February 28, 2023

Hello!

First, some programming notes.  Blogger is being difficult and won’t show me all the pictures all the time.  That’s why there are duplicate photos at the bottom.  I’ve given up on trying to make the margins the same.  But, we will persevere.

We had another nice breakfast at Rawi this morning.  There is so much food available that it’s difficult to choose just a few things.  But I’m not complaining!

We were on the bus at 9am to go to the Citadel and the Egyptian Museum.  Our bus is very nice and big.  I haven’t mentioned the traffic much.  I’ve been trying to think of appropriate descriptive words but all I can say is that the traffic is utter chaos and crazy.  We’ve been in crazy traffic in other countries, but Egypt takes the cake.  Below is one small snapshot of the view from our bus windows.  The noise, the people crossing in front of traffic, the horns honking, the motorcycles with up to three people riding on them, the 3-4 vehicles abreast in a space for two lanes just makes me shake my head and laugh. Most cars have scraped up fenders and doors.  Gee, I wonder why?  There are over twenty two million people in Cairo and I suspect that they are all on the roads, in some form or another, at the same time.  

Anyway, we went to the Citadel where the alabaster mosque is.  We fought our way in, through the X-ray line and machine, then our guide Salah asked Bob to help out while he looked for the lost people of our group.  There is just so many people!  Bob, bless his heart, stepped up to handle the arduous task of holding the “lollipop”.  

We went into the courtyard of the mosque and Salah explained that the Citadel was built between 1176-1183.  In 1830 - 1848 Mohamed Ali commissioned the Alabaster Mosque to be built in the Citadel.  The mosque has the capacity to hold 10,000 people.  Mohamed Ali was a prophet in the Sunni Muslim religion.

Here is a picture of the inside of the Mosque.  

After we finished at the Citadel we climbed aboard the bus and we went to the Egyptian Museum.  Again, we fought the crowds, going through X-Ray, getting a ticket and fighting more crowds to get our ticket torn in a corner and to be let into the museum.

To say that the museum was crowded is an understatement.  However, there are so many amazing relics that it takes your breath away.  Some of the pictures below are of artifacts from 4500 years ago.  4500 years ago!  We saw so many amazing artifacts, that are in really good condition.  It’s because they were buried inside various Pharaohs tombs and Pyramids that were covered in sand for centuries.   It is really awe inspiring to think about standing there in 2023 and seeing the artifacts of people from so long ago.  Makes our problems and issues rather small in comparison of centuries of people and their lives.  

 

This is Alexander the Great and Cleopatra.

This is Tutankhamun’s throne. It is magnificent with all the work on it.  The foot pedestal has the 9 enemies of Egypt at the time. 

Being able to see all these sights today was sobering.  Can you imagine the work, the expense and the community it took to create these?  

Our eyes are burning and our throats are scratchy due to the “fog”.  When we were in China they called it “Mongolian dust.”  Here they call it “fog”.  When I was a kid in Southern California we called it smog!  If you mention the word smog in China or Egypt you are corrected and told it is what we now call “Mongolian dust fog.”  

We have a long day tomorrow going to two major pyramids Sakkara and the Sphinx.  We may not be up to blogging, but we will be back. So stay tuned.  

We are having so much fun!  

Bc and Gc 

February 25 - 27, 2023

Hello!  

We are in Cairo!  Rather jet lagged but we are doing really well.  Our time with our New Jersey family was so nice.  We love being at Mike’s  home with all the good times.  Lisa and Frankie came over Friday and brought us lunch and spent the rest of the day with us.  It’s such fun to spend time with everyone.  

After Friday taco night we took pictures so you can see our lovely family.  Bob with Lisa and Mike.  Mike made us a fabulous dinner!  

 

Sydney and Samantha have grown into lovely young women.  We loved chatting with them when they came home from school.  Both girls are so talented, smart and beautiful!  

Lisa and her new love, Frankie!

Mike took us to the local pick up point for our shuttle to JFK from Marlton.  Our buddy Abdul Parnelli got us to JFK in record time.  We’ve taken this shuttle before and it’s always an E coupon ride.  We even get bumps that lift us out of our seats while speeding up the New Jersey turnpike.  We had a wonderful flight from JFK to Frankfurt.  The business class seats were a dream and the food excellent.  We waited around in the airline business class lounge from 6 am to 1 pm, then literally carried all our bags up and down stairs and onto busses to our next flight to Cairo.  We both slept on and off and missed the meal, but I think that was a good decision.  Business class across the Atlantic is very different than business class across Europe. When we got to our hotel I thought it was Saturday evening.  Nope.  Sunday evening.  Our journey began in Marlton at 8:50 am Saturday and ended at 9:30 pm Sunday night.  

