Our plan had been to just hire one way cabs and find another driver when we were ready to leave each spot, but apparently we were the first fare our driver had gotten in 48 hours. He was determined to drive us around for the whole day, offering to wait outside the monuments for us while we toured and then taking us on to our next destination. By this point in the trip, though, we had learned that we didn't want *anyone* to do us ANY favors. We had learned an important Egyptian word - baksheesh.
There's really no good English translation for this baksheesh, though the closest is probably "tip" or "bribe". However, neither word really directly correlates, because a tip is optional and the men who were doing us "special favors" (ie, giving us a beat-up piece of cardboard to fan ourselves in the tombs, opening up previously locked doors, encouraging us to disregard the posted "no photos" signs and snap away) clearly did not consider our payment to be optional. Also, a bribe is such a negative word in America, but here it's just a regular part of the lifestyle. So much so that we eventually learned to walk out of the house with small Egyptian bills in our pockets, just so we'd have something to give them when their palms came out. They weren't begging, certainly, because they were "providing a service" (however small), but by the time we'd been there several days, we were worn out from the expectation of always having to throw around our pocket money, if anything just to get a determined someone to go away!
Luxor Temple was the site of one of Egypt's most important festivals, and this large temple area on the banks of the Nile had been expanded several times by various pharaohs. The Opet festival was a reaffirmation of the Pharaoh's authority and was celebrated each summer by parading three important statues of their gods back from the temple of Karnak to their "home" at the Luxor Temple. The cult priests would actually carry the statues on their shoulders down the "Avenue of Sphinxes" - approx 3 kilometers, stopping to rest along the way at various shrines.
The massive columns were all exquisitely carved, and the amount of ruins scattered nearby hinted at what a beautiful site this must have been in its heyday.
Given that we spent this day touring on our own, we relied on guide books and spent a few minutes at each site reminding ourselves of what we'd heard the day before from our great guide, Mike. Plus it gave us a chance to enjoy the rare shady coolness.
One of the interesting bits of this area was the 14th century Mosque perched two or three stories above the temple level. It hangs over one of the courtyards showing just how high the rubble had been buried, before this temple area was rediscovered and excavated in the 1800's.
These "guides" were sitting in the shade outside of a room that supposedly featured a painted image of Alexander the Great dressed as an Egyptian pharaoh. We avoided them (clearly, baksheesh workers) and decided we were okay missing Pharaoh Alex.
Another little tidbit - the top of this carved dome inset is covered with a Roman era fresco. It was completely strange to me to think about the Romans coming in and redecorating this monument that, at the time, would have already been a thousand years old! Roman graffiti!
It's good that we started the day with Luxor Temple and finished at Karnak, because by comparison, Karnak is an elephant and Luxor is a mouse.
One of our guide books described the Temples of Karnak as the place where, for over 1500 years, "pharaohs vied for the gods' attention by outdoing each other's architectural feats". Well, yep, that pretty much sums it up! This massive complex of statues, temples, sanctuaries, pylons and obelisks covers more than 2 square kilometers and is large enough to house 10 sizable cathedrals. It's main building is the largest religious building in the world - ever. The scale is just impossible to envision... I kept wondering when we'd get to the end, and after two hours of touring in basically one section in a straight line we couldn't even see the end of it. I'm guessing we saw less than a tenth of the whole thing.
We spent our time in the Amun Temple Enclosure, their holy of holies, if you will. My favorite section of this was the Great Hypostyle Hall which felt like a forest of giant columns, all topped with papyrus-shaped sculptures. This hall was incredibly big - enough space to hold both St Peters in Rome and St Pauls in London. The combination of the size of the pillars, the sheer quantity of them, and then intricate carvings that went on and on was an overwhelming sight. There were several places in this hall where the colors were just as bright and vivid as when they were painted by Ramses II's workers in 1225 BC. I loved it.
Obelisks were sort of common place there... even the really really tall ones!
