OUR TRIP TO EGYPT!! Aswan and the Abu Simbel Sun Festival

One reason I chose the tour company I did and went to Egypt at the time we did is because it was during the time of the Abu Simbel Sun Festival. Abu Simbel consists of two temples carved into the sides of mountains in 1264BC down at the very southern tip of Egypt near the border with Sudan. Twice a year at the spring and autumn equinoxes the sun is positioned just right so that it illuminates the statues of three gods at the very interior of the temple.

Bright and early (4am) we were picked up from our hotel to take us to the airport where we boarded an Egyptair plane to fly from Cairo to Aswan.

 It was only about an hour and a half flight.

 We went directly to our hotel. This was the view of the Nile River we had out of our hotel window.

 We went to see the High Dam of Aswan, which was the highest dam in the world when it was built across the Nile in the 1960's.

I tried to get an artsy picture with the flowering bush in front of the dam, which I think is much prettier than the view above.

 Our next stop was at the Philae Temple, which was on an island. It had to be moved when the dam was built because the location where it was became underwater.

 An impressive entry way.

Our tour guide pointed out and explained several of the hieroglyphics to us.

 A nice photo spot.

I added this photo of the map to show how far we traveled from Cairo down to Aswan, and from there we rode all night about 190 miles on a small bus without a bathroom down to the temple of Abu Simbel. We were given a box breakfast/lunch to eat on the trip.

We got on our bus at 11:15pm and arrived at 4:15am and our first stop was to use the restrooms.

Then we got in line with thousands of other people from all over the world-not only Egyptians- to wait our turn to enter the temple.

 The sunlight hitting the interior of the temple happened right at sunrise, which is why we had to be there so early.
                            
 We watched the sun rise over Lake Nasser as we waited to enter the temple.

Here's what it looked like as we were going towards the entrance,

 and here's what the phenomenon looked like once we got inside.

 It reminded me of going to see the Mona Lisa at the Louvre in Paris with huge crowds of people all jostling and shoving, trying to get to the front to get the best view.

It was pretty crazy, so Kent and I didn't get any pictures of us by the statues. There were workers inside hustling everyone to keep them moving.  I'm photo bombing Lissa and Jason's picture below.

 The best view I got without lots of arms and phones in the picture.

 Since we were close to the end of the line, we got back in line and went through the temple again after we'd been rushed through, and this is what the statues look like the rest of the year, illuminated with artificial lighting.

This was another room in the temple, covered with the ubiquitous hieroglyphics.

  Some of the detail of the temple on the outside of the entrance.

 It was a truly magnificent structure and we took tons of pictures. Unfortunately the sun was right in our eyes as we took pictures after most of the crowds had left. Our tour guide gave us some information about the

 Beside the larger temple there was a smaller one to the right of it, dedicated to the wives of the Pharaoh. We went inside the smaller temple, too, and then our tour guide gave us some information about the temples and their significance. We spent about four hours at Abu Simbel.

The last three pictures represent the scenery we saw out the windows of our bus as we drove back up to Aswan.

 It was some of the bleakest and most desolate landscape I've ever seen.

 What I don't have pictures of are the speed bumps and the several security checkpoints we had to pass through on the road. It took us four hours to drive those 190 miles.

We'd been on a cramped bus without access to a bathroom for eight hours, and so almost everyone was pretty tired, hungry and cranky by the time we finally arrived back at our hotel.  At the hotel we picked up our luggage and were taken to the cruise ship that would take us to different ports along the Nile River for the next three days.

OUR TRIP TO EGYPT!! The Pyramids and Cairo

Get ready for lots of pictures of pyramids!! 

 On October 19th Kent and I boarded a plane that flew from Virginia to Cairo, via Paris. We had a layover of about three hours in Paris, but the part of the Charles DeGaulle airport we were in was very boring--not even a place to buy a croissant or a baguette- so I didn't take any pictures. We spent most of our time in Paris sleeping, then had a 41/2 hour flight down to Cairo, arriving at 9:30pm.

 

 The good news was that you could see the great pyramid of Giza from our hotel--the bad news was that it was on the opposite side of the city from the airport, so we had quite a drive through crazy city traffic to get to our hotel.

