So when I woke up for the first time in 2016, I was pretty damn excited. Going to Egypt has been a dream of mine since I was a little girl, but it was one of those things that I never actually thought would happen. Like meeting Eddie Redmayne or writing a New York Times bestseller, it would be incredible if it happened but I wasn't about to hold my breath. So really, I was just as amazed as anyone else that it was actually happening, furthermore considering the fact that I'm only 23.
So my flight wasn't until the late afternoon but I had to check out of my hostel in Madrid before 11, so I was on my way to the metro at 10:50. I probably could have killed time in a Starbucks or something but frankly, I was so excited to just go that I was eager to get to the airport (Plus, the idea of rolling a suitcase into a Starbucks with me didn't hold very much appeal.). So I'm pretty sure that I was the first person who checked in for the direct flight from Madrid to Cairo via Egyptair, but I'm a very patient person. I don't mind waiting.
My flight to Cairo was thankfully very uneventful. I had a window seat, and the seat next to me was empty, which was really nice. And the woman on the aisle seat was lovely, and we ended up chatting for awhile. I love meeting friendly people when traveling, because so many people are nervous about flying or suspicious of strangers that it doesn't happen as often as I'd like.
I got off the plane and almost immediately, a representative from my tour company, Topdeck, was there to meet me. Frankly, I don't understand how they allow civilians to be in the airport past security, but I was relieved he was there. He helped me get my visa to enter Egypt (Certain nationalities, including Americans, can pay for and receive a visa on the spot, which was also unusual) and then we went to wait for my bag. And we waited. And waited. And waited some more. And after an hour, just as we were both starting to lose hope (The representative actually went over to the Egyptair window to ask them what was up), my bag appeared on the belt, much to my relief. I have a bad habit of traveling light on the plane itself, so if my bag didn't show up, I had almost literally nothing on me except some chapstick and my passport and phone. I had money of course, but I didn't even have an extra pair of socks. I was confident that I wouldn't have a problem because my flight was direct, but stranger things have happened. It was a learning experience, for sure.
We went back to the hotel and I met my tour director, who gave me the run down about how the tour was going to work. Then I immediately went to bed because I had an early start in the morning.
So technically, my tour didn't actually start until January 3. Most people were arriving on the second, but I had gotten there on the first because I booked an additional day tour from Cairo to Alexandria and back. So I was getting a very early start on the second so that I could see the best of what Alexandria had to offer. So we left the hotel in Cairo at 6:30 AM and made the three hour drive to Alexandria.
Let me first say that Alexandria is beautiful. It's right on the Mediterranean, and the city itself is very cosmopolitan and the architecture has a lot of European influence. I really enjoyed my visit, especially because my tour guide was brilliant. He was a certified Egyptologist, and he was able to read hieroglyphs with just a glance. He even worked for some time in the Egypt section of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I couldn't have had a more knowledgeable guide to show me the sights in Alexandria.
Our first stop was to visit the Citadel of Qaitbay, which is one of the most important defensive strongholds on the Mediterranean Sea. It's built on the site of the Lighthouse of Alexandria, which is one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. My tour guide told me that the ruins of the lighthouse are actually underwater, not far from the citadel, and that people can take diving trips to see them. That must be an incredible experience.
Citadel of Quaitbay
Our second stop was at the Catacombs of Kom el Shoqafa, where I was not allowed to take any photos. It was a pretty cool stop, and thankfully it wasn't nearly as far down as the catacombs in Paris. Many things in Egypt have been discovered by accident, and these catacombs are no different. They were discovered in 1900 because a donkey fell down a hole that turned out to be the entrance to the catacombs. The architecture of the catacombs is pretty cool, because there are statues and tombs that combine different styles, including Roman, Greek, and Egyptian. Also, my tour guide told me that these catacombs are the only catacombs in Africa, but I wonder if they're just the only catacombs yet to be discovered in Africa.
We also visited Pompey's Pillar, which is the largest Roman-style column built outside of the imperial capitals (Rome and Constantinople). It's made from a single piece of granite and it weighs 285 tons. Originally, people thought that the pillar was built during the time of Pompey, but it turns out that it wasn't. But I guess it's too late to change the name.
