Egypt This was our very first "tour" and we used OAT - Overseas Adventure Travel. Travelers - Just me and my mom because we were the only members of the family who have always wanted to travel to Egypt, always wanted to stand at the pyramids, always wanted to travel up the Nile. We were not disappointed.
You can walk from the great pyramids down to the Sphinx but we took the bus around the other way, through traffic and into a circle lined with tourists shops including KFC, all facing the entrance to the Sphinx. Tourism indeed. When you stand at the Sphinx and look up towards the pyramids, more important – as you take your photographs of the Sphinx, angle to get the pyramids in the back ground. It’s easy to block out the chaos behind you and visualize this as alone in the desert. In fact, bare desert stretches out behind all these monuments – seemingly forever.
At the base of the sphinx are more buildings, everything is a complex rather than the one single star monument that we think when we see photos, So we marched through what remained of Khafre’s mortuary temple. Dad - Khufu may have built the largest monument of 4,000 years (beat when the Eiffel tower was built) but the kid had more stuff. The floor of the Valley temple was alabaster, worn and dirty from 4,000 years of footsteps and sand, but still apparent, still itself. Red granite pillars open to the sky. these Pharaoh knew how to impress. Maybe if Bush sat in an impressive Valley Temple with alabaster floors, he’d be more impressive. Naw.
After the dam we traveled to Philae Temple - Greek/Roman but in the Egyptian style, or it began as an Egyptian temple to Isis and then restored and enhanced by those Greeks, who, thank the gods, respected everything Egyptian and restored or copied the best. Although the most incongruous thing I saw in the Egyptian museum was a Ramses-like statue with the very Greek head of Alexander the Great perched on top – too small for the monumental body of the pharaoh, but the Pharaoh none-the-less.
Philae Temple is another rescued temple from the rising lake under the Old Dam. It was replaced on an island, just as the original was built on an island, following the curve of the land so the temple is not built on a straight axis. We took ferries out to the island and I have pictures because Philae is lovely, and one of the first of the long series of temples we will explore in the new few days. The best part of the Temple of Isis is there were no lines for the women’s rest room – that’s just proves the Goddess’s benevolence to women. We did have to tip.
The Nile is flat and calm. The boat doesn’t even move, or sway or bob around in any manner at all. It doesn’t even feel as if we’re moving. So the only way to know is to watch the landscape on either bank move past the deck.
The wind is so hot and so persistent on the upper deck that I could feel my eyeballs drying out. We have two decks on board, lower and upper. For this afternoon, the book readers all congregated on the top deck (there is a pool as well, but the water is too chilly, no one went in). We all moved chairs around to be comfortable, shaded and have a view. Six people just sitting together reading our books. I think that is lovely. What a nice group, a group who reads.
So we cruised and I watched this marvelous coast line slip languorously by. Languid. The warmth and breeze the feeling that you should just be sitting and watching the coast peddle by – is one of the best words I can think of for this marvelous feeling of slow movement. We don’t tolerate slow movement any more in our lives, so this was a treat and definitely a throw back to another time. This is really the best place on earth, and if I were Egyptian, I wouldn’t leave here either.
Egypt
After the dam we traveled to Philae Temple - Greek/Roman but in the Egyptian style, or it began as an Egyptian temple to Isis and then restored and enhanced by those Greeks, who, thank the gods, respected everything Egyptian and restored or copied the best. Although the most incongruous thing I saw in the Egyptian museum was a Ramses-like statue with the very Greek head of Alexander the Great perched on top – too small for the monumental body of the pharaoh, but the Pharaoh none-the-less.
The Nile is flat and calm. The boat doesn’t even move, or sway or bob around in any manner at all. It doesn’t even feel as if we’re moving. So the only way to know is to watch the landscape on either bank move past the deck.