update from the land of sand, temples and scams

hey guys!


I know it's been forever since we have updated the blog. I wanted to put pictures up so you would have something interesting to look at, but the technology here is struggling and the computers won't recognize my memory card so, it'll be a little while!


On our second day, we visited old Cairo and saw some really old churches, an old mosque and the islamic part of Cairo. We even visited a crypt that is said to have housed the holy family (Jesus, Mary and Joseph) when they fled Israel from Herod. The buildings around the church are over 650 years old.


The next day, we visited Alexandria, a city three hours north on the mediterranean sea, where we saw an old mosque, the library overlooking the sea and had fresh fish, cooked in the Egyptian style of cooking the whole fish and leaving it on your plate, bones and head included. It was good though, just more work than we are used to!


We had a day to relax in Cairo before taking the night train so we mostly walked around the city, getting lost in the markets. The children here are great; they are so friendly and curious, and always want to know your name and where you're from. We saw some wacky stuff, like a cow in the middle of the street and goats all over the road.


The night train from Cairo to Aswan was horrible. Our travel agent suggested we go in first class instead of on the sleeper car for the 15 hours on the train. Lucky for us, we were sitting right in front of a guy who was snoring so loudly you could probably hear it in the next car. Jason tried to wake him up but he fell back asleep and back into loud snoring mode. We moved into another car, but the only two seats together that were available were right at the front near the open vents, so our night's sleep wasn't great. Upon arrival to our hotel, we had about half an hour before we were wisked away on a tour to see the Philae temple, a beautiful temple on an island. We were both so tired we weren't really paying attention to the tour guide though. That night, I think we were in bed by eight because we had to get up at 2:45am to see the temple of Abu Simbel because apparently there was only one convoy that went per day and the journey took 3 hours. Why we had to go that early is beyond me...after we got back, we headed out to our cruise boat where we spent 2 nights enjoying our first cruise boat. It was nice, even though there weren't many people and most of the were in their sixties, but oh well....it was part of the experience! The food was good. We had to get up at six am the next two mornings; the first morning, we went to the Edfu temple, and on the second (this morning) we had to check out early. We spent the day checking out the valley of the kings and the valley of the queens, two places where there are tombs, although everything has been taken out and put into museums.

So, tomorrow is our last day of checking out temples and then we head out to Sharm el Sheik for Christmas. We are getting pretty tired of checking out temples, and even more tired of constantly looking out for people trying to scam us. I think Cairo was more enjoyable because it is not a city that is only focussed on tourism, unlike Luxor or Aswan. At all major sites we get hounded to buy useless stuff. It gets a little tiring to constantly say no only to find the sellers even more insistent. We are having a great time on this trip though so we can't really complain, but we are just a little tired of the early mornings and constant scams. That's the joy of travelling though!

Anyways, we hope you're all doing well and are enjoying the Christmas season. We heard that there is a lot of snow back home - we are looking forward to seeing some of it when we get back on the 29th!