A few weeks ago I spent a weekend in Luxor with a friend of mine. It was a nice diversion from classes at AUC and very much welcomed. We took the cheapest option for getting to Luxor, an 11 hour train ride in second class. We left Cairo around 1 AM and arrived in Luxor around 11 AM the next morning and went right to our hostel to get cleaned up. The hostel we had booked online was the Bob Marley Hostel and the hilarious wall decorations made up for the functional but rather beat up facilities. After an hour or so of resting we walked to the Corniche and took a 1 LE ferry ride across the Nile to the Valley of the Kings. The taxi fare was a bit steep at 25 LE (including a return trip), but we didn’t know the way there yet so we accepted. The Valley of the Kings was 40 LE to enter but it was absolutely amazing and well worth it. The tickets allowed us to see three tombs (we spoke Arabic to one of the tomb guards and actually got to see a fourth one). We weren’t permitted to take pictures (my friend almost got ejected from the tombs for taking one surreptitiously) but I wish that we had been. The tombs were full of amazing colors and images that were on the most part well-preserved along with interesting sarcophagi and other fun things. After a couple of hours of enjoying the valley we headed back to the other side of the river and ate dinner at an over-priced, not particularly tasty (despite being recommended by our travel book) restaurant along the main drag. Finally, we headed back to our hostel for an early bedtime as we didn’t sleep too restfully on the train ride to Luxor.
Saturday morning we woke up early and breakfasted on the hostel’s complimentary breakfast – a better-than-average meal including tea, coffee, eggs, bread, yogurt, fruit and jam. Afterward we once again decided to cross the river, but this time we headed to the Valley of the Queens. Recalling the price and return trip of the taxi (the driver picked up 6 extra young male passengers without consulting us in the slightest and then demanded baksheesh and was incredibly rude overall) we decided to forgo the taxi and instead walk the few miles to the valley. Along the way we passed the Colossi of Memnon and stopped to take some pictures as well as an archaeological dig and some small villages. The Valley of the Queens was much cheaper than the Valley of the Kings only 20 LE, but the tombs weren’t as well-preserved and honestly at that point they were all beginning to blur together anyway. Considering that we were ridiculously overheated (or at least I was) from the walk there in the hot noon sun and a lack of water, we decided to head back to the river at a slower pace. Once we got back to our hostel we found a cheap (4 LE!) delicious shwarma place right across the street and enjoyed a relaxing lunch before getting ourselves cleaned up and rested. Later that evening we headed back to the Corniche to take a felucca ride. Our friendly (heavy sarcasm for reasons to be explained later) felucca driver recruited one of his friends to go along with him and the four of us headed off to Banana Island. The boys were roughly our age and very friendly and solicitous on the journey, offering us food and drinks during the 2+ hour boat ride. We stopped off for a short time on Banana Island and examined the banana plantation, before heading back down the river. Once we got back we paid the boys 50 LE for the ride and then agreed to go to a cafe with them for a short time. We all had a good time snacking and chatting so we agreed to meet them the next morning for a tour of their village. On the way back to our hostel we took some gorgeous night shots of the Luxor Temple to complement the ones we had already taken during the day time, because honestly the entrance fee was overpriced and the best photos to be taken of the compound are from the outside, not the inside where everything is too large to photograph properly.
The next morning we woke up a bit early and after breakfasting at the hostel again we headed down to the Corniche to find our fine felucca friends. They took us across the river and we went by walking (my friend) or donkey (myself) to their house. The slow trip allowed us to get a tour of the village in which they lived which, like most of Egypt, was in borderline poverty despite being so close to a great tourism revenue site. We spent a few hours at their house chatting and drinking tea before heading back to the mainland where our guides surprised us by demanding payment for both the donkey ride and the riverboat trips across the river. This would not have been such an unpleasant surprise if they hadn’t told us the day before that we would be doing these things for free as a sign of friendship. My friend and I were rightfully annoyed and told them that we had not expected to have to pay them for these things and thus were not going to. After a few more minutes of attempting to get payment out of us, they permitted us to leave the boat without further incident. Feeling a bit out of sorts, my friend and I went to a perfumery we had seen the other day and spent the next two hours suffering through some thinly veiled sexual harassment before paying a small sum for our lovely perfume and perfume bottles. We went back to the hostel and ate at the cheap shwarma restaurant and devoured some authentic gelato from a small shop run by two very handsome young men. The rest of the day was spent walking (and getting ridiculously lost on the way) to the Karnak Temple. The temple was quite delightful (except for several groups of young boys asking to take pictures of us) and I greatly enjoyed it. That night we returned to the hostel early so we would be able to get enough sleep to wake up early for our train ride back to Cairo in the morning, a train ride which I am delighted to say was entirely uneventful. Despite the teeming hordes of young (and old) men making passes at us as young un-hijabed women, Luxor was quite a delightful city and I would definitely recommend stopping there for a visit if you’re ever in Egypt.