Another favorite for me at this site was the Festival Hall of Tuthmosis III. It's a huge banqueting hall with columns imitating tent poles, perhaps referencing this pharaoh's frequent military expeditions. In it, I discovered one of the earliest forms of one of my favorite old things - a blue painted ceiling dotted with gold stars! Many sites in Europe that I just love echo this same ceiling pattern. It was fantastic to realize that this design dates back to Pharaonic times.
This is the point as which I cried Uncle and asked if anyone minded if we turned back. We were probably less than a mile from the entrance, but I thought I might get desperate trying to keep up with any more Setis and Ramseses and Sesostris. I just held up my camera and shot this photo into the distance - all the things we weren't going to see up close. My eyes were starting to cross.
I tried to capture the scope of the complex on our way back to the entrance. I believe I failed, but this was as close as I could get...
The Ancient Forum in Rome looks like a puddle compared to this ocean of ruins and relics - it was really amazing. But at this point, I was just done.
Unfortunately, that afternoon was my only real disappointment from the trip. We had planned to visit the widely respected Luxor Museum, supposedly the best collection of Egyptian antiquities in the world. We arrived out front only to discover that they had closed late for lunch (3-5pm?!) and wouldn't open again until we had to head to the airport for our flight back to Cairo. All of us were sad to miss this world class museum, particularly since we had already checked out of our hotel rooms. But in the end we enjoyed hanging out at our hotel lobby, playing games with Brooks and lounging in the air conditioning!
These gentlemen were outside our hotel entrance every day in Luxor and would strike up their songs every time a guest came to or left the hotel. On our last day there, Brooks and Dad joined the band, much to my delight...
That night, we flew back to Cairo and checked into a very nice hotel in the middle of the city center. We had rooms overlooking the Nile and felt like we had moved into the Ritz! This was our view...
It was a beautiful retreat from the hectic foreign feeling of the city, to stay in a fancy Western style hotel. We spent a great night getting recharged for our last full day in Egypt.
We started the next day at the Egyptian Museum of Cairo, a museum which was both truly amazing and quite disappointing. I don't have photos of the exhibits as cameras weren't allowed, but there were several spectacular highlights...
First, the Tut rooms were amazing and we saw some beautiful treasures. His sarcophagi and all his jewelry were in a special room with more than the usual limited descriptions. Even though this area was crowded, it was air conditioned so it was actually much more pleasant than much of the rest of the building. His other treasures, chariots, clothes, underwear, floral arrangements, beds, statues, food containers, etc were all spread out in long gallery cases in the rest of that wing. Over these cases, enormous photos were hung showing what the tomb looked like when it was discovered in the 1920's. To find everything piled up inside the tomb in such a chaotic fashion must have been really bizarre, but I really enjoyed searching for various items in the gallery that I had spotted in the photos.
Second, the Royal Mummy Room was incredible. The mummies of 25 or so pharaohs were laid out with details about the man and his reign. Using our guidebook we were able to piece together stories about many of them - how they died, how they lived, and compare them to their sons and fathers in the next case. It was well-worth the extra ticket.
In addition to that, they had tens of thousands of relics, statues and other bits of history. Unfortunately, the museum itself is pretty ancient (Egypt's been a tourist destination for a long, long time) and the combination of dim lighting, no air conditioning, and the extremely limited exhibit explanations left me wanting to became a museum curate so I could overhaul the entire collection. Thankfully, a revamp of the museum is apparently in the works - it will be good to bring Brooks back one day to learn and see more.
This was actually the one photo that I stealthily snapped inside the museum. When at one point we divided up, Dad and Brooks took a short break and waited for us in the upstairs lobby. When Mom and I came out of the Mummy Room, we couldn't find Dad, and I thought that's funny, I'm sure he said he was going to hang right here. After 15 seconds of scanning the crowd, I heard my Dad's big laugh coming from the middle of a huge gaggle of giggly children and their happy mommas. I walked over and there was Dad, sitting down next to Brooks in his stroller, grinning. All around both of them were these precious families all playing with Brooks, saying hello, giving high fives, handing him pastries and other treats, adoring their new little friend. I couldn't believe it and Brooks seemed a bit stunned, too! By the time I decided it was worth the risk to sneak a photo, several of the women & kids had already drifted away but can't you just feel the happiness and energy in this group?! It was a fantastic moment!
