Whatagain in Egypt

[whatagain]

We just arrived in Egypt for about 2 weeks.
I don’t really know the planning so we will discover it together.
Right now we went through the city from the airport.
Very well organised and fast.

[whatagain]

Cairo ! 
we flew via Athens. Direct was much too expensive. 

Very efficient customs. 

The hotel has a beautiful roof. 

The lobby. International. 

[lugg]

You are brave .. not sure I would want to be there at this time.

Lots of things to like about Egypt - what are your plans ?

[kerouac2]

I have been thinking about Egypt quite a bit in recent days because I am currently reading a novel that takes place in Cairo. For professional reasons, Egypt is the 3rd country where I have spent the greatest amount of time in my life (after France and the United States) because my company had to spend as much money as possible there because they were not allowed to export much of their revenue, even though Egypt was their biggest market. So the vast majority of the seminars and training courses took place in Cairo. Well, at least I know quite a bit about all of the luxury hotels of Cairo, like it or not.

I actually made a voluntary trip to Egypt once to visit a friend who was living in Alexandria for six months. This at least gave me a slightly different view of the country. Alexandria is amazing (also decrepit).

Anyway, the book I'm reading made me wonder if I would want to go back there, and I have not yet been able to decide. I spent too much time there against my will, but I also learned to appreciate quite a few things. And even though I fully visited the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, I'm sure that its new replacement in Giza must be breathtaking.

One memory that I treasure is that I actually climbed one of the 3 pyramids of Giza (illegally) with my German colleague Franz-Josef. It was the smallest one but still absolutely enormous, and a great challenge to out-of-shape me. The "steps" are the size of refrigerators and each one was a struggle.

And another memory that lives in horror is a trip I took with other colleagues to the oasis of Fayyoum. There was a big isolated pyramid along the way. I looked it up but have forgotten the name. Since this particular seminar lasted almost a month (!) the colleague from Brussels had brought her teenage son with her. During the week he spent every day at the swimming pool and would tell us the various scandals of the Ramses Hilton. Can you believe that two people died of "accidental" deaths there during that time? Saudis. Most of the customers were Saudis.  It was August, the hottest month of the year. 

Anyway, back to the pyramid. There was actually a ticket office there even with zero visitors, and we were asked if we wanted to go inside the pyramid. No absolutely not! Except for Franco, the teenager. No way was his mother Marijke going to allow him to go in alone, even with a guide, and she stared me down. So I visited this abandoned pyramid with Franco and a guide with a flashlight. There was sand, and there was crawling, and there were ladders. If you have seen an Indiana Jones movie, that was it, even if there were no snakes or bugs. I was terrified and Franco loved it. I came out of there a different person. Call me Indiana Jones.

[onlyMark]

I have fond memories of Egypt. A lot of memories in five years. A few bad like the hassle, but the vast majority are good. I would live back there again. I'm interested how this thread pans out.
The hotel looks like the Sofitel at the bottom of Zamalek.

[mossie]

I spent 30 months at an airfield on the point of land which separates the Great and Little Bitter Lakes. What with the flies and two bouts of dysentery that is an experience I have no wish to repeat. A complete dump>

[cheerypeabrain]

Despite my love of the art and history of Egypt I haven't been there. I'm terribly impressed with your adventure inside the pyramid Kerouac. Not a fan of enclosed spaces but I'd love to visit the new museum of Egypt and the valley of the kings. Obviously sampling local food and meeting Egyptian people would be great too. Maybe one day.

Are you on holiday Whatagain? Or is it a business trip?

[kerouac2]

To be honest, the first time I went to Egypt, Cairo was the filthiest city I had seen anywhere in the world. A few years later, it was replaced by Madras (Chennai) in my personal classification. When I returned to Cairo the second time, it was still amazingly filthy but it had improved at least 200%. And the next time I returned it was almost a normal city, at least in the central areas. People were even beginning to stop at some of the traffic signals. Amazing. Meanwhile the Cairo metro was spotless (and empty probably due to tickets costing about 10 cents); you could have eaten off the floor.

[onlyMark]

Mrs M said recently that the traffic is still chaos but a hell of a lot less in the centre than there was before the satellite areas were built. Cleaner too.
I used to drive her to work near Tahrir Square from out on the Suez Road near the airport every day. We'd time it so it was quiet going in but I'd see all the jams on the other side when I was leaving. I refused to pick her up though at knocking off time and she'd always get a taxi back.
Manila was the worst place I lived in for traffic.

[whatagain]

The view from the hotel - Sofitel indeed. 