Pompey's Pillar
Our last stop was the one I was the most excited about. We were stopping to see the Library of Alexandria, which is built on the site of the ancient one that was destroyed by Julius Caesar. Alexandria has a big university, which is across the street from the library. The new library, which has a conference center, several museums and art galleries, a planetarium, and the largest reading room in the world, is quite a sight.
Library of Alexandria
In front of the planetarium
The library was the last stop on the tour. After a quick lunch, I got back in the car and headed back to Cairo.
When I arrived, I met the two other girls I'd be sharing a room with. One girl was a half-Hungarian, half-American girl who lived in Saudi Arabia, and the other was from South Africa. At our introductory meeting, I met the boys: two guys from Australia and one from Singapore. I was pretty excited that were no other Americans on the tour, simply because I love meeting people from other countries to hear different perspectives. Egypt was the fourteenth country that I've visited, but I was by far the least well-traveled in this group, which made for incredible conversation. If I recall correctly, one of the Australian guys (who was only 28) had already visited 42 countries. Meeting people like them was basically a dream come true, because it validated every travel dream I've ever had. Maybe it will be possible for me to someday see the four corners of the world (Although I'm not attempting to do it before I turn 28, for the record).
The next day was the big day of the tour. Our first stop was the Egyptian Museum. The museum is broken into three sections, featuring things from Ancient Egypt, the middle era, and the New Kingdom (The New Kingdom isn't very new, for the record. Those artifacts are from 1550-1069 B.C. Although they are considerably newer than the things from the Ancient section, which go as far back as 2500 B.C., if I'm not mistaken). I enjoyed seeing the variety of statues and artifacts, but the best part of the museum was seeing the treasures from King Tut's tomb in the Valley of the Kings. His tomb was so full of treasure that its display takes up at least a quarter of the second floor of the museum.
The Egyptian Museum
King Khafre
One of King Tut's golden chariots
King Tut's personal hand fan
Anubis, the jackal god of embalming and keeping watch over the dead
Solid gold chair from King Tut's tomb
King Tut's solid gold sarcophagus
King Tut's solid gold mask (weighs almost 25 pounds!)
After we saw King Tut's many treasures, we had some free time in the museum. Everyone on my tour opted to pay the extra money to go in the mummy room, which was definitely one of the coolest things I did on the trip. No photos were allowed, but seriously, the mummy of Ramses II looked like it could sit up and start talking. It still had hair and everything. I've seen too many horror movies to be comfortable with that kind of realism. I kept having visions that the mummies were going to come to life and lock me in that room to become one of them (I have a very active imagination.). My favorite was seeing Queen Hatshepsut's mummy, because she's my favorite pharaoh by far. But I'll have an opportunity to talk about her more later.
After we left the human mummy room, we went to the animal mummy room. Seeing the animal mummies is free, and photos are allowed. Some of the mummified animals included a crocodile, a dog, part of a cow, and several rams (Which I obviously took a picture of, because as a West Chester alum, I am a Golden Ram myself). They didn't look as lifelike so I wasn't as freaked out in the animal mummy room.
Dog and monkey mummies
My fellow Golden Rams (Rah, rah, rah, rah, West Chester U!)
For the rest of our free time, we just wandered through the museum. We managed to find the largest statue in the museum in our travels, which was pretty cool.
Papyrus from the New Kingdom
Largest statue in the museum
Our next stop was the one I was the most excited about. Seeing the pyramids has been something I've wanted since I was a little girl, and they did not disappoint.
The pyramids are situated at the eastern edge of the Sahara Desert, which stretches all the way west to Morocco. Having the opportunity to stand at the foot of the Great Pyramid was awe inspiring. Even in the photo above, I didn't have a real grasp of its vastness. It reminded me of the Washington Monument. You can see the Washington Monument from almost everywhere in downtown Washington, so you realize that it's big, of course. But it wasn't until I stood at the foot of the monument and looked up that I started to understand how big it actually was. The Great Pyramid was the same. I found out later that it contains 3 million individual stones, and 100,000 people worked to build just the Great Pyramid, not including the others. Visiting the site was literally breathtaking, and I do mean literally.
