Big fat Punjabi wedding day 2

First a note of clarification, while this was my second day of involvement in the wedding, it had been going on for several days before I got invited to play along, but I got to see some of the most important stuff. For day two for me we were attending the reception at the San Francisco design center. We arrived at 6:30, the designated start time to be wowed by the size and setup of the venue. We could choose any table among the second, third or fourth floor, and chose something right in front of the stage on the third floor. We were eventually joined by a nice couple who travel a lot because they are self described "UNESCO Junkies", and a few more of W's co workers. UNESCO tourism does give me some ideas about trip itinerary planning for the future, but that will come later. What would have been sufficient food for dinner turned to be just the appetizer, and dinner was finally open for business sometime after 9:00 p.m. There was traditional dancing, and a DJ spinning a mix of Hip hop, a tribute to Michael Jackson, and traditional Punjabi music. The music was loud, and the dance floor was rocking with people fueled up on delicious Indian cuisine, and free flowing alcohol. In addition to the robust sound system, up to three drummers were adding to the beat. I might not ever get the sounds of those drums out of my head, but they made it impossible to sit still in your chair. As with almost anything in life, if one person is doing something, there are surely hundreds of others out there on the internet uploading videos of themselves doing the same thing. A quick google search finds me this video of someone playing a Bhangra Dhol over a hip hop hit, turning a song I don't like very much into something I can't stop listening to. We didn't leave until after midnight, and could have stayed much longer had both W and I not had to work on Sunday. The food was awesome, the dancing was fun to watch, and even more fun to participate in, and I recommend you go out and find yourself some cardamom flavored ice cream, it is delicious. Just in case your curious I've only been to 11 of the 145 UNESCO sites, I guess that means I've got some work to do.

My 2 days as an honorary Punjabi

Last weekend was dedicated to exploring the bay area, and this weekend we spent time diving into the unique mix of cultures you can find here. W. has a co- worker who's daughter was getting married, and we were lucky enough to get invited. Part of her adventure last week was going to pick up some appropriate gear to wear for a Friday morning ceremony, and a Saturday reception. So with W. in her new red Salwar Kameez, and me in a suit with matching red tie, off we went to the Gudwara Sahib, Fremont, not knowing exactly what to expect. We were told to arrive early because we needed to be there in time to see the groom come in on a white horse, so when we pulled up nice and early, and I immediatley got put in a bright pink head scarf, and and a pink corsage. In a Sikh place of worship, you remove your shoes, and cover your head, and since I was part of the brides party, the pink accessories were compulsory, but I was certainly not alone in my pink gear, and I'm the kind of guy who's more than willing to do as. We were lead to food almost immediately, there were huge trays of samosas, and chick peas, and a few other Indian snacky foods. Finally when the party seemed to be growing quite large, you could hear drumming and singing in the distance. The groom and his half of the party numbering another couple hundred strong slowly made their way to the Gudwar. There was a ceremonial exchange of gifts between the families that took place on the front steps, and then all of the grooms family were invited in for snacks too. We helped ourselves to another round of snacks and then took our floor seats inside. Fortunately some more of W's co-workers arrived so I had a guy to sit with since men and women sit on separate sides inside. The ceremony was loooooong, and includes 4 laps around the main altar for the bride and groom. Making it seem even longer was that every word sung or spoken was in Punjabi, so I sat there dumstruck looking at all the colors and pageantry. The carpet inside is well padded, but any time over 30 minutes on the floor is a long time. The final part of the ceremony is the passing out of a customary sweet, Karah Prashad, that is mixed and distributed by hand, and was strange but tasty. After the ceremony a full, but vegetarian lunch was served, and we hung out for a while afterward, but eventually left right around the time the bride and groom were to take off. The full description of what happens in a Sikh wedding is here.