After deplaning we found Isaac who Bob had had hired to assist us through customs and get us to our hotel.  Talk about money well spent!  Isaac moved us along bypassing lines and got us checked in with new stamps in our passports.  He then took us outside where we waited for our driver.  Mr. Driver didn’t speak very much English, but that was fine. Whenever we have landed after a long airline trip, especially at night, it’s always rather surreal.  It’s dark, strange looking roads, people racing around honking, it’s crazy.  Last night was no different.  Mr. Driver got lost a couple of times and even pulled up into what we later learned was a mosque and kept honking to get someone to come out and let us in.  The guard came out and told him that the Sheraton was down the street. When he found the hotel he pulled up and two guards, one with a dog sniffer came and checked out our vehicle before we could get into the hotel area.  

Here is a photo from last night.  We were so tired and jet lagged we didn’t know if we were swimming or winding our watch.  So we headed to a restaurant that was quiet, ordered caprese and smoked salmon with a bottle of Egyptian Syrah. It was delicious!  I know what you are thinking.  You flew all the way to Cairo to eat Italian?  Yup.  We were beyond investigating new foods.  By the way, that’s the Nile River in the background. 

Here is a photo from our balcony this morning.  Sunrise over the Nile.  

We will take it easy today, naps, and resting and tomorrow the tour begins!  

Love to all,  Bc and Gc.   

February 23, 2023

Hello!

On Tuesday February 21st we left Cairn Carroll for our Egypt trip!  After years of planning (thanks covid!) we are on our way. Yes, we are going for three weeks and packing only carry on.  Wish us luck!

Our neighbor Patty was our taxi driver and we took our first of many flights from Pasco to Seattle.  It was a very blustery day in the Tri Cities.  

When we landed it was sunny and cloudy, typical February weather for Seattle.  

As we landed Bob got a text from Alaska airlines letting us know that our flight to Philadelphia tomorrow was canceled due to snow.  After we stood in line for 30 minutes Sadar helped us get rebooked on another flight.  There was a lot of back and forth trying to decide what to do.  There was only one viable option.  Take the 6am flight tomorrow to Chicago, because who doesn’t want to go to Chicago, and then fly from Chicago to Philadelphia.  So, we lost our first class seats on a direct flight for an earlier flight where we got seats in the back of the plane and then two middle seats.  I kept asking Sadar, why was our flight canceled for snow but this earlier flight was going to go with no issues due to snow.  Sadar explained to me “I’m not trained on that issue.”  Ahhh...

So, we checked into our hotel, and walked over to our favorite Sea-Tac haunt, the 13 Coins to drown our sorrows in scotch and red wine.  Add in a yummy bucket of clams and you’ve got a band aid for a less than optimum situation. We set our alarm for 3am through neither of us ended up needing it.  We were at TSA pre check before it opened and on our way.  Here’s a shot of the train sign on the ride to the north terminal. 4:42am.  Those of you that know us, especially me, early mornings are not my cup of tea.  

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The flights were, well at least we got to Philadelphia and our son Mike picked us up.  We are stying with Mike and Jenn and our delightful granddaughters until we get a shuttle to JFK on Saturday.

  We did take an adventure today to buy new shoes.  My new shoes were not fitting and I will leave them with Jenn and the girls.  Bob and I called Uber, got a ride to DSW shoes and viola! I have new shoes that don’t hurt my feet.  It’s the simple things in life.  We walked back to Mike’s house meandering through Walgreens to look for wine for dinner tonight.  Walgreens is the first place we usually go to buy wine after all.  Anyway, we learned that New Jersey Walgreens doesn’t sell wine.  

We are excited for our time together on this trip.  Thank you for checking in on us.  We will continue to try to post but we’ll see how blogger likes Egypt internet.

Love, Bc and GC  

 

 February 17, 2022

Guess where we are going?  

EGYPT!  Yup, we are headed out on another adventure on Tuesday, February 21st.  We are so glad to be traveling again.  

It's been awhile since we did a search for the Big Ball of Yarn (BBOY).  We figured that we should do our civic duty and see if the BBOY is hidden in Egypt and Rome.  You just never know.  After all, the pyramids are fairly large and have many things hidden inside them.  😉

If you are joining us for the first time you might want to check out our previous trips.  You can find them on the left side of the blog page.  The tricky part is that the blog posts a new post at the top of the page.  You can go to the date listings and find the "bottom", or first posted date, to follow along chronologically.  We will do our best to post once a day.  Because of internet capabilities, technologies, time changes, and how tired we are, that might not always happen.  

We will be doing a lot of flying, and other forms of transportation.  If you will send good thoughts out into the travel universe for perfect or at least mostly on time travel for us, we would appreciate it!  

See you later!

BC and GC