That afternoon was another trip highlight for me but in a very different way. As we researched our vacation, I got really excited about seeing Old Islamic Cairo and looked forward to touring the inside of a mosque. Several were closed to women, or to Westerners, or to non-Muslims, but some were open. We started our visit to this section of the city at the Al-Azhar Mosque, one of Egypt's oldest (founded in AD 970), and the highest theological authority for Egyptian Sunni Muslims.
I wasn't sure what would happen as we walked in, because I suspected that as a Western woman with my uncovered head I would not be allowed free reign of the place. We were immediately approached by one of several men who were hanging out by a case full of shoes and sandals. They were apparently waiting just for us! One of them offered to escort us around the mosque, another came to take our shoes, another picked up a beat up box of scarves and plucked two out and handed one to me and mom. We tried not to think of the last time they were laundered. The man who was to give us a tour then came over to me and started motioning to my stomach. I wasn't sure what he was trying to say, until I realized he was concerned that my midriff might at some point be exposed. I was wearing long pants and a long sleeve linen shirt (my uniform for the trip to protect against sunburn) so I was a bit startled that I didn't immediately pass inspection. Eventually he left me alone about my outfit, but not before I was a bit concerned that I'd have to wear a full burqa during our tour or something.
Our first stop was in the room that was functioning as a study library ... This mosque is the home of the world's second oldest learning institution. Old books on low shelves, wooden reading tables and ornate decor all jumped out at me. This photo was clearly posed by our guide, my first glimpse that perhaps he wasn't showing us around out of the goodness of his heart. He actually paused to go fetch a vase of plastic flowers to put on the table. And then ... he did it again. Two vases of plastic flowers. And us nervously wondering - what's next? The mosaic & columns in the cut out behind us are some of the mosque's most celebrated features. This is a particularly beautiful mihrab, a niche indicating the direction of Mecca by which the faithful can line up to pray.
From there we entered a long corridor filled with dusty sunlight and cats which led to the woman's prayer hall. Mom and I were invited to peek inside and several families (mommas and a handful of children) were all sitting on the floor, talking or playing quietly amongst themselves. The guide told us that with the theological school here, many men bring their families to come study and this is a place where the women can spend their day. Really? It seemed dark and depressing and confined to me.
After walking through this bright courtyard...
we entered this huge dimly lit prayer hall. Our guide immediately brought us over to a bookcase and gave us about 10 or 12 different books and tracks about the Muslim faith - including a special book for me and Mom entitled "Women and the Koran". Wow. I was really a bit startled to find that most of the men inside weren't in fact praying in this room, they were actually just lounging or snoozing away the hot afternoon hours. The pattern in the carpet was consistent throughout the enormous room (this picture shows less than a fourth of the room's footprint - 1000s of men could pray in here at any given time), and was designed to mimic individual prayer rugs. The head of the one praying would bow towards Mecca and touch the ground inside the rounded top. Note the resting faithful who didn't seem at all bothered when our guide flipped a switch and the dim electric lights flickered on.
It was at this point that our guide took us into a back room to show us some famous detail that I've forgotten. While we were hidden away, he took that moment to ask us if we were enjoying the tour and if we liked everything that we'd seen. He held his hand out. Ahh, this was the baksheesh request. Eric pulled out his wallet and paid the man 50 Egyptian pounds, about $10 total. The man looked at the money, shook his head, and gave Eric a pointed look that easily translated to "Ahh, come on. Is that it?! Is this all my mosque is worth to you!?" I was a bit floored by his greedy attitude but Eric calmly put his money back in his pocket and we walked out of the room. We whispered awkwardly as we walked back through the prayer hall - was that not enough? did we insult him? what did you offer? why didn't he take it?! What do we do now?!?!
