Travels

After a dusty morning traipsing around tombs and temples, the Winter Palace Gardens were a delightful escape from the afternoon heat. We enjoyed a tasty lunch at the poolside restaurant, watching other mad dog tourists bake in the midday sun. Wandering the grounds after lunch felt a bit like stepping into Wonderland.  After lunch we … Read more

Tuesday morning we left the hotel at 6:30 am to ferry across the to the West Bank for a visit to the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings and the mortuary temple of Hatshepsut (Deir el Bahri).   We hooked up with a lovely, chatty taxi driver from Gurna (the settlement that was on … Read more

We arrived in Luxor shortly after dawn on Monday, May 1, only 1 hour late, which is pretty good for an Egyptian train. Wast, the ancient Egyptian name for the city, was the capital of ancient Egypt from ~ 1500 BCE to ~ 1100 BCE. This was the age of empire, when Egypt controlled large … Read more

On Sunday, after a traditional breakfast of taameya and fuul, we walked down Sharia Al Manial to the Prince Mohamed Ali/Manial Palace and Museum, just a 1.5 km walk from Moshi’s house.  We walked along Sharia Al Manial, the main arterial street for the island of Roda. It runs mostly N-S and  curves on the east … Read more

On Saturday we visited Saqqara, my favorite cemetery in Cairo. For more than 8000 years, people have been burying their deceased loved ones along the west bank of the Nile opposite what is today the Cairo megalopolis. Archeologists have identified more than 30 miles of cemeteries stretching from Abu Rawash on the north to Medium … Read more