash everywhere and the water was disgusting. We had fun though, just hanging out, drinking wine, playing cards.
We left Alexandria at night to drive to Mt. Sinai. That was my birthday! We stopped in the middle of the desert to celebrate in the morning. Our tour guide had a cake for me and a birthday hat. It was awesome. When we arrived at Mt. Sinai we first took a tour of St.Katherine's monastery where they have Moses's well and the burning bush (I don't really get that that's the original burning bush) and St. Katherine's finger (OK gross). There were a ton of Christian pilgrims here.
And then we climbed Mt. Sinai! It took about 2 1/2 hours to climb to the top, but we got there in time for sunset, and it was just awesome (this was another top day on the tour...and not just because it was my birthday). We had to climb down in the dark which was a bit of a challenge, in fact one of the girls we were with tripped and cut up her leg pretty badly. We spent the night at the hotel owned by the monastery. It was stark. But we drank a lot of wine to celebrate my birthday. Everyone in our tour was great. It was definitely one of the best birthdays ever!
After Mt. Sinai, we went to the Red Sea to stay at a resort in Dahab.The resort was pretty, but everything seemed really half-assed. We went snorkeling the first day, and the reef was just off the shore. The water was so blue and the fish were plentiful and colorful. Dahab itself reminded me a bit of Elat in Israel. Very touristy with a board walk and shops and all.
Our last day on our tour we rode ATVs into the desert and on the beach and visited a Bedoin village. We got incredibly dusty, but it was fun. After that, one of the women in our tour, Laura, treated me to a massage at our hotel as a birthday gift. Best massage ever! They made me get totally naked and started it off by sitting me in a sauna for a few minutes. Then the woman had me lie down while she soaped me up and scrubbed me down. Then she hosed me off with cold water and put me in a cold jacuzzi with hot tea to sip for a few minutes. Then she brought me into the room for my massage. She climbed onto the table and yanked and pulled and cracked all my limbs. It was wonderful! I spent the rest of that day just sleeping on the beach. Michael went snorkeling again and then he played beach volleyball (haha have you ever seen him play volleyball?) and then he went down the water slides in our hotel's pool (we stayed at a resort!). Gosh it was so much fun!
Our experiences in Egypt as a whole have been good and bad. We have seen some really incredible things and made some really good friends on our tour, but the culture here has made some things pretty rough. You really can't trust anyone. EVERYONE is trying to rip you off, even the freakin' children. It's really dirty here. They still use donkeys and camels for work which is really cool, but they are horrible to them, beating and whipping and starving them (Michael has to constantly fight the urge to punch these guys in the face everytime he sees one of them hitting a camel). And they're really sexually repressed. I've been groped a couple times by random dudes. Not cool. And there's like nothing for us to eat. It was Ramadon for the first 10 days we were here, so you couldn't really find anything to eat during the day, unless it was geared to specifically tourists (ie.really overpriced). And past that, they really don't have much vegetarian food. All we have eaten is spaghetti (sometimes with tomato sauce), bread, french fries, bread, bababnough, bread, tahini, bread, falafels, and oh yeah, bread. Literally. We are scared to eat any raw fruits or veggies, and they don't really have too much in the way of cooked vegetables. We have been drinking a lot of Turkish coffee though. That's really good. And cold hibiscus tea. And we spend most nights in coffee shops smoking sheesha. Overall we are happy. But I don't think we ever need to come back to Egypt.
Tomorrow we take a bus for 4 hours out to Bahayira which is an oasis in the western desert. We'll take a 2 day safari into the Black and White deserts. I'm really excited for that. Then we'll come back to Cairo again for a couple of days before flying off to Nepal! Oh boy this trip is going fast! Anyway, thank you, everyone who sent me birthday wishes (and it's OK if you didn't b/c I'm sure most of you didn't even know it was my birthday...I'm 26 now...holy cow!) OK, Salaam! (That's like the only Arabic word I've managed to learn, other than Baksheesh which means "tip". Oh, and emshy which means "go away". Very useful)

Mummy Love,
Lauren and Michael

PS Stay tuned for more pics being uploaded soon at www.flickr.com/photos/chasetherisingsun

*I just need to amend this. Since writing this entry last week we have discovered a wonderful traditional Egyptian dish called koshary that is completely vegan! It's a dish the Coptic Christians eat when fasting (they don't eat any animal products for one month), and it was created to contain all the nutrients you need. It's a bowl of noodles, rice, macaroni, grilled onions, lentils and chick peas all covered in a tomato, garlic sauce. It's so good! We found a place around the corner from our hostel. It's 3 stories big and all they serve is koshary. It's called The Koshary. It's always busy. When you go in and sit down you just say if you want big or small and then a minute later you're eating. There's no menu since that's all they serve. So awesome.