After breakfast at the hotel and meeting up with our travel companions, Lissa and Jason, and Nick and Donna (our friends from Stafford) we met our Egyptian tour guide at 7:30am so we could be at the pyramids when they opened at 8am.

 Seeing them in person after seeing them in pictures for so many years was an AMAZING experience.

 We made lots of stops and took LOTS of pictures. These were taken in front of the stones at the bases of the pyramid of Giza.

                                Jason, Lissa, Nick and I climbed up inside the pyramid. On the left is the view at the top of the stairs looking down. On the right is what the room looked like at the top of the pyramid. We got very sweaty climbing up all those stairs in the airless pyramid.

 
 Next we had the opportunity to take a camel ride.

 Only Lissa and Jason decided to do it, but I regret not taking the camel ride. It would have been awesom to have a picture of Kent and I on camels with the pyramids in the background!!

Kent brought calzador with him to be in some photos with the pyramids.

 We were only about 15 minutes from the city, but these photos make it look like we're out in the middle of nowhere.

 Next we went to see the sphinx.

 Many more photos were taken.....

                              

This is the picture we used on our Christmas card for 2018.

                                          
 I liked this one because some of the original paint is visible on the back of the head.

Our tour guide is explaining about the stonework of the structure next to the sphinx, and how they all fit together.

 The Stinsons and us having some fun peeking out from behind the stones.

After visiting the pyramids we went to the Coptic Christian part of Cairo.

 We visited two old Christian churches and a synagogue.

 One of the Christian churches had some pretty mosaics on the walls outside the entrance.

 Naturally the image of "flight to Egypt" was a popular theme.

 Here's another version that was over a doorway.

 This was the entrance to the church that had the mosaics on the walls.

 The interior was beautiful, too.

This is called the Coptic cross, and it was carved into the walls of the church.

 I'm sure this is like most places in Israel where they don't really know where an event happened, but they want to have a shrine so they choose a place and claim it happened there.

 I really wanted an Egyptian nativity set, and I figured the Christian section of town would be my best bet, but it was not to be. I purchased the "Flight into Egypt" on papyrus below at one of the gift shops inside the church, which was the best I could do.

Speaking of papyrus, we went to a papyrus shop where we we given a demonstration on how to make papyrus. It was interesting, and of course they had lots of prints on papyrus for sale.

A view of some of the city streets as we drove by.

 Many of the areas reminded us of our trip to India several years ago.

The Nile River intersects the city of Cairo, so rode over it on a bridge several times.

We had lunch on a boat in the Nile River. On the left is the exterior of the boat. For lunch we had chicken  and pictured on the right are some of the varieties of hummus we ate with large discs of warm flat bread.

Our second to last stop of the day was the Cairo Museum of Antiquities,

 or the Egyptian Museum.

It was filled with a mind boggling collection of statues and artifacts.

                                                       

Pictured below is one of the gold boxes found in King Tut's tomb. I was glad I'd seen the shiny new replica on display in Portland, Oregon the weekend before!

 No pictures of King Tut's mask were allowed in the special room where it was on display, so I took this photo from the outside. Again, I was glad to have seen a shiny new replica the week before.

 Jason in the museum.

 The photo on the right was pointed out to us because of the difference in the skin tones of the two figures seated right next to each other. The photo on the right shows some of the other statues on display.

The Egyptian Museum was a disappointment because the artifacts were displayed in cases that were dusty and in disrepair. It was built in 1887 so the artifacts aren't displayed to their best advantage. We saw where a fabulous new museum is being built to replace the old one, so I suppose that's why not much effort is being made to keep things clean and repaired. Lissa, Jason, Kent and I paid extra to see the "mummy room" where actual pharaohs and their queens from thousands of years ago are preserved in controlled conditions, but no photos were allowed in there.

Our last stop of the day was the old shopping bazaar area of the city where we could look for souvenirs.
                        
 Again I kept my eyes open for nativity sets, but of course didn't have any luck.

                                  We only lasted about 30 minutes of shopping because we were all pretty tuckered out after a very long day of sight seeing!