The five minarets of this mosque are particularly famous, as each of them was added by a different sultan or emir during his reign, placing his name and mark on the famous building. At the end of our tour we climbed the newest (c 1510) and tallest tower with its double finial with our guide - thankfully he allowed us to put our shoes back on before heading up the hundreds of steps. He made a really big deal of requesting the "special keys" from the caretaker (another hint that he was expecting extraordinary baksheesh!) We discovered halfway up that there were zero lights in the tower stairwell, so after we had climbed above the shafts of light that broke through from the occasional open window, the guide struck some matches to provide a tiny bit of light on the stairs. It was pretty comical. Needless to say, we were glad when we stepped out into the sunshine and enjoyed the hot wind on our faces.
My mom, as always, was a trooper! (The guide allowed us to remove our scarfs on the stairs as it was so hot and we were alone).
The tower we climbed is on the left, but this is taken from the roof of the seminary, so the ground level is several stories below us.
Now the tour was really ending, and our guide waited again for us to acknowledge him with baksheesh - it seemed so obviously manipulative. So we paid him a much larger amount which he graciously accepted with thanks. We all took our shoes back off (so as to not walk across a prayer area with shoes on) and followed him to the front entry to turn in our head scarves.
I must say that that was one of most uncomfortable moments of the trip for me. We had not known what the appropriate amount of baksheesh should be. We appreciated his time and information, but I felt very taken advantage of that no price was quoted up front. It seemed like each time we turned a corner, or every time he pointed out another detail, our bill clicked higher and higher. In the end, we chose to be overly generous so as to not have our "gift" rejected again. Even still, I was sure that giving all we had seen, the price was totally worth it. But I'm sure I would have rather bought a TICKET than have to deal with all of that. I left with a yucky taste in my mouth, despite the beautiful, incredibly unique sights.
From there we were back in the sunshine and out onto the street, so we got a lot of water, and headed across the street and into the Khan al-Khalili, the great bazaar!
One of the world's most famous bazaars, street vendors have been selling their wares here since the market was built in the 14th century. Some of the districts (particularly the gold section) are still the prime place for thousands of locals to do their shopping. We wandered into a huge fabric section that sent Mom and I into sneezing fits, browsed down the gold street (until we stopped and asked prices and realized we were wasting our time!), poked our heads into the copper smiths with wire and discs of copper piled to the ceiling and ended our tour in the spice district. The haze and the smell of the spices were both really intense, and Mom and Eric (with Brooks) zipped on ahead but Dad and I hung back, checking out the barrels and baskets of mysterious herbs and roots and powders and nuts. It was fascinating!
In the category of things that would not happen in America, we have another really fun story that none of us will forget! Leaving the market area, we were all hot and tired and hungry and just spent. We finally caught a cab and windows rolled down, crammed into yet another beater of a taxi, we inched along in Cairo's rush hour traffic, bumper to bumper and mirror to mirror with all the cars squeezing out into the major road. All of a sudden Brooks looked out the window and saw the next car's driver smiling at him while he munched away on some snacks. He had two boys in the back seat who were fascinated by the four of us (me, mom, Eric and Brooks) crowded into the back seat. The father leaned out of the window and handed Brooks one of whatever he was eating... it looked like a puffy cheeto, maybe? Brooks reached out and took it and ate it and gave him a big smile before his car inched forward and away from us. The boys turned around in the backseat and waved goodbye. Brooks loved the treat and kept pointing to the car, saying More! More! Moments later, the traffic shifted again, and we found ourselves pulling alongside of this family. Brooks asked "more?" and the father leaned over and gave Brooks a whole handful of his snack, much to the delight of both families. We shouted "shukran!" - Arabic for thank you - as his car pulled away, laughing as we all waved goodbye.
That five minute interaction with the other driver and his children will always be one of my favorite memories from our whole trip.
Our final night in Egypt ended up being really special. After a solid week of no salad or cut fruit or fresh anything, I was getting kind of tired of the same menu choices. We had eaten just as many different Egyptian versions of Western food as I could stand, and nothing sounded particularly appealing to me. But Eric wisely chose Sultana, the hotel's Middle Eastern restaurant and we loved it. The food was great, the service was perfect, the fish tank proved hugely entertaining for Brooks, and we loved hearing the live music from the stage just behind me.
