Mar 22
Just went online and learned our Cairo to London flight is cancelled, meaning I can’t book seats for our return trip.  We knew BA was on strike and had been told Tuesday was not a strike day. Unfortunately it appears most planes are back in London.  Will write more when I know more. Doubt BA plans to put us up in our Pyramid View rooms at Mena House.

Last night I was about to hit the send button when my time ran out!
We have arrived at terminal 5 and passed through multiple layers of
security.  It appears our flight is on!:

We have a flight to Heathrow on Egypt Air and boarding passes for the
Heathrow-Phoenix flight.  It may work out.  If not, we’ll be in
London.  I may send a lengthier travelogue on Wednesday. Here at Mena
House, my 30 minute card is about out.

Today we returned to Islamic Cairo and visited the Citadel before a
visit to the fabulous Egyptian Museum. For lunch sugar cane juice and
a stuffed pigeon in the Khan El Kahlili.  You stuff them into your
mouth.  No silverware required.

Mama, we had dinner with our travel agent Khaled.  He looks just like
Uncle Gene!

Egypt will change your sense of human time in wonderful ways.
Consider a visit and consult with us.

Love to all, Toni

dahabiya.  then at 6 we leave the boat at Edfu to visit a temple.
perhaps it’s the temple of horus.  the last few days incredibly lazy
and lovely, with today  the loveliest of loveliest.  given the
iffiness of this internet, i will start with the best.  after going to
bed in a terrible wind, with our two waiters struggling to serve a six
 course meal on the deck while first one, then two, then three tugs
tried to push our boat close to the shore.   lots of yelling and
running, and we thought of the titanic.  in the morning, a light
breeze and we are on the edge of yet another farmer’s field.  the guys
start setting up breakfast in the middle of it- first tables, then
chairs, then tablecloths, etc. and eventually we descend the gangplank
and eat surrounded by children from the nearby village.  it has the
feel of surreal movie, so the talk is all of film until we go for a
walk through banana, mango, sugar cane, onions, dates, eventually
reaching the village, where we are surrounded by  the same kids and
invited into their homes by the mothers.  these are two or three-room
mud brick, no windows and a little “garden” in back with an oven for
bread, goats, turkeys, geese, etc.  back to the boat where the wind
finally allows the dahabiya to sail without assistance from the tug
(the usual state of affairs).  Perfect weather, and very  welcome
after days of somewhat oppressive heat. we read, nap, talk with our
fellow passengers- besides our group of eight, there are four friends
from England and Denmark, and another British couple.  By now we all
get on very well and have great conversation.  The American married to
a Dane was writing a book about Muslim feminism that is morphing into
a book about misogyny in all the religions of Abraham- Judaism,
Catholicism, Islam.  Papa, she graduated from Hollywood High and her
parents were screenwriters.  She thinks she knew Gina!  When we’re not
eating or lounging on the upper deck- well that’s pretty much what we
do.  life on the nile is endlessly fascinating.  yesterday we went
through a lock at Esna, then wandered through town where I bought a
cane for Mary.  other than breakfast in the  field, she has not left
the boat since we arrived Saturday.  the ankle is much better and she
plans to go ashore at Edfu.  there are worse places to be!  by now she
has knocked off most of the common birds of egypt and a few uncommon
ones as well.  tomorrow the crocodile temple at Kom Ombo, then on to
Aswan where I think we spend a couple of nights on the boat before
flying to Abu Simbel, then back to Cairo.  there’s a British Airways
strike that may complicate our plans, and we’ll worry about that in
Cairo.  life doesn’t get much better.
Toni

of Hatsepshut and missed Karnak, an unbelievable site that took 2,000
years to build.  Wrote you all a long description of stuff and lost it
when this shaky connection disconnected.  Live is good and we are like
pashas on the Nile, moored by a cabbage patch with boys, donkeys,
women doing their wash, life unchanged for thousands of years.
Love, Toni