The Sahara, to the west
Posing with the Great Pyramid
Standing at the foot of the Great Pyramid
The last remaining Wonder of the Ancient World
Our next stop was to see the Sphinx, which was surprisingly underwhelming. It's beautiful and amazing, of course, but size-wise, everyone on my tour expected it to be bigger. I thought it was similar in size to the pyramids. Not quite as large, but at least comparable. And as it turns out, it's not. It's small, in comparison. But as one of the guys on my tour said, "If you were the one who had to build it, I bet it wouldn't seem small at all."
Posing with the Sphinx
Our last stop on that day's tour was to visit a papyrus institute. Just in case any of my readers don't know, papyrus was the ancient Egyptians' paper, which they made from the papyrus plant. At this particular institute, they make papyrus the same way that the ancient Egyptians made it, so making one piece takes a week. But we got to see a demonstration, which was really cool. And the papyrus artworks that they had for sale in the institute were gorgeous.
Papyrus-making demonstration
That evening, we got in our Topdeck minibus and made the 12-hour drive to Aswan, which was an overnight trip. I was lucky and I slept for most of it, but it wasn't the most restful sleep I've had. I was looking forward to sleeping in a hotel that night. But our first day in Aswan, we went to Philae Temple. Going to see that was really cool, because the temple is on its own island in the Nile. So in order to get there, we had to take a motorboat. Then when we arrived, the temple has three parts: an Egyptian temple, a Roman temple, and a Greek temple, but they're all decorated with hieroglyphs.
The coolest thing about Philae Temple is that the whole thing had to be moved. Aswan is relatively well-known for their Nile dam, and for good reason. If the dam were ever destroyed, half of Egypt would probably be underwater. But when they built the dam in the first place, it changed water levels in different parts of the Nile, including where Philae Temple was. So the temple was actually underwater for many years. But UNESCO started a rescue project in the 1960s, so the temple was moved piece by piece to an island with higher elevation.
Philae Temple
Egyptian section of the temple
View of the Nile from the island
After we left the temple, we took a different boat to a Nubian village. Nubians are an ethnic group that live along the Nile in southern Egypt and northern Sudan. We visited one of their villages to visit a school and to have home-cooked food (which was delicious) in one of their houses. It was a really interesting experience. On our way, we actually passed the Old Cataract Hotel, which is a real place where Agatha Christie set part of her novel, Death on the Nile. The hotel is actually quite famous, and some of their guests have included Winston Churchill, Jimmy Carter, and Princess Diana, among others. Furthermore, the movie version of Death on the Nile was filmed there. My sister kept making jokes about Poirot coming with me on my trip down the Nile, so I'm sure she'll be thrilled to read this.
Boat we took to the Nubian village
Motoring down the Nile
Old Cataract Hotel from Death on the Nile
Nubian school
Nubian school
Inside of the Nubian house where we ate dinner
The people who live in the house we visited actually raise crocodiles to mummify and then sell to tourists. So I had the unique pleasure of holding a real alligator. Not fully grown, thank goodness.
Making new friends!
After dinner, we took our boat back to Aswan and slept for awhile in the hotel, but we had to get up early in the morning to go to Abu Simbel temples. These two temples, built by Ramses II to commerate himself and his favorite wife, Nefertari, are close to 200 miles south of Aswan, close to the Sudan border. When we went to visit, we actually traveled as part of a police convoy with every tour company that was visiting the temples that day, which was a crazy experience. And we left at 4 in the morning so that we would be there before the temple closed in the afternoon. While we were traveling from Aswan to Abu Simbel, there was nothing around for miles and miles. It was a crazy experience.
Abu Simbel is right in front of Lake Nasser, a lake created from the construction of the Aswan dam, making it one of the largest manmade lakes in the world. These temples also had to be moved to be saved from flooding, so they were also moved stone by stone back in the 1960s.