Lots of reasons you should come visit

The most fun thing about living in the bay area is all the cool stuff we get to go do when people come visit us. This weekend we got a visit from one of W's sisters, and we moved all over town making sure she had a quality visit. So we started Friday night at the Bachhus wine making club, Where there was a delicious tasting going on. The concept was pretty cool, you buy by the half barrel, they bottle up your goods and put a customized label on it. The wines they have vary in quality and character, but there were some very good ones. After wine, we made our way to Berkeley and chowed down on some Zachary's Pizza. We elected for a half Caesar, and a large Deep dish with sun dried tomatoes and salami. As usual it was worth the trip. Saturday we got up early (by our standards of course) and made the drive up to Napa. On the way through we noted that there was a sonic in american canyon, that might warrant a stop on the way home. Our first stop was at Mumm Napa, the official wine of Jason and W. The tastings there are reasonably priced for wines that we knew we loved, so we picked up a few on the way out, and made our way to some lunch. Travel/Foodie friend Steve recommended that we eat at Cindy's Backstreet Kitchen. I started with a mojito, and W had what is quite possibly the best bloody mary in the universe. For lunch I had a seared ahi tuna salad, W had an amazin "Adult" grilled cheese sandwich with fig jam, and Mel had a really wonderful curry chicken. We sprung for dessert too, havina a strawberry crisp, pineapple upside down cake and this wonderful lemon cake a la mode that was just incredible. Next we were off to Clos Du Val, but since we'd seen them along the way, we stopped at Folie A deux, and the Cosentino Winery. We do really like Folie A Deux's Menage A Trois wine, but the tasting room was charging above retail for it, and their other wines were only average. W discovered Cosentino long ago while waiting for a table at nearby Mustard's, so we stopped in specifically to grab a couple of bottle of their "The Zin" wine, and try some of the other delicious wines they had available to sample. We moved next to Clos Du Val, which wins the prize for prettiest setting, and their wines are spectacular. They could sell wine that good from the back of a truck and it would still be great. We made a final move to the Vintner's Collective, and tried some really good wine there too, but by then the triple digit temperatures were starting to weigh pretty heavily on our tasting team, and we decided to skip our final planned stop and start working our way home. We stopped at that sonic on the way back to get some junk food, and a delicious cherry lime aide. Some time during my stop at sonic I managed to drop my wallet, and didn't realize it was missing until Sunday when I went to work, but I'll get back to that. We came home tired and had leftover zachary's for dinner and crashed pretty hard. For the record I was the DD, tasting a lot more wine than I drank.... safety first! W and Mel went shopping on Sunday back in Berkeley for an Item we needed for a special event coming up this weekend (details to come after Saturday) I was supposed to join them to come check out the international food festival, but I was busy looking around the house for my wallet. Finally I called the last place I remembered having it, the Sonic in American Canyon. Turns out they had it in their safe, just waiting for me to come back and get it. We had some time to kill before dinner, so we drove back up there to get it. It turns out some jerk lifted the $20 I had in there, and tossed it in the garbage. Fortunately a car hop was nice enough to rescue it and turn it in. So if you eat at the Sonic in American Canyon, California; Tip Big! they deserve it. We drove directly back to San Francisco to grab dinner at our must bring restaurant, Tomasso's. The wait for a table was 45 minutes, so we had time to go see one of our favorite wine maker's new ventures, the Vin Club. We've been a fan of Vin Nostro wines for a few years now, and are glad we have a new place to go drink them whenever we feel like it. We got back to Tomasso's and got seated at a booth! We really enjoyed our dinner and had their always wonderful tiramisou for dessert, and finally tried the creme brulee, which is just as good.
Monday we went for the final bay area delight, a burger from In N Out. I'm trying not to think about the number of calories we went through, but when visitors come we have to go all out. Stay tuned next week when we reveal the mystery item purchased someplace in Berkeley and why we need it.