museums shortly, followed by a drink on the terrace of the winter
palace hotel.  morning was tombs of the nobles, village of the workers
and a hot air balloon ride.  should probably have stuck with at least
a morning of planned nothing.  the hotel (look up the Al Moudira on
the west bank of luxor) is luxurious, particularly after a week in a
toyota land rover with no ac- blowing sand, heat, and seven people, as
in addition to our guide – now known as Mohamed of the Desert in
comparison to Mohamed III, our current, not so good guide- we had the
driver and either a chef (for the night camped in the white desert-
think river trip without the river) or a policeman.  the desert was
spectacular and like many such places, far away from anywhere else.
we drove 1,000 miles in all.  the white of the white desert is a soft,
chalky limestone.  in places it is covered with iron pyrite in lovely
shapes.  although I’m sure no one else complies, we were good and
followed the national park rules asking us not to remove the love iron
pyrite flowers our driver abu talled and chef passam presented us
with.  they are now up to 40,000 visitors a year and the resistance to
new Egyptian national park regulations – remove toilet paper and human
waste, stay on tracks, etc.- is strong.  it is all stunning, as you
will see someday in photos.  as usual our highlights are more the
interactions with people. passam declaimed long epic poems he had
written himself and i almost understood Arabic.  we now know a few
words and phrases- all well received in the desert oases and not so
much here in luxor.  our favorite hotel and food- we eat basically the
same meal morning, noon and night- was in Bahariya where the staff
were so gracious and welcoming and delighted to see us at all times.
it reminded us of the recapture lodge as a place to use as home away
from home base.  everything we saw was reminiscent of something
(indio, bluff, etc.) and not.  so much sand and vast expanse and we
were just on the eastern edge of the great sand sea.  we have now
personally experienced the environment of deposition of aeolian
sandstone.  oases are not a few palm trees and a pool of water; rather
small cities or strings of villages, green bands in the desert, strung
out along old camel tracks and routes used by conquering armies-
greeks, romans, etc.  we saw mummies and tombs, an old roman fort, the
oldest coptic christian cemetery in the world.  the tombs are
surprisingly moving- the people so real you feel you could meet them
on the street.  think a family album of snapshots from the afterlife.
time to go.  tomorrow we leave on the dahabiya for a week of sailing
from here to aswan.  in real life, we spend the next two nights moored
somewhere around luxor.  love to all, toni

maybe not.

Mohamed delivered our bags around 1:30 a.m. this morning, after
calling at 10:30 to say he would be by to pick up our passports, so he
could look for our bags, then shepherd them through customs.  Mohamed
says it’s his job to make everything work out, and did not trust
British Airways to get them to us before tomorrow.

After the late night drop-off, he was back at 8 a.m. to let us know
tomorrow’s departure time (7 a.m.) .  Later we dropped Mohamed off in
Giza on our way to Dashur, and I realized he must have spent most of
the night getting  from home to our hotel, to the airport, back to the
hotel, home, then back to the hotel.

Today our travels took us by the Great Pyramids several times.  We
won’t actually visit them for a couple of weeks.  They are huge and
surrounded by very urban development, traffic, construction, etc.
Gives them a bit of a theme park look, and although I know there will
be Disneyland-sized crowds when we visit, I”m sure close-up the
feeling will be different.

We drove an hour or more south through the “countryside,” an odd mix
of abandoned canals, trash, agriculture (fruit, vegetables, dates),
weekend villas and poor farmers’ homes.  As in Cairo, horse and
donkey-driven carts, buses, cars, pedestrians and bicycles (sometimes
ridden by guys with trays of rolls on their heads), all jockeying for
position,   We see no accidents, so it works after a fashion.