Abu Simbel temple for Ramses II
Throughout the trip, the most impressive carved hieroglyphs that I saw, in my opinion, were at Abu Simbel. Tourists aren't allowed to take photos, but they were absolutely amazing. It's very hard to believe, seeing the clarity of the hieroglyphs, that the temple was built around 1250 B.C.
Okay, you caught me. I took one sneaky picture when a guard wasn't looking.
Ramses II is considered by many to be the greatest and most powerful pharaoh ever to have lived, so his name is everywhere in Egypt. And he lived so long that all sorts of structures were built under his commission, including Abu Simbel. So after we saw the main temple for Ramses II, then we saw the temple he built to honor his favorite and most beautiful wife, Nefertari. Ramses II lived to be 90 years old and he had 90 some children, so his having a favorite wife was a big deal.
Temple of Nefertari (And you can play Where's Clare? in this picture!)
Panorama of Ramses II temple (on left) and Nefertari temple (on right)
Lake Nasser
Once we had our fill of hieroglyphs, we got back in the minibus and drove back up to Aswan, where we boarded our felucca. Aswan is famous for its feluccas, which is a type of sailboat. We would be spending the rest of the day and the entire next day sailing down the Nile, and I was really excited about having time to relax. There was literally nothing to do on the felucca except lay around, sunbathe, sleep, and read. It was my favorite part of the trip by far.
Selfie on the felucca
This is how we ate our meals on the boat
Felucca on the Nile
Sunset from the boat
Our felucca crew performed with drums on the beach for us one night!
Nighttime on the felucca
Really, the only time we left the boat was to go to the bathroom (and by bathroom, I mean bushes along the Nile) or to frolic on the shore if the boat was docked. You can see in the photo above that the felucca crew insulated the boat with a fabric of some sort overnight, because we even slept onboard (Let me just say that the mosquito bites still aren't gone from my hands and face). It was a great experience overall, and as I said, definitely my favorite part of the trip.
However, my least favorite part of the felucca cruise was whenever I had to embark or disembark. Unfortunately, I didn't think to take a photo of it, but that's likely because of my intense sense of dread whenever I had to face it. There was literally a plank of wood that we had to use to get on and off, because it wasn't like we were pulling up to a dock; we were just pulling over on the river. So anyone who knows me well knows that I have a terrible sense of balance. Combined with the fact that it was literally a plank of wood (As in, "Walk the plank, matey!") and the fact that I'm a rather large person, I was terrified that I was going to end my adventure in Egypt with a trip to the hospital after I plummeted into the Nile and gave myself a concussion or a broken leg. Thankfully, it turned out that I was able to manage (Although I was forced to sidestep crab-style, which the felucca crew enjoyed giggling about whenever I had the misfortune of entering or leaving the boat). However, my new friends did some drinking on the boat one night and I decided to abstain. The last thing I needed was to further tempt fate by drunkenly walking the plank on my way to a nearby bush in the middle of the night. Heaven knows I was having enough trouble when I was stone-cold sober.
After a day and a half and two nights of floating down the Nile, we finished our felucca cruise right near Kom Ombo temple. This was a pretty cool temple to visit because it's a "double temple," which means it was dedicated to two gods. The first god is one of the most popular in Egypt: Horus, the falcon god of protection, and I saw him in literally every temple we visited. But the other god was Sobek, the crocodile god of power and fertility. Ancient Egyptians were understandably terrified of crocodiles, so it's unusual to see Sobek at all, let alone to have a whole temple dedicated to him.
Kom Ombo temple
Sobek, the crocodile god of power and fertility
My hair was in such a state of disarray after two days on the Nile that I actually wore a scarf on my head to the temple. The temple was really fascinating, but I think at that point I was most eager to use a real bathroom.
After we toured the temple, we got to visit the crocodile mummy museum. When excavators discovered the temple, they also found some 300 mummified crocodiles in the area. Not all of the crocodiles stayed onsite, of course, but it was really cool.