Jordan Day 3 Floating in the dead sea

On our third day in Jordan our trusty cab picked us up at 9:30 and we started off on the drive to the Jordan Valley and the dead sea. The ride takes you up the gorgeous kings Highway, which early on in the trip runs you by Shobak Castle, an old crusader castle that underwent a famously long siege by our friend Salah Al Din, you'll remember he's the guy responsible for the citadel in Cairo too. There were a ton of stone cannonballs left inside and a good portion of it is restored, and then left to crumble again, but for 5 Dinar we got an interesting tour, and it only took us about 2 miles off the main road. We wanted to keep it moving so we passed on one other little crusader castle and made our way up and over the mountains. The road has a lot of switchbacks, and would probably be a lot of fun to drive in a souped up convertible with a stick shift. When you reach the top there's a great place to take pictures and a place that sells coffee tea and sodas and provides a much needed bathroom break. On the way down you can see across to Israel, and finally the dead see comes into view. There are a few picture opportunities along the way, and eventually the driver just learned not to bother asking me, of course I wanted to stop to take a picture. We even bumped into the guy who originally picked us up in Amman when we were near the salt crystals, and he set us up to pick us up at the hotel the next day for our ride to the airport. It was perfect. We then pulled into the hotel, where they actually take their security seriously. You should have seen the size of the tire spikes at the front gate, if you got the crazy idea to run through the gate. We weren't quite prepared for the temperature difference between Petra and Sweimeh. When we got to the hotel, the Jordan Valley Marriott Resort, our room wasn't ready, and we let the hold our bags so we could wander about the grounds. We went down to the dead sea to check it out, and then found ourselves some lunch at the sports bar. The hotel is absolutely amazing, and we once again regretted not booking more time at a place. The pool is gorgeous, and the access to the dead sea is right on the hotel property. Our swim in the dad sea was amazing, and the feeling of buoyancy is stranger than you can possibly imagine. Anything you do makes you bob right up out of the water. The taste seemed saltier than just taking a mouthful of table salt, and trying to swim face down is a futile effort. The buoyancy of the rest of your body pushes your face straight in, and that is not water you want in your eyes. We spent the rest of the afternoon down by the sea shore and at the pool, even taking a few runs down the water slide. We settled on Italian food one more time, avoiding a final buffet, and tried a different Jordanian wine that we didn't enjoy quite as much as the one we'd had in Petra. The desserts however, were absolutely amazing. I ordered a makeup serving of tiramisu that definitely lived up to my expectations, and W ordered a panna cotta that was amazing. We stopped by the really nice lobby bar, and had a couple of drinks to settle in, they pour one heck of a mojito in Jordan it turns out. Saed, our driver, met us in the lobby at seven the last morning, and dropped us off safely at the airport. I managed to get through customs without incident, and we really liked the personal entertainment system and our favorite Jordanian wine on the flight to Frankfurt. Once in Frankfurt we stopped and had a nice, but expensive German meal, with a delicious German beer to go with it. There were some tense moments in the airport since they waited until 15 minutes before departure to give us boarding passes, but they did manage to find us a couple of first class seats for the trip home. That brings us to the end of this adventure, I've been to the library already for the next set of travel books, so it's only a matter of time until the travel itch needs to be scratched again. Here are the full Albums for your enjoyment.

Egypt Part One

egypt and jordan

Jordan Day 2, Rewarding our Hard Work

