March 2, 2023

We thought yesterday was busy!  Today was wonderful and exhausting.  

We were up at 4am to put our luggage out, eat breakfast and get on the bus to go to the airport in Cairo for our flight to Luxor.  It really doesn’t matter what airport you go to, the chaos of processing 68 people through gathering the luggage, transporting it and the people through various forms of security, checking the luggage and then loading the plane is crazy time.  But we succeeded.  It’s noisy, confusing and not fun.    The Viking tour chartered a plane from a petroleum company so we were not involved with the local travelers.  Our flight was just one hour.  

Here’s a shot leaving Cairo.  Cairo is a city that isn’t probably one of our favorites.  We never felt safe enough to venture out of our hotel.  The city is very dirty.  Trash everywhere, the canal is filled with refuse, the buildings are torn apart, dogs and cats roam looking for food and the noise of so many people is unnerving.  

Here is the view of Luxor as we landed.  Luxor is very green as it is on along the Nile.  There are less people, but there is still the refuse, broken down homes and animals roaming.  

We drove to the Karnak Temple.  It is a beautiful and overwhelming place.  The Karnak temple is the largest religious building ever built.  It was built over 1300 years beginning in the 16th century BC.  It is huge and amazing to walk through. 

We boarded our boat MS Antares in time for lunch at 1:00pm.  We have a lovely suite, with a sitting area and plenty of room to stretch out.  One wall is windows so we can watch the scenery as we travel.  We were so tired, but still had safety exercises to do, as well as unpacking.  I laid down and fell asleep for about an hour.  Bob woke me up so we could go on our next tour to the Luxor Temple.  I will admit I was a bit cranky, and even considered not going to the Luxor Temple at 5:30 pm.  I’m so glad we went.  Again, an amazing walk through time.  The Luxor Temple was built circa 1400 BC by Amenhotep III and Ramses II.  It was a beautiful sight at night.  

We came back to the ship and by the time we got into bed it was 10:30 pm.  That was a long day!  

You know when you travel, all sorts of things happen.   Both good and bad.  Mostly good of course.  The cruise people have loaned each of us a “whisperer”. I love it and hate it!  You wear a lanyard with the box attached to ear buds.  This way we can hear our guide easily around all the other people talking.  However, I have nearly choked myself many times between the ear bud wires, the lanyard, the hat chin strap, and the bag I’m carrying.  No matter how carefully I wrap the various wires and lanyard around the box, it always comes out in a tangled mess like this.  I almost threw it out the window of the bus, but then remembered that it’s not really mine to give away.

We are still waking up around 5 am, but that’s not really a bad thing.  Each day is filled with more tours and more amazing sights.  It never ceases to make us pause and wonder what it must be like to live here surrounded with thousands of antiquities as you go about your day and life.  There are so many temples, statues and they keep finding more all the time.  It must be surreal to pass by acres and acres of items that are hundreds of thousand years old as you are trying to make a living and live a your life for today.  

We have a security presence around us when we travel by bus and when we are visiting sights.  It is a blessing and also a realization that we are so lucky to not have to worry about this type of security issue when we go about our life at home. 

This trip is one of those trips that we will never forget and will change our perspective forever.  

Hope you are enjoying our blog.  Please excuse the random margins.  Blogger has a mind of it’s own!

Bc and Gc.

March 1, 2023

On Wednesday we had an amazing day of seeing the pyramids near Cairo.  These pyramids are within a 30-45 minute drive from Cairo.  It’s surreal to look at these huge structures and see downtown Cairo in the background.  

Our first stop was the Saqqara Pyramid.  This is Egypt’s first and largest pyramid.  It was built about 4300 years ago.  4300!  There are many important people buried in this step pyramid.  The pyramids remind me of our national mall.  There are many different statues and memorials that America has built over the past 247 years.  

We were able to go into two of the burial sites.  The first one was a princess’s chamber that we walked through.  To see the carvings, still with their original color is breathtaking. 

The burial chamber of King Unas was also built 4300 years ago.  We were able to walk down and see the sarcophagus.  The passage way down and up is 3 feet high.  We walked at a steep decline bent over.  It’s one of those times when you think “I can do this!”  As we started out it was exciting, then you start thinking, “wait, how far down is this? And we have to go back up!”  There were lots of people going down and up the same space.  Luckily we had our hats on, so when our heads scraped the “ceiling” it was a reminder to bend down more.  

 

I found that walking sideways while hanging onto the rail worked best.  Just when you think you can’t go any further you step into a small room with other rooms on either side.  The carvings on the walls and ceiling were amazing.  So many stories and magical potions were carved in this entire tomb.  

Here is Bob standing next to the sarcophagus 

After lunch at a tourist place with good food, we went to see Giza and the three “smaller” pyramids.  At Giza we were allowed to actually climb the pyramid which was scary!  Imagine lots of people, irregular steps that are very deep and nothing to hold onto.  We climbed up three layers. Here we are sitting on the third level and watching the people go by.  

That’s a lot of stone to carry up a hill.  

Our nest stop was to see the Sphinx.  It sounds weird, but we both were surprised at how small the Sphinx was!  It was carved from one complete block of stone.  You can see Giza in the background.  By this time we were hot, tired and ready to go to the hotel for a rest.  

