Finally HOME!

What was supposed to be a 17-hour commute that got us home Friday night turned into a 45-hour commute that got us home Saturday night. We had delays in Cairo and Munich, missed our connecting flight in Newark and had to stay overnight there. The next flight wasn't until 2:50 pm Saturday, but that was also delayed and we didn't take off until 4:30 pm. It was an ordeal. Poor J is sick, I'm still getting over a head cold, and we're both jet lagged, but we're happy to be home.

Picking up from where we left off on our last big post, we arrived in Luxor and went to the Colossi of Memnon

and then to the Valley of the Kings. It was amazing - really! We went into 3 tombs - Ramses III, Ramses, VI, and Ramses IX. The few glimpses of colors that we'd seen to that point could not hold a candle to the spectacular colors painted in these tombs - the blues, reds, and yellows - simply beautiful! Photos are not allowed inside the tombs so I just have to try to explain how incredible it was to see carvings and paintings that were done thousands and thousands of years ago and still in bright, vibrant color! It just took my breath away. It was jaw-dropping when you stopped to think about what we were getting to see and how old it was and the people who explored and discovered it all. We had a fantastic time in the Valley of the Kings.

After visiting the Valley we went to an alabaster factory/shop and it was probably the first time on the whole trip of store stops that we didn't buy anything - hahaha! Actually, after we left the "official" tour of the factory we were offered cast-offs of alabaster and J did buy a small piece for the equivalent of 10 cents from one of the kids making the vases and other items.

Back on the bus to the Temple of Hatshepsut, which is just huge! Hatshepsut was the only Egyptian woman to rule Egypt - you may say, "what about Cleopatra?" but Cleopatra was Greek, not Egyptian. Hatshepsut's brother built her this temple and had his own burial temple built near the site.

We walked around the Temple for about 45 minutes and then went to our hotel. It was lunch time so part of the group, who I started to call "the adventurous eight" went to a Koshary place and had a nice meal. Later, the same group went to a fabulous restaurant called Sofra and ate pigeon! It's a luxury in Egypt and we really enjoyed it, even if there isn't much meat on a pigeon. After dinner, some shisha was enjoyed by all (well, all except Jen and two others in our group of eight). Dinner, with appetizers, juice, teas, and shisha was like $12 each! Parts of Egypt are still an incredible bargain.

The next morning we got to sleep in for the first time on the tour. There was an optional tour that left at 7:00 am but we skipped it and instead had a relaxing breakfast and went to the souk (shopping area). After battling our way through the tourist portion (and coming out with an adorable purse) we went through the local bazaar and it was so much fun! We got a hand embroidered lace square for our dining room table and some great pictures:

That afternoon we visited Karnak Temple. One of the James Bond chase scenes from "The Spy Who Loved Me" was filmed there! It was impressive, to say the least, but to be honest, we were all a bit templed-out at that point!

There are temple guides at each one you stop at and most of them are native speakers and very poor. At Karnak one came up to us and offered to show us an area that was gated off due to construction. There were statues behind the gates that were in good shape and he "let" us take pictures of them - for a 5 Egyptian Pound baksheesh (tip) which is less than $1 and well worth it to us.

After visiting the temple, we went to our final group dinner with the entire tour group (which was only 13 including our guide, Sami). It turned out to be a fun dinner and only "the adventurous eight" made it to shisha time, and we had a lot of laughs. We had to get back to the hotel relatively early, though, because we had a 4:45 am wake-up call for our flight from Luxor to Cairo. Upon landing half of us went straight to the hotel, but others were on an optional tour. We were happy to get settled a bit before meeting the rest of the group at the grand bazaar, khan el-khalili. It's a huge shopping district with little restaurants. We knew exactly what we wanted and found it all straight away so we got some lunch at an outdoor cafe and had a nice time sipping fresh mango juice and just watching the world go by (also chasing off flies and cats, but that was only a small part of the experience!). Men kept offering to shine J's shoes and we kept refusing, but he let this one guy do it and the next thing we knew, the man ran off with his shoe! We couldn't imagine what was going on, but about 10 minutes later he came back with it and then took the other one. He insisted that we pay him 1 Euro for the pleasure of almost losing a shoe and we tried to explain that we would pay him 1 Egyptian Pound but he didn't like that at all. In the end we gave him about $5 US which was overpriced but whatever. This was the last time we got to see our guide and we knew we would miss him. He was fantastic! Having an Egyptologist who spoke nearly perfect English as our guide was priceless. Two members of our group got lost but we did find them and they were so embarrassed, but it was a huge souk and not hard to get lost in if you're not careful as all the alleys look alike.

That night "the adventurous eight" headed out for dinner and found a Chili's! We were so happy to have Western food, even if it didn't quite taste like the Chili's at home and they didn't put tequila in the margaritas - it was a real treat!

The next day most of our tour group flew out and we spent the day with a mother/daughter of the group that we'd become friends with and went to the mall - what a mall! Six levels and four wings. You would need two entire days to see every store. They even had the Egyptian version of a super Wal-Mart, called Spinney's and that was huge! It was a fun way to spend the afternoon, in air-conditioned comfort!

We bought a few things and had lunch at a Johnny Rockets (more Western food!). Then we had to say our good-byes and transfer to our final hotel, the Radisson Blu, which was, as said on our previous post, just fabulous!

Once we're both recovered from colds and jet lag we'll get lots more pictures posted and relive the trip a bit more. Thanks to everyone who has tuned into our blog so far - hope you've enjoyed it!