We actually volunteered to get up early on our second day in Jordan, and it totally paid off. Our driver met us at the hotel at 7, and down the hill we went again into the Wadi Musa valley. Wadi Musa loosely translates to the Valley of Moses, making this our 2nd Moses encounter of the trip. It is said that in this valley Moses drove a stick into a rock to find water, and also here is Mount Hor, where Moses' brother Aaron is said to be buried. When we arrived at the visitor center we marched right in and signed up for a tour. It turns out that 6 grad students from Stanford were waiting there for a tour to start and we made their group big enough to leave. We bought two day passes, thinking that we might go back in the morning the next day, since the second day is only about $7 more than a one day ticket. There's only one way in, so it starts by covering the same ground that we had the night before on the Petra by Night tour. You could tell as you were walking there were probably things to see on the way to the treasury, but the luminaries only lit the path nearby, so it was all dark and mysterious. On the way through in the morning, you see all the vibrant colors, and all the carvings along the way. Walking through the Siq and first laying eyes on the Treasury is truly a powerful experience, and our guide had us go through one by one to make it more personal. Our tour was informative, learning about who lived in Petra, and how they built it and survived sieges and takeover attempts for long periods of time. The Romans finally managed to take over by poisoning the water supply. My two tips for the would-be traveler to Petra are: 1 the gates open at 6, get there as early as you can before the tour groups arrive and the vendors set up, it makes it a completely different experience. 2 Make the effort to go all the way up to the monastery. The views are incredible, and there is a little place to rest with a drink stand built right into a cave. It's really interesting to listen to the Bedouin vendors switch seamlessly between English Italian french and Arabic to make a sale. I felt painfully under educated knowing only how to speak English, Spanish, some German and hello and thank you in a few other random languages. After the official part our our tour got done, we were free to walk around and explore. You have the choice of climbing up to the Monastery, or the high place of sacrifice, or to just turn around and go back. We spent some time at the museum and gift shop, and then began the trek up to the monastery. As the crow flies it's not that far, and you could pay for a donkey to get you there, but it's a lot of stairs, over some narrow areas that didn't make it look like it would be a very comfortable donkey ride. We walked, and took lots of breaks in the shadows where a cool breeze would frequently blow, and were rewarded with a beautiful monastery structure, some goats, and incredible views down over the valley. We sat down in the cave and had a coke to recharge and then went on our way. Our original plan was to go back and walk up to the high place of sacrifice, but we'll just have to save that one for a return trip, because after getting back from the monastery, we were pretty beat. There's a couple of restaurants down in the valley and we settled on the buffet (ugh) at the basin restaurant. The food was acceptable, and helped refresh us after our hike. After lunch, we wandered back out to the front gate, where our cab driver said to go to one shop and the owner would call him to come pick us up. Of course he wanted to look around while we waited, and when he and W couldn't agree on the price of a camel wool and silk blend scarf, she said, "I'm sorry I'm cheap", and he said "not cheap, just... difficult" a good line, but $25 for a scarf that we could load up on in china for under $5 per didn't make a lot of since. Our driver arrived, and back to the hotel we went. Back at the hotel after a shower we sat at the bar and enjoyed a beverage and a chance to get off of our feet. W went to the spa to get a foot massage, while I read some more about Petra and our next destination. We met some other Americans at the bar, told them a little about what to expect on their Petra tour tomorrow, and recommended the Jordanian wine to them. We compared Egypt war stories with them since that's where they'd just come from too, and had some good laughs about our experiences. There was another beautiful sunset right outside the windows, and we eventually went right back to dinner at the Italian place just because we'd enjoyed it so much the night before. Our wine was right there where we'd left off, and was just as delicious with my rack of lamb as it was with my steak the night before. My one complaint about the whole experience was the tiramisou, it was just not right. But that's minor in the grander scheme of how amazing our Petra experience was. We stopped by for one more drink at the bar and then went back to the room before we fell asleep in their chairs. We decided to let our 2nd day at Petra go, neither of us having the energy left to get up early and go for a hike in the morning.