We finally reached Dashur and visited the Reddish Pyramid and the Bent
Pyramid.  Standing alone in the desert (except for the army base next
door), they are very impressive.  Taller and steeper than the pyramids
in the Yucatan   Not many people at either, and you can go inside the
Reddish Pyramid by climbing up the stairs, then descending steeply to
the burial chamber.  The shaft is at most four feet high, so you are
descending in a crouch.  At the bottom the air feels tired and reeks
of ammonia.  Quite an experience.

Maha waited in the car while we were inside the Reddish Pyramid.  When
I commented it was not a good place for people with claustrophobia,
she confessed she had tried a dozen times to enter and could not get
past the entrance.

On to the  Bent Pyramid, a pyramid that started to collapse when the
angle was changed, causing the king to start building another pyramid,
now called the Broken Pyramid.  It”s visible a short distance away
and looks more like some rock formation you would see up around
Monument Valley than a pyramid.  The Bent Pyramid is unique in having
smooth, almost polished sides.  We’re told all the pyramids originally
were like this, and painted as well.   From a distance we thought the
smooth look came from some sort of plaster.  Close up it is clear it
is the stone itself.  Hard to imagine the work involved.

Oh yes, we are told the pyramids were built by workers, not slaves,
and that they worked an 8-hour day.  This and many things we here make
us think licensed guides may be asked to present some things in the
most positive light.  In the same vein, Jews, Christians and Muslims
are all equal in Egypt, even though it is ruled by Islamic law and 9
out of 10 women we see wear some sort of hijab.  We see many burkhas
as well.  We are told the hijab is more for fashion than religion.

After a quick visit to a Carpet School where boys and girls learn to
knot and weave beautiful silk and wool carpets, we headed back to
Cairo for another late lunch, this time Indian food in a restaurant
called Kandahar. Great food and conversation about the pros and cons
of arranged marriages, followed by a drive around the very European
looking downtown, and home to Le Riad just before the 6 p.m. call to
prayer rang out from the mosques all around us.  From our little
balcony I watched the street below go from full and lively to almost
empty, as the men entered the mosques for ablutions and prayers.

Cairo just gets bigger, and today was also very smoggy. I will be
ready for a week in the desert!   Unless the oases are more urban than
I hope, our next computer access will likely be a week from now, when
we reach Luxor.

Until then, Toni

plane was delayed several hours, and arrived at Heathrow just as our
Heathrow-Cairo plane was scheduled to leave.  After telling us it was
impossible, British Airways did everything they could to get us on the
plane.  They were less successful with our bags.  We are hopeful they
will arrive tonight.  Next time carry-on!  Oh yeah, my Global
Traveler phone has a wimpy battery and was dead when I fired it up at
Heathrow.  So although you can leave me messages, I can’t retrieve
them until our bags (and the charger) arrive.  Meanwhile our lovely
hotel in old Islamic Cairo offers laptops in each suite.

Our hotel http://leriad-hoteldecharme.com/
Our suite is Mamluk.

Our first day in Cairo has been nothing short of fabulous.  Breakfast
on the rooftop terrace, surrounded by minarets.  We are on a street of
mosques, little shops and a famous bazaar.  From our little balcony we
can watch a fascinating parade of people.  Then Maha, our guide for
this first day and a half in Cairo, arrived and took us in hand.
Coptic Cairo, the very synagogue where Moses was pulled from the
rushes (it’;s a long story), the Mosque of Ibn Tulun, the
Gayer-Anderson Museum, a place where we learned how they make papyrus,
a long conversational lunch overlooking the Citadel (at 3 p.m.), a
visit to a perfume maker to learn about essential oils, then back to
our hotel at 7 p.m.  Tomorrow the Bent and Red Pyramids at Dashur and
more.

It is as if a friend was showing us around.  Oh, did I mention we have
a driver too?  Essential in Cairo, which is like nothing I have ever
experienced for traffic and random driving.  Imagine a city of 22
million or more (2 million living in a huge cemetery called the City
of the Dead) without signals.  Maha calls it democracy in action!

More tomorrow.  Now we are off to wander the “”neighborhood.”

Love, Toni