In the crocodile mummy museum
A recreation of how they were discovered
After the tour, we got back in the minibus and continued north to Luxor, which was about 3 hours away. I was really looking forward to Luxor because we would be visiting the Valley of the Kings and the Temple of Hatshepsut, who I said earlier is my favorite pharaoh. The best part of getting to Luxor though was getting to use the bathroom, for sure.
Later that evening, we had the option of going to Luxor Temple at night, but my South African friend and I both opted out. Honestly, the temples in Egypt are all incredible in their own unique ways, but unless you can actually read hieroglyphs, a lot of them look pretty similar to the uneducated (aka me). So we took that time to explore the market in Luxor, and that was one of my favorite things that we did. They had gorgeous things for sale, from scarves to jewelry to exotic spices and teas to perfume in ornate glass bottles. And the shopkeepers in the market were so friendly and nice, mostly because they wanted to make a sale I'm sure, but I still appreciated it. I did, however, make the mistake of telling one of them my name. He told his friends who told their friends so then everywhere I went in the market, someone would call me by name like they knew me. It was really funny but also a little disconcerting when I stranger would come up and say, "Clare, hello! I have a good deal on curry just for you!"
The next day was the big day. Our first stop was at the Valley of the Kings. No photos there are allowed, so you'll have to do with my descriptions. The Valley of the Kings is where the pharaohs and their families from the New Kingdom were buried. The valley is the resting place of 63 known tombs, and I had the fortune of visiting three of them. I saw one of the oldest tombs there, an unfinished tomb, and one of the ones with the best paint. The thing that's unique about the Valley of the Kings, and the reason tourists aren't allowed to take photos, is because the original paint is still in such good condition, but flashes from cameras would make it fade faster. It's really awe-inspiring, mostly because the paint is made from ground up rocks and egg whites, but it's managed to last thousands of years.
One of the tombs I visited was actually the tomb of Hatshepsut's archnemesis, which was pretty cool. He had good reason, honestly. So the reason that I like Hatshepsut so much is because she was originally married to a pharaoh herself, Thutmoses II. But he was pretty sickly during a lot of his reign, so she did most of the ruling, without anyone realizing it. But then he died, so his son, Thutmoses III, became the pharaoh. But he was a child at the time, so she continued to rule in his stead. But when Thutmoses III was sufficiently grown and ready to take his throne, Hatshepsut wouldn't give it up. She started lying to people and told them that she wasn't a woman, she was actually a son of one of the major gods in Egypt, and she paid off the priests at the time to back up her claim. So she ruled Egypt, as a woman, for 20 years. What a badass, right? So I visited the tomb of Thutmoses III, who hated her for stealing his throne, understandably. And after she died, he made it his mission to destroy her remaining artifacts, which is unfortunate. So at Hatshepsut's temple, any hieroglyphs of her were scratched off the walls by people doing her archnemesis's bidding.
Painted hieroglyphs at the Temple of Hatshepsut
The jackal god Anubis, protector of the dead
Temple of Hatshepsut
What the area around her temple and the Valley of the Kings looks like
Sassiest ladies in Egypt: me and Hatshepsut
That was the last big day of my tour. After that, we got back in the minibus for the last time and drove north to Cairo. It was about an 8 hour drive, so I immediately went to bed when we got to our hotel. Our last day in Cairo was a free day, so my friends and I did a little shopping and hanging around, and we ended our night by watching a movie together. By the time everyone went their separate ways, I only had about enough time to take a nap before I had to get up again. My flight was at 7:30 in the morning so I left my hotel at 4:30. I had a connecting flight in Paris, and I got delayed coming through passport control. So my trip ended with me barreling through the Charles de Gaulle airport, nearly rupturing a lung in the process, but I made my connection to Madrid. By the time I got to the Madrid airport, picked up my bag (which only took 15 minutes), took the metro to the bus station, and took the bus back to Quintanar, I had been traveling for a total of 15 hours. So when I got home, I ate a bowl of pasta, took a shower, and went to bed, because I had school in the morning. Heaven knows it was a whirlwind of a Christmas break, but I wouldn't change any of it. It was an incredible end to 2015 and an even better start to 2016. I can only hope the rest of the year goes this well!
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