Egypt Day 12 and Jordan Day 1

On the 12th day of Egypt, my true love gave to me, a relaxing day by the pool. That's right, on our last day in town, we did practically nothing. We spent far too much time getting things straightened out for moving on to Jordan. For some reason contacting Marriott reservations in Cairo turned into a huge fiasco, and we finally broke down and sprung for a call to the US, to have our savior Francie call the US Marriott number. That fixed everything. We spent a good portion of the afternoon reading and napping around the pool, where a very nice gentleman refused to let us go thirsty. It turns out they pour one heck of a long island iced tea. We grabbed some dinner at the cafe, and got ourselves packed up to leave in the morning. The rest of the girls were headed back to the states, so we had our favorite van guy come pick them up at 1:30 a.m. and we thought we'd communicated that we'd like for him to come back and pick us up at 7, but by 7:10 he still hadn't arrived. We had the hotel grab us a cab, and for the first time all trip, they worked out the rate for us before we got in. We had to work to communicate that W and I were going to one place and Dave was going someplace else, but we eventually got it figure out. Unfortunately once we got out of the cab at what we thought was our terminal it turned out to be wrong, and there's no efficient way to walk between the two. So we had to wait for the bus. Meanwhile a cab driver wanted to take us over there, and the longer we waited the lower his fare got, but we eventually held out for the bus. When you're nervous about whether your doing the right thing those waits seem like an eternity especially when the more nervous you look the more often the cab driver comes over. The bus eventually came, and off to our terminal we went. We checked ourselves in and got some seats right away which is always nice, and were ready to head off to passport control. By this point in the trip I am by far the brownest I've been in years, and with my features and hair, it's hard to tell exactly what you're looking at when you see me. So when the border agent hands me back my passport I tried to be polite, and said the Arabic word for thank you: shokrun, and started walking. The agent quickly stands up, whips around and says with an angry look in his eye "Are you an Arab"? I stand there frozen, and whimper out a "no...". He says "But you speak Arabic"? With my wits back about me, I manage to get out "Just hello, and thank you". He looks less stressed by that point, and lets me through. I check my underwear, and am ready to go get on the plane. In Egypt they don't even have gates like we're used to here. You always get on a bus, even if it only goes one hundred feet out to where your plane is. Royal Jordanian's seats are nice, comparable to the premium economy of domestic carriers. The service was solid, and the food was good too. In no time we'd landed in Amman. We'd had the Marriott in Petra arrange a car for us, and sure enough a nice gentleman was waiting for us as soon as we got out of the terminal. Having your name on a sign does make you feel like a rock star. He took us out to a cab that was waiting, and off we went to Wadi Musa. It's about a 3 hour trip from Amman, and there are a few military looking checkpoints along the way but they were more interested in taxi licenses and such than W and I in the back seat. The driver already knew that we were in petra for 2 days and then heading to the Jordan valley, and signed himself up to drive us from petra there, and from there to the airport. and as many trips from the hotel down to Petra as we needed. Having our needs anticipated for a change was a nice touch. I wanted desperately to stay awake for the whole t.rip, but eventually the early morning caught up with me. I woke up just as we were getting to Wadi Musa, which means I was awake just in time for a photo op. We arrived shortly after at the Petra Marriott, where it was calm and peaceful compared to the lobby in Cairo. We got a room with a great view, and the front desk strongly recommended we check out Petra by night. We'd read good things about it, so we got tickets and they would arrange our driver to get us there. That gave us time to grab some snacks and a Jordanian beer. There's an amazing outdoor patio overlooking the canyon, with drink specials during sunset hours. We got ourselves ready for Petra by night, layering up for the significant drop in temperature we were experiencing there. Up high at the hotel there was quite a cold wind, so we were prepared for the worst. Our cab showed up right on time and took us down the winding roads to the Petra visitor center. We gathered there, and when the time comes you start the walk down to Petra there are over 1500 luminaries there to light your path, and they ask everyone to be quiet so the experience is really wonderful. You don't realize that most of the way is down hill, and since you're down in a canyon, the weather is not so bad. Eventually you get to the treasury where there are hundreds of luminaries and a woven mat for everyone to sit on. They bring you a nice warm cup of mint tea, and then the performance begins. One man plays an ancient stringed instrument and sings, and the acoustics from the canyon walls make the sound so pure. After the singing someone begins to play a flute from inside the treasury, eventually walking out and moving around the crowd. I have never heard a sound like the flute that night, it was as if sound completely wrapped around you. It's not all fun and games, you're on the ground and there are rocks underneath you in the sand, but I'd go back every night given the opportunity. After taking the time for pictures we made the treck back up to the visitors center, which made us realize how downhill the trip in was. Our cab was waiting for us, and then back to the hotel for some dinner. We decided to try the italian restaurant and were pleasantly suprised on all counts. I had a filet that only cost $16, try finding a filet for that price in the states, and we sampled a really wonderful Jordanian wine. We didn't finish the bottle, but they were nice enough to hold it until the next day for us. After a long traveling day we crashed pretty early, aiming to be out the door at 7 the next day.

