Category Egypt
Art and wedding and candy-floss clothes
My Site Today was just the most fun! I woke up refreshed after a great night’s sleep and went downstairs to meet Dan for breakfast. He’s the one who hired me at the Kennedy Center thirteen years ago based only on a short phone interview that I took sitting in my car at a Flying […]
Put a bird on it (or how Rome does obelisks)
Rome has more Egyptian obelisks than I’ve seen anywhere else. Seems like there’s an obelisk in front of every church — and given the number of churches here, it’s a wonder there are any left in Egypt! And I just love how the church couldn’t resist adding its own little touches. Typically it’s a spike […]
Egypt in New York
Having just traveled through Egypt (and visited the Egyptian wing of the British Museum), I couldn’t not make a pilgrimage to the Met Museum’s famous Egyptian collection. In particular, I wanted to see the Temple of Dendur. I remembered feeling awed by it when I visited years ago, and I wanted to see it again […]
Egypt at the British Museum
Guess what? When you live in London your Egyptian vacation doesn’t have to end when you come home! Those acquisitive Brits brought a lot of the good stuff home during their colonial heyday. To be honest, it felt a bit strange to see the statues, sarcophagi, and mummies in the British Museum. I felt like […]
Oreos and shopping on our last night in Cairo
The guided part of our stay in Cairo may have ended when the driver dropped us back at the hotel after lunch, but we were far from done with Cairo! We still had Egyptian pounds to spend and space in our luggage to fill. I was feeling headachy, so I took some Excedrin and a […]
Exploring Cairo
Last day in Egypt! The day got off to a bumpy start when our original tour guide canceled for health reasons and we got one of the office administrators instead (he was a sweet guy but his English wasn’t as good and he was both awkward at playing host and painfully apologetic for everything). Eventually […]
Movie night at the mall in Cairo!
The Nubian village was our last stop in Aswan; in fact, we brought our luggage with us on the boat so that we could hop right into the taxi and head to the airport. It was a quick flight back to Cairo where we met our driver. Since it was only 3pm by the time […]
Nubian village
After exploring the reedy islands in the Nile, the boat brought us to a small Nubian village on the west bank of the Nile. Nubians are an ethnic group, with a culture and language distinct from Egyptians, who live in southern Egypt and northern Sudan. Their traditional homeland was flooded by the Nile dams and […]
Boating around Aswan
Our last morning in Aswan was gorgeous! As if trying to make up for the terrible weather the day before, the air was clear and cool and perfect. We went out on a boat to explore the many little islands that dot the Nile at Aswan. This part of the Nile is called the First […]
Philae at night
Our guide said that if you wanted to see all of Egyptian history in one spot, the temple at Philae would be the place. It was begun by the ancient pharaohs, expanded into a temple for Isis by the Greeks, further expanded by the Romans, defaced and converted into a church by the Christians, mentioned […]
A More Gentlemanlike Manner 