The citadel of Saladin built in XII century. Repaired x times. 

On the top of the hill a mosquée built by Mohamed Ali in XIX. 

Marber and bronze. The Minarets are typical of the Ottomans.  



The fountain. 
The clock was a gift in exchange for the obelisk in Paris. It never worked … 


The interior is splendid. 

That is where the priest/Ilan/whatever goes to lecture the Fidels. 



View from the top. If there were no pollution we could have seen the pyramids in the left. 

View from outside. Quite impressive. 

[kerouac2]

Considering the fragility of all of those minarets, Egypt is very lucky not to be in an earthquake zone.

[whatagain]

After the citadel came the museum where quite a few artefacts had already been shipped to the new museum, yet to open. 
these are kind of impressive. 

I always found these funny : instead of gloves pharaohs would wear these at the end of fingers and toes. 

I love this chacal/Anubis. 

The young generation was very enthusiastic 

Back in the street. 
some traffic but bearable and quite clean. 

[whatagain]

We had a nice lunch here. They make only one dish, vegetarians are all nice (I still need to meet an Egyptian who isn’t nice). 
the decorum is … bling bling shall we say ? 

We then went on foot to have dinner. This lion guards the bridge where Egyptians like to have their picture taken. 

From that bridge , view on the city. 

The other side of the bridge with a view to our hotel. 
Lots of olive trees here. 


An old colonial building home to a diplomatic school. 
The restaurant - very nice - called Fel Fela. Apparently Jimmy Carter was here in 1990.


I never take picture of the food but the arrangement of the kebab food made us think of something. 

[kerouac2]

There are two possible things about which to think when you see that.

But my pure mind only sees delicious food.

[onlyMark]

Oct 22, 2023 19:03:04 GMT whatagain said:

We had a nice lunch here. They make only one dish,

Enjoy the photos and places I sort of remember - Abu Tárek restaurant and koshary and Felfela - that place hasn't seemed to change.

[kerouac2]

I'm pretty sure I ate there once, too. Foreign visitors are always channeled in that direction. But it is still a good place in an extremely atmospheric setting.

[bixaorellana]

You are getting to see a great deal, Whatagain. Were those walking excursions, or did you go in a car?

The Ottoman stuff is just glorious, but I'm am stunned by the air pollution -- did not know it was so terrible there.

[whatagain]

Breakfast with a view on the Nile. 

Pyramids ! 
the name derives from Arabic and means what I understood as boarding a Zeppelin : a stairway to heaven. 

First a stop at a mastaba 

Ra us plying hide and seek with Kephren pyramid. 

If you too close to the bottom of the pyramid you can’t see the top. 

Inside Kheops. Hot. Humid. Stale. Magic. 

The pharaoh was there. 

There is a bit of crawling to do. 

And Kheops in all its splendour. 

The usual picture from the panorama point. 


This is Mykerinos 



And of course the Sphinx. 



Here we go through the temple at Saqara, the Djoser pyramid. 

Much older and by steps. 



Going down here not up. 

The royal tomb. The sarcophagus weight several tons. Reason why it remained whilst everything else was pillaged. 

And some decoration at a nearby tomb. 

Back to the hotel. A look of a third world country. 
Yet if a lot of buildings are ugly the city is very clean. At least where we drove. 
apparently they demolished part of it to build the road. Makes for interesting painting. 

[whatagain]

I read air pollution is extreme here. Maybe only matched by cities like Mumbay.

Yes Bixa we have a bus for us - we are a group of 8 and had everything organised by a French travel agency.
Up to now not a glitch.

[kerouac2]

I lived in Los Angeles at a time when the horizon was dark brown on a sunny day, so I know about air pollution. Los Angeles has improved immensely since then and now it is Paris that sometimes has a dingy horizon. In any case, I never saw Cairo as bad as Los Angeles in 1970, so it just goes to show that different cities each deal with pollution problems sooner or later. Mumbai is moving to electric vehicles so fast that it might have a cleaner sky sooner than Cairo.

[mich64]

Oct 22, 2023 7:03:28 GMT mossie said:

I spent 30 months at an airfield on the point of land which separates the Great and Little Bitter Lakes. What with the flies and two bouts of dysentery that is an experience I have no wish to repeat. A complete dump>

My father has recently began talking more about the 6 months he spent in Egypt on UN duty we think in 1973 or 74. He went into a lot of detail about the conditions there in camp including the dysentery and the flies. He said it was the only time in his career that he looked forward to military ration meals instead of eating in the cafeteria tent.