Egypt Day 11 Religious Cairo

On our Eleventh day in Egypt, it was time to see some of the major religious sights in Cairo. The bakery at the Marriott got us off to a good start with a pastry and a cappuccino, and we piled into the van once again. Our first stop of the morning was the Citadel of Salah ad-Din. We started by walking inside to see the Mosque of Muhammad Ali. You've got to take your shoes off to enter, or buy some plastic booties to go over your shoes. You can set your shoes down, but with the soles turned so they're not touching the floor. The first thing you notice when you get inside, is what's missing, there are almost no chairs. We took a seat on the floor in a circle and Yusef gave us all the information about the mosque and gave us an overview of key points of islam. The girls got to ask some questions about life as a muslim woman, and even how our guides felt about the way that women and men our treated differently in our society and theirs. We talked for a while about polygamy, and how much a man is responsible for taking care of his wife. From outside the mosque, you can see all the way across cairo to the pyramids. On our way out of the citadel complex we saw a group of catholic schoolchildren visiting the mosque. When someone in our group started to take their picture they were very excited and yelled in perfect english, welcome to Egypt. it was very cute. We stopped by another mosque that somehow I managed to forget the name of, but i'll be seeing if i can match up pictures and find the name of it for you. The girls had to put on robes with hoods and enter through a seperate door, and there was a funeral going on while we were there, so in all the excitement the name of the place completely eluded me. Being a tourist during someones funeral feels more than a little weird. Next was a trip to Coptic Cairo, and a visit to the hanging church. We wandered through churches at a pretty rapid fire pace here, but probably the most important note is from the church of St. Sergio (Abu Serga). There is a cave below the church where it is said the Holy Family stayed on their journey through Egypt. We also visited the church of St George, and the Ben Ezra Synagogue, where legend has it baby Moses washed up.From there it was on to lunch, which was on a boat docked on the nile, the food wasn't that great but there was a cute little kitty outside that lived on the dock, we snuck him out a little fish in a napkin on the way out that he chomped down in a hurry. Then it was time for a trip to the Cairo museum. The items on display here are truly, truly amazing, even when you consider how man of the really great works are spread out in museums across the globe. Having a tour guide was helpful, since there is so much stuff that there's no way of knowing what is important and what isn't. We had some time to wander after our tour, and W and I just tried to make sure we at least eyeballed all the exhibits, and we'd consider a trip back the next day if we thought we were really missing out. You can rest assured, if I thought I could get away with it, I would have worn out my camera in there, but there was strict adherence to the no camera policy. After the museum we sat outside and asked questions about the exhibits and then it was time for power shopping. We needed to stop first for a pick-me-up at a coffee shop, and as you're sitting there merchants stroll through frequently selling tourist goods. It's charming at first to shop over coffee, but after a while you tire of shooing away the fourth straight person hawking beaded head wear.That brings us to the final must see of any trip to Cairo, a visit to the Khan, or Khan El Khalili. We walked around for a few minutes looking for a spoon for a friend, and before we left Rosita recomended we stop by Gouzlan where she shopped frequently when she flew the Cairo route for TWA. We absolutely just happened to walk right up to it by accident without even trying. They have nice things and sold in a much lower pressure situation than many of the other places. We met back at the coffee shop when we were done, and enjoyed a tasty falafel selection before heading back to the hotel. We made our usual stop in the lobby, and after such a busy day and late snack we couldn't round anyone up for dinner, so we ended up having a little room service and crashing hard.

Egypt Day 10 getting down to business in Cairo

If you're counting at home, I've been in Egypt 9 days and have yet to lay eyes on a pyramid. Day 10 brought about time to change that. We talked our favorite tour guide into hooking us up with a friend in Cairo, and our trip sounded like so much fun that he took the train up to join us. So now we have the six of us and two tour guides on a whirlwind mission through Cairo. We started down in Memphis with the open air museum there, which has a lot of cool old stuff some more ruined than others, and a giant colossus of Ramses II that won't stand up anymore. The drive to Memphis takes you over a lot of little bumpy rides past the most disgusting looking Nile canals. At some places the canals are filled with floating floating garbage at one end of a section and at the other end there would be people fishing. I'll order the lamb thanks. From the museum at Memphis, we next rolled to Sakkara where you find the oldest pyramid, the step pyramid built by Djoser (Zoser). We had seen dogs at a lot of the sites, and got the impression that there might be puppies around someplace, but finally found one at the step pyramid. I think if W thought we could have gotten him in our carry on, we'd have a new puppy at our house. You start by walking through the temple complex through some stone columns, and suddenly find yourself craning your neck at this giant structure. There is still much to be unearthed there, but the structure itself is really quite impressive. There's a small museum there too, with cool artifacts from the early dynasties there would be pictures, but you know how this story goes. After hanging around the step pyramid for a while, we were back on the bus, for a quick trip to the carpet factory. How they make the carpets was cool, what they charge and how they pressure you to buy, not cool. After carpet shopping it was time for a little lunch. We ended up in a pretty touristy spot that I really regret not getting the name of because the view of the pyramids from there was incredible. We sat at a window table that looked right over the Giza plain. The Egyptian food served there was quite good, despite the fact that it was on a buffet. We gorged ourselves on all the deliciousness and enjoyed a sakkara beer with a whole new perspective on it. After lunch the guy in charge took us up a few flights of stairs to an outdoor deck where we actually got some of the best pictures from the trip. After our picture time, it was time to go get up close and personal with the pyramids. You have the option to pay extra to go inside the great pyramid of Cheops (Khufu) but no one really wanted to follow the big crowd into a hot, dark cave and pay extra for it. You can go down in one of the smaller pyramids without extra charge, and essentially get the same experience. We had also been warned by many people not to take the camel ride at the pyramids, so we were glad to have already fit the camel ride in. There's no doubt about it, the pyramids are big, and impressive. Tourists don't get to climb up the sides of the pyramids anymore, and there was a little guy blowing a whistle and yelling at select groups of people climbing and letting others go with no real rhyme or reason to his methods. After getting close to the great pyramid and going down into a small one we got on the bus to go over to the panorama where you can take pictures of the big three in one shot. After snapping there for a while it was time to go pay a visit to the sphinx. You can't terribly close to it, but the fact that you're there at all is plenty of consolation. You're also there with a lot of other people. I never realized how short a distance it is from Cairo to major European hubs. 5 hours from London or 3 hours from Frankfurt makes a sunny destination like Cairo easily in reach of a lot of tourists. So you don't get a lot of pictures without other people in them, but for us here in the states it's a big deal to go that far, so you just learn to deal with the crowds. While you're there, you have to take the touristy pics of pointing at the pyramids, and kissing the sphinx, and assume that people have done these things as long as theyve had cameras to do it with. The best realization is that some of the monuments you're standing in front of have been there since before 2000 BCE, or more than 4000 years ago. That's an insanely long time. We were a tired wind and sand beaten bunch when we got back to the hotel, and after a little rest and a round of showers for all, briefly checked out the casino, and it seemed nice, but there were far more casino employees than gamblers.We grabbed a bite to eat at Roy's Country Kitchen in the hotel, which has unfortunate Egyptian waiters forced to wear overalls and flannel shirts, oddly paired with dress shoes. Then it was sleepy time, with another full day ahead of us for the next day.

