We left our apartment at 6:30: am, enough time to hike to the bus and get there by 7. We had walked a half block when a taxi came by and couldn't resist hailing it. The taxi got us to the bus early, so we had our choice of seats, in the front.
Driving south, with the Dead sea on our left and the bare hills of the wilderness on our right, we encountered places where the wadis had washed mud and rocks across the road. The bus would bounce and rock it's way slowly across the slippery mess. We crossed the Suez Canal by tunnel and when we came out on the African side we saw a beautiful sunset (picture 5326).
Our (five star) Hotel in Cairo was a five minute walk to The Pyramids and we could see them from our balcony. Yes, the school was able to up grade and the hotels we stayed in were five star. Our sleeper compartments on the train were first class. No complaints about the food or accommodations!! Because of September 11, tourism has dropped off and the better hotels are willing to match the prices of less expensive hotels. After Cairo and a train ride, our next stop was in Aswan, this hotel is on an island in the Nile river and we reached it by boat. Our balcony looked out over the river with the wilderness mountains beyond. Aswan is very pretty and I wish we could have stayed longer. After Aswan was Luxor, this hotel also looked out over the Nile but was in town.
In all of these places we visited antiquity sites, temples and castles and tomes. We saw museums, poor sections of town and affluent parts of town. Shopping in the towns was fun but the merchants at the tourist sites were a nascence. The little children were cute (dirty and barefooted but with smiling eyes), they would come up to us with their hands out, some would say "Bin Laden is bad, America is good!" in hopes of getting on our good side.
Sunset in Africa
Don and I
Don in a tomb in one of the pyramids
Down a Cairo street to see a church
Ruins
If you want to know specifics about where these places are you will have to ask Don, he keeps it all straight better than I do. I took some pictures with my little Elph camera but am waiting until we get to the US to have them developed.
Only 12 days until we leave for the good old US of A.
Shalom.............Bernice