A few weeks ago my friends and I decided to climb Mt. Sinai supposedly where Moses received the commandments from God. We left late from Cairo so we would be able to reach Mt. Sinai and climb before the sunrise which actually turned out to be perfectly planned. The trip took around 7 or 8 totals with stops and what-not which was somewhat uncomfortable considering we had more people than the bus could actually legitimately hold. The bus company had told us that the bus could hold 16 people but neglected to mention that this number included the driver and his navigator. So some people ended up sitting on the floor or on the luggage, but otherwise it was rather fun. When we got to the Mount Saint Catherine Protectorate it was still cold and dark outside. We payed a nominal fee (I think it was 10 LE or so) to enter the Protectorate and drove to a small encampment before the base of the mountains. We gathered our belongings and set out for a long climb to the top. The first part of the climb was a large path that slowly sloped in front of the mountain, twisting and turning back on itself. The path was dificult to navigate in the dark and was extremely rocky. Unfortunately, one girl turned her ankle early on and had to ride a camel to the top of the mountain. However, the second part was even more difficult. It was some half mile of stairs leaning at some points in a near 90 degree angle to the mountain. We made the entire trek in just under 2 and a half hours, in time to see the sun rise over the top of the mountains. It was quite simply stunning and amazing. The sunrise and feeling of excitement of being on top of the mountain and overlooking everything made the difficult climb worthwhile. My advice for anyone wishing to climb Mt. Sinai is that if they aren’t very physically fit, they work out for a few weeks before attempting the climb as my legs were ridiculously sore for the next several days.
This year I spent the first of my two weeks of Spring Break in Israel. We traveled from Eilat to Jerusalem and then to Ein Gedi and the Dead Sea before heading back to Cairo. The trip from Cairo to Taba wasn’t bad at all, only six hours or so and I remembered to pack plenty of snacks. So many in fact that I had breakfast and snacks for the next day in Israel. Once we entered into Eilat the fun part started though. I was with four other girls but, most likely because I look like I could be Egyptian, I was lucky enough to get my stuff searched at the border crossing into Eilat! The front page of my homework had the word “Islam” on it so of course I had to put up with some very silly questioning about why I would have that. The fact that I was coming from Egypt where I study at the American University in Cairo seems like a reasonable enough explanation but apparently not. After 10 minutes of questioning and them dumping out all of my luggage I was grudgingly allowed to leave. Of course, I had to repack everything without any help…glad my underwear was clean at least. After that we got our passports stamped and grabbed a taxi to the boardwalk where we ate at a rather popular restaurant named Aroma. At this point I have to mention that our trip during Spring Break happened to coincide with Passover, Western Easter and Eastern Palm Sunday. I had stayed overnight at a friend’s place in Cairo so I could catch the early morning bus and gotten the chance to participate in my first Seder. Now, there was a certain poignancy to be celebrating the exodus of the Jewish people out of Egypt while in Cairo waiting to go to Israel. Though that could also have just been the wine after four months of being dry. Oh my, how expensive alcohol is here! Anyway, the point of this side trip down random memory lane is that all the bread in Israel was unleavened throughout our stay. Except for the delicious fig bread I managed to find each morning (but that’s a different story). I’ll have to leave this update here as I’m about to lose my internet access again, but tomorrow’s post should continue the story.
Last month we went to Hurgada, a pleasing resort-style town on the Red Sea. The bus ride from Cairo took several hours and was somewhat uncomfortable, but not horribly so. We spent a few hours looking for a decently priced hotel and found one for about 50 LE each for the night. The rest of the day we spent hanging out at the beach and exploring the city; we went shopping for cute dresses to wear that night for the club and I ran into a goat and the afternoon prayer. I felt a bit uncomfortable walking in front of all these men praying in my skimpy beach attire, but since they were lining all the streets it was impossible to walk around them. We went back to our hotel for a little bit of a nap followed by happy hour before heading out on the town. We were a bit too early to go to the club as of yet so we grabbed dinner and then smoked sheesha and drank tea at a ridiculously overpriced place downtown, clearly catering to the foreigner population. Afterward my friend and I went to the local Hard Rock Cafe since she knew someone who could get us in and ladies drank free until 2 AM or so. Everyone else went to see DJ Feedo at Buddha where we joined them a few hours later. The Hard Rock was fun and, as well as supplying females with free drinks, they played mostly American songs that I recognized and could dance to. On the other hand, the crowd was mostly Americans and Europeans with very few, if any, Egyptians. The crowd at Buddha was less enthusiastic, possibly because of the late hour, and sadly we missed the R&B stuff by DJ Feedo. We eventually left the club in the early morning hours and wandered around looking for breakfast before going back to our hotel to sleep and get cleaned up before the bus back to Cairo. Overall, Hurgada seemed like a nice place to spend a weekend on the beach, but I’ve heard that Dahab is even better.