Egypt Day 9 a long way for a long day

Our Ninth day started with an early wake up call for our trip to Abu Simbel. A ticket on egypt air from aswan to Abu Simbel get's you a bus ride over to the temple, and we'd arranged with Sayed to meet a friend of his for a tour. On final approach to the airport, people sitting at the window on the left side of the plane get an eyeful. As you can see, I was one of those lucky people. Growing up the grandchild of a librarian meant that my house was filled with hundreds of cast off National Geographics. One of which I distinctly remember was May 1969 (I remember the cover picture, not the date). If I had my time machine I'd go back and tell myself to save those, but alas they're long gone. If you've been following along this far, then I know you're already a fan of Hatshepsut, who just happens to be on the cover of the April 09 National Geographic. Our guide Eba met us at the airport jumped on the bus with us and began our tour of the temple. Having known about Abu Simbel for all this time, means that as I stood at the feet of the colossi, I was having one of those I can't believe I'm actually standing here moments. There are some tourist sites that are so over hyped as a must see, that when you get there you think to yourself, Meh. Abu simbel is not one of those places. It is every bit worth the hype. As you walk around the temple you know just how ammazing the setting, with the huge statues overlooking sweeping views of lake Nasser. An earthquake shattered the 2nd statue during Ramses II lifetime, and he assumed it was because the gods were angry, so the statue was never rebuilt. The inside of the temple is actually really nice too, but of course, you don't get to take any pictures inside. You don't hear too much about the second temple that's here, the temple built for Nefertari, who I introduced you to in the valley of the queens. After our tour we went back to the airport to wait a while for the cairo flight, and then off to cairo we went. On Egypt Air flights there is a Qur'an behind glass prominently displayed as you come in the main door, and I did not have the stones to ask if in an emergency you should break the glass. We attempted to arrange the guy who took us to the cairo airport to come back and get us and be waiting, and after collecting our bags, there he was holding up a sign with Herron in big letters on it. Yes we overpaid, but it was nice to have it already taken care of. Back at the cairo marriott, we made a beeline to the lobby bar, where they serve absolutely the coldest sakkaras in all of Egypt, and have really comfy chairs. We spent way too much time and money there. Ever since we'd left Cairo the first time we'd been dreaming about eating at egyptian nigts again, so there was no keeping us away from the bread and the cold Mezze platter that night. Then it was off to bed, for an early start the next day seeing Cairo's most important sites. There are two towers at the Marriott, and the one we were in for our second stay had a much nicer view from it's balcony, but also overlooked a very busy road. If you were out on the balcony with the sliding door open you couldn't hear what was going on in the room at all. You could see bustling cairo and a long way down the nile from our room, and listen to the busy honking of all the cars below. In Egypt, you use your horn as a turn signal, warning, pedestrian motivator, and possibly a radio. Sometimes I think drivers on empty roads honk their horns just out of habit. There was one place in Luxor where there was a no honking sign, that we stood around and watched for a few minutes just to see if drivers obeyed. Of course not.