Egypt 2009

11/8

2009-11-12T09:20:00.000-08:00

11/8

Recovering from the jetlag was difficult, so we slept in on Sunday (especially since we didn't get to our room until about 1am).

Josh: I went to the conference (International Conference on Image Processing, ICIP) around lunch time and it was my first experience in Egypt. The buses to the conference only run in the morning, so I could either walk or take a taxi. I was not feeling up to bargaining for a taxi ride, and I felt like a walk would do my legs good, so I started off. Crossing the streets is RIDICULOUS!! There is no way to describe it. Just look for someone crossing that seems to know what they're doing and follow them closely. The Grand Hyatt is a 25 minute walk from the Ramses Hilton (even though the bellhop told me it was 10 minutes), but you get to stroll along the Nile and see a lot of Cairo craziness - well worth it! I checked into the conference and grabbed my bag of goodies and attended a couple of afternoon poster sessions. After the conference at around 6pm, I headed back to the Ramses to see Desiree and get some dinner!

The Ramses Hilton is one of the best places (believe it or not) to take in some authentic Egyptian music, dancing and entertainment. The restaurant is called Falafel and it's very beautifully decorated.

We took in folkloric, traditional music (live instruments), a magician, dervish dancing, and a belly dancer. The show was about two hours long and the food and drink were delicious! All of the entertainers were very professional and invited Desiree up to the stage on numerous occasions.

2009-11-12T08:19:00.000-08:00

11/6-11/7

After