To see all these amazing things, is amazing.  As we sat in our bus being driven back to the hotel, with all the chaos of traffic, it seemed as if we had been in another time and place.  I guess we were.  

Here’s some information for you.  There are 105 million people in Egypt.  There are 20 million people in Cairo.  That means there are 8000 people pre square kilometer in Cairo.  For reference, there are 2300 people per square kilometer in New York, 4600 in Chicago and 330 people per square kilometer in Seattle.  

We are having a great time and will write again when we can get internet and time!

Love, Vic and Gc

 

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.  

  I 

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

April 29, 2016

 

We were up and on the bus at 8 AM.  I would like to mention our tour mates here.  We had a great group.  We looked out for each, laughed, sang, drank, ate and were amazed together.  No one in our group was ever late or held us up.  When one would hurt themselves, the rest of us would pitch in.  Walking down streets in Cuba can be dangerous.   Holes appear out of nowhere with no sign, there are rocky cobblestones, waterfront and all sorts of stuff to watch for.  Typically the first one in the line would yell out, “hole” and the rest of us would yell hole to those behind us when we got to the hole in the ground, (or dog poop).  We had some interesting tour characters, but they made the trip amusing. 

 

The Cubans are the nicest people.  But oh my, are they slow.  They are very disorganized, but we have noticed in communist countries organizational skills inherent in the population are discouraged.  And, do we really need to have everything fast? 

 

It only took 1.5 hours to get checked in and through Cuban TSA.  If you can imagine, we were there first in line with VIP express service, but it still took forever.  They know the flight leaves at 11am, but they have one person checking you in and one person in immigration, until it gets to the point all the people waiting to get on the flight will never be processed in time, or even that day!  So then more employees show up to assist with the lines.  Going through that check in/out procedure really had me frazzled for a couple of reasons.   

 

A couple of odd things happened which don’t bear repeating, but by the time I made it through the X-ray machine I was wild eyed.  Bob was several people behind me, so I was waiting for him when I saw TSA pull him aside.  He had mistakenly put a sealed bottle of rum in his carry-on bag.  So of course they took it away from him.  He even had to sign their official book that logged he "gave them" a fifth of rum.  Did I mention that we both had opened, half full bottles of water in our carry on which was perfectly alright to take through?  Hmmm.. Bob had a few CUCs left so he went over to the Duty Free store and bought his bottle of rum back.   

 

Our tour guide Alfredo had arranged for a special VIP room for us while we all got through check in/out.  Our VIP service included a private lounge with sandwiches, yes rum, etc.; peaceful, air conditioned and quiet.  Because everyone is equal, if you pay more you get to be more equal and that’s a good thing at the airport.  Escorted to board our plane first we were starting to get used to being more equal. 

 

 The views upon departure of the north Archipelagos of Cuba are spectacular.

 

We spent one night in Miami to rest a bit.  We swam, ate at a local restaurant and didn’t eat rice or beans. 

Miami

 The next day we flew to Pasco, Washington, where we were met by our grandson Parker and his dad Chris.  It brought tears to my eyes!

It was an amazing trip.  We enjoyed so much of it.  We were tired, weary, but so happy to have been able to see Cuba before it’s spoiled.  We are very glad to be US citizens.   The Cuban people are so kind and fun!

 

Some random thoughts and information.

If we never hear the song “Guantanamera” again it will be too soon.  Originally a song about an island love affair between warriors it has, with modified lyrics, become a protest anthem for many.  Pete Seger adapted the song writing a verse for Jose Marti and made it famous.  We heard that song, literally, every day and most days, several times a day.  Here’s another interesting story.  When I was in 6^th grade, our teacher would have “music” on Friday afternoons.  We would sing our hearts out to records he played.  I remember three of the songs we sang every Friday.  The Kent cigarette song (!), the ant who knocked over the dam and Guantanamera.   Every time I heard the Guantanamera song I thought of sitting in Mr. Farley’s class when I was 11.  It's amazing how life turns out.    

As the story is told, the word Cuba means land surrounded by water.   

The history of Cuban people is very interesting.  In 1530 approximately 2 million African slaves were brought to Cuba.  In 1840 to 1850 two hundred thousand Chinese slaves were brought to Cuba.  In 1880 the Americans wanted Cuba, at that time many French, British and Spanish were living in Cuba.  During WWI many Syrians and Europeans came to Cuba.  And in the 1960’s many Russians emigrated to Cuba.  Cubans are quite the melting pot.   

One thing in Cuba hasn’t changed since 1959.  The communist/socialist governance of the country that Fidel Castro and his brother Raul founded.  One realization  we came away from on this trip is that nothing significant will change in Cuba until the Castro regime is gone.  However one interesting thing that occurred during Cuba's recent election was that the government passed a law stating no one may hold office in the Cuban government if they are over 60 years old.  That’s probably a good idea.  I think that might be something our own Congress should take up.  Ha!

Cubans are very happy to see the US lift the blockade.  They want us to come and spend money.  They are eager, happy, nice people.  In my opinion, in a decade we will not recognize the Cuba we saw in 2016.  That is bittersweet.  I hope the Cubans will have a better standard of living, but I also hope they are able to keep their joie de’ vive.  The very last note I wrote in my diary was “or maybe the Americans should stay away and let paradise be.” 

We hope you enjoyed our trip and blog!  Take care, bc and gc