Brooks generally did fine with the long seated dinners, but when he got restless, we walked over and looked at the aquarium and made a few fish faces.
Before the band members went on a break, they invited Brooks up on stage to play their guitar and tambourine a bit. He absolutely loved it!
Our final morning in Egypt we spent exploring the Coptic, or Christian, section of the city. After the decline of the pharaohs and before the dawn of Islam, Egypt was Christian, but now only a handful of the original 20 plus churches remain. That morning, however, it seemed to me that the narrow cobbled streets and alleyways had a peace and calmness that the rest of the city lacked.
Part of the fun was using public transportation to get there! Eric and I loved figuring out the train system, maps, tickets, etc. I suspect that by the end of our trip Mom and Dad would have been happy to spring for a cab, but then we would have missed seeing the segregated train cars (oops, that one's for women only!) and the stares we received when Mom and I boarded the co-ed train car with Dad and Eric and Brooks. I was fascinated by this glimpse into "real life Cairo" and the different people we saw there... everyone was very helpful, trying to make sure we knew where to go. Lots of people stared at Brooks in his backpack and wanted to make him smile or laugh.
Our main destination in the Coptic part of town was the Hanging Church, a 9th century structure built on top of a pair of old Roman gates. With several additions and "updates" the entire building was a bit of a mishmash, but the sanctuary itself felt like Noah's ark turned upside down. A heavy wooden barrel-vaulted roof and delicate ivory carvings were just a few of the details that we loved behind this gorgeous mosaic entry way.
Inside we were approached by this lovely Christian woman, who seemed to be spending her day inside the church awaiting guests.
She offered us a *free* (really free? yes, really, free!!) tour of the church, if we so desired, and it ended up being another one of my highlights from the trip. This gentle woman had such an obvious pride in the beautiful building and she enjoyed pointing out the many details and the deep symbolism of each object. There was quite a lot of ivory inlay and she explained the design of this Coptic cross and why it's shaped the way that it is. In the center is the Cross of Christ. The three tips at the end of the four equal legs symbolize the Holy Trinity - Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The twelve points represent the Apostles that took the Good News to the nations. The four separate "arrows" pointing into the center of the cross are the Four Gospels, accounts of Jesus' life and death.
This beautifully inlaid pulpit, used only on Palm Sunday, has 13 thin columns. Our guide told us that they symbolized Jesus and his disciples, the darkest one being Judas.
The baptismal font was tucked into a private area in the back, it seemed like such an intimate spot, and I loved the light pouring in from the window.
The dark wood pews had fish symbols carved into each back rest.
I loved meeting another believer from the other side of the world, a woman who like me celebrated Christmas and Easter and not Opet or Ramadan. She was friendly, and informed, and welcoming and I was so glad for her tour that I would have happily paid her baksheesh if she would have accepted it!! Ironic, that was the only time it wasn't encouraged.
The rest of our time in Coptic Cairo was spent finding smaller and older churches, including one which - according to "tradition" - is built over a crypt in which the Holy Family stayed during their flight to Egypt when Jesus was a child. We also visited a beautiful synagogue - the country's oldest - which is built next door to a spring, supposedly the site where Pharaoh's daughter found Moses in the reeds. Pretty amazing to be in the same spots where so much Biblical action took place!
Soon, it was time to pack up and head home. The lobby of our last hotel had great big wide staircases and fun marble ramps to play on. Brooks enjoyed getting some of his wiggles out as he waited with Gramma for the taxi to take us back to the airport.
One final photo - Brooks had grown so accustomed to making friend with complete strangers while we were in Egypt that the Zurich airport was really boring on our return trip. He kept walking through our gate area, saying hello and waving to his fellow passengers (like a politician? a celebrity?) and getting little to ZERO response. I actually felt a little bit sad for him, as he was clearly trying to make friends and not really getting anywhere with the other mostly European, very reserved passengers. So we waved to him and gave him lots of high fives and smiled and hugged and did all of those things to make up for the missing enthusiastic hordes of Egyptians. Once again, I must say that my child was an ambassador for world peace on our trip.
