As anyone who has read Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile knows, the best way to travel up the Nile is by boat — so of course that’s what we did. We used Luxor as our starting point and then working our way south toward Aswan aboard a river cruiser that may not have been as […]
Next morning after visiting the Luxor temple, we got up early (this was not a trip for sleeping in!) and crossed the Nile and made our way through the lush farmland to the arid hills where the ancient Egyptians made their tombs. First stop was Hapshetsut’s memorial temple, which lies at the base of impressive […]
We visited the Karnak temple early in the morning to beat the heat. After lunch and an air-conditioned nap back on the boat, we headed out again to see the Luxor temples at dusk. The Luxor temples aren’t quite as old as Karnak (only 3,000 years instead of 4,000 years) and are on a slightly […]
Sitting here in grey, rainy London (I flew back from Cairo yesterday) the sun and heat and sand of Egypt feel very far away! But before the memories dim I want to linger a bit longer on the highlights of our journey last week — let’s start with the temples of Karnak . . . […]
Between the last post and this one, we visited temples and sweated in tombs and cruised up the Nile and wrestled a crocodile — all without Internet. So more on that stuff later. But we’re finally back to Cairo and Internet for one last night. It’ll be an early morning tomorrow as we head out […]
Before visiting the pyramids we spent the morning at the Egyptian Museum, which is a late 19th Century museum stuffed to the gills with more mind-blowing antiquities than you can believe. In a whirlwind tour with our guide, we all all the greatest hits. Rameses, Hatshepsut, Tutankamen, the pet mummies, and all the other fascinating […]
I saw and touched and went inside one of the seven wonders of the ancient world! Pretty incredible. The Great Pyramid was built some 4,500 years ago. That’s mind-blowing to me. I mean, woolly mammoths were around for roughly another 1,000 after it was built. That’s farther before the birth of Christ than we are […]
It’s only 4.5 hours from London to Cairo. Deplaning and getting through immigration and customs was an adventure. Not only were we dealing with different norms for standing in line (you had Americans and Brits on one orderly extreme, the Chinese on the far opposite end, and the Egyptians somewhere in the middle), but the […]
Hooray for layovers! I’m distracting her from jet lag by plying her with curried chicken and questions about the job change.
It’s 10pm. I have just shut down my work computer and I leave for the airport in 12 hours. Time to start packing! (P.S. Is now the right time to wonder whether all my shots from traveling in Asia and South America will cover me on a cruise up the Nile?)
A More Gentlemanlike Manner 