March 3, 2023 

Today was a slower day, and boy did we need it!  

When we first checked into the boat Bob noticed they had massages for a very fair price.  We jumped on that, scheduling 3 different services each!  (That’s how reasonable they were and how sore we are after the flights and the past several days of walking over uneven granite and marble surfaces in the heat.)

We each had a 1 hour massage in the morning and it felt so good!  

We set sail around 8am to go to Qena.  We were there in an hour and half.  At 2pm we got off the boat and did the routine of getting on the bus, tangling ourselves up in wires, hats straps, bags and carrying more water.   Qena has about 10 million people.  It’s a very rustic city, with tumble down homes and businesses.  The traffic isn’t nearly as bad as in Cairo.  

We drove a short distance while being escorted by two old Toyota trucks carrying 2 men in back with rifles, one in front of the bus the other at the back.  There was a police officer on a motorcycle in the lead.  I didn’t know if I should use my princess wave or hunker down on the floor of the bus! 

Here’s what usually happens at Temples, Pyramids and Tombs.  We get a ticket from Salah our guide, then give it to someone at the entrance to be punched by a man with a one hole punch, then we go through security. Like every security in the world it’s chaotic and noisy.  Add in that we have to remove our bags and put them through an X ray machine, which entails untangling ourselves from all the stuff around our necks.  Then Bob goes through an X Ray machine that is turned off due to his pacemaker and I go through a regular one.  There is a lot of beeping and yelling and people go through so fast that the X Ray machine never really resets from the previous person.  It’s an exercise in chaos and futility.  Then we hope we get our bags on the other side, find our ticket and use the bar code on it to pass through a turnstile.  This exercise can happen up to 4-5 times in a day, depending on how many places we are going through.  It’s craziness!

In any case, Dendera Temple is beautiful.  

All the temples are magnificent and huge.  The work that is done inside the temple is done over hundreds of years for various Kings.  The pictures on this temple show stories of Ptolemaic rulers, Roman Emperors, goddesses and the lifestyle of the ancient Egyptians.  

This guy is outside the entrance to the Temple.  He is a dwarf and is a God of fertility for women.  

Check out the ceiling below. 

At some point people moved into the temple and lived there.  The ceiling was absolutely black with soot.  They cleaned it and found these colorful stories and carvings.  

At some point, sorry I didn’t get the century, a religious group found the temple and decided they didn’t like the faces on the carvings , so they carefully chipped away all evidence of faces.  That was a lot of work and took many, many years.  

I was amazed at how hundreds of these gods were set up on the capitals.  See how it looks like they will fall over?  

We took a walk through the temple and went up stairs.  Check out the carvings on the hallway wall!

There was a bad-relief on the ceiling of the innermost temple room.  It was a sculptured Zodiac sign exactly what we see today.  If you would like to see it, you can check it out at the Louvre in France.  It was moved there in 1821.  In the Dendera temple it’s just a pretend one that is sprayed black.  It’s rather odd looking.  

 

We went back to the boat with our motorcade and as soon as we arrived the boat set sail for Luxor.  

We had a lovely dinner that consisted of Egyptian food as well as American food.  So that’s was a nice day and very  interesting.  

Stay tuned for tomorrow.  It was amazing!

Bc and Gc  

TheTh

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.  

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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