Whatagain I hope you and your family enjoy your holiday and show us everything you get to see. Enjoying the photos so far as this is somewhere I will probably never go but I find quite interesting.

[whatagain]

The aqueduct. Dates from XII century and is several Km long. 



Some doors are very old too. 

One of the most ancient site - where Jesus and his parents prayed.  

Marie loves orthodox churches. 

A basilica. Ugly from inside. Saint George was imprisoned here. 

Another church. 

They can really carve wood beautifully 

A superb mosque also from around 1150. 





My wife takes food from lunch’s and feed the cats. 
cats and dogs are well treated by the locals 

Waw, no ? 

Waw again. Ce

[whatagain]

Visit of the souk of Cairo. 











And relax at the swimming pool at Awan after an uneventful flight. 

[Kimby]

Thanks SO much for these images, whatagain. Glorious photographic spread.

Takes me right back to our trip to Egypt in 1989. Our photos are slides, and not as nicely exposed as your images. I guess the internet there is good, for you to be able to upload so many pictures to share with us.

I don’t remember polluted air as much as I remember the sand everywhere, filling in stairways making it hard to get a purchase on each step.

And what’s this about the museum MOVING? Not just opening another branch?

I remember the hot humid stinky tunnels through the pyramids, but I don’t recall there being separate lanes for up and down traffic. We had to smoosh past the traffic going the other way.

And the camel jockey outside the pyramids (not the official camel barns) robbed us! Not in a scary way, but in a sneaky way.

SPOILER: Click to show

“Abdul” (alias, I’m sure) must have snagged Mr. Kimby’s wallet while boosting him onto the camel, whose name was “Michael Jackson” (yeah, right), then while we were galloping, suddenly stops the camel and shouts “Look sir! Your wallet! Lucky I see it!” and points to the ground. There lay the wallet, dusty and with a new scratch in the leather, as if the camel had stepped on it. Abdul ceremoniously picked it up and handed it right to Mr. Kimby who opened it enough to see there was still money in it, and stuffed it back into his pocket. After the ride, paid for in Egyptian pounds (and overpaid because Abdul couldn’t make change) as we walked back to our car, Mr. Kimby took a better look in his wallet and realized $80 US was missing! The scoundrel! Abdul wouldn’t let us take his photo (no wonder!) and the photos he took of us on Michael Jackson - intended for our annual Christmas photo card - were framed so the camel was completely out of the picture!

Fun travel memories! I would think your tour guide kept you from trouble like we got into.

[kerouac2]

Totally fantastic photos, whatagain.

I hope that they have found a way to ventilate the inside of the Kheops pyramid. I thought I was going to suffocate crawling in there with the heat and the lack of oxygen. (Strangely enough, the scary pyramid where I was forced to crawl had much better air -- probably because there were not 700 people breathing in there.)

Unlike just about everybody I know, I have never been a fan of the Khan Al-Khalili market in Cairo, even though it is of course interesting to visit. Just too crowded and too intense for me (Buy! Buy! Buy! Look at this, touch that, come closer, my friend. I give you a special price!)

I know that this is the same as so many tourist markets around the workd, but it rubbed me the wrong way. Probably because I was in Cairo against my will.

In terms of "normal" stores in the downtown area, I had never seen so many shoe stores in my life.

[whatagain]

We were in Abu Simbel
around 3 pm. Perfect time to go to the swimming pool. 

The pool was on 2 levels with a view n the lake Nasser. 

A great hotel. 



Not everybody lives from tourism. These guys are fishermen. 

Really a nice hotel with spectacular views. 

[whatagain]

And another magical moment : a light show at the temples. The comments were in French s’il vous plaît. 

Ramses guarding the entrance of Nefertari’s temple. 

In the daylight.  Statues are really huge. 



Inside was beautiful but a real furnace.  Outside was 39c. 

Just fantastic. 

[lugg]

Wow - just fantastic Whatagain ... Abu Simbel and the area around is somewhere I would love to see. Are you going to Luxor ? Asking because it is the only inland place I have visited in Egypt despite going several times. My love is for the coral reefs along the coast so that is wherer I usually go.

[whatagain]

Yes Lugg.
Tomorrow we visit Philae then on a boat to Luxor we see Karnak com ombo and Erfud and the temple of Hatshepsut.
More magical moments to come !
Then to the Red Sea - maybe snorkelling.

Up to now it is every moment as fantastic as I had hoped for.

A god I love is Imhotep. Ah no he is an architect and I mean the god Imodium. God of the intestines. What a great god !

[htmb]

Absolutely fabulous photos, whatagain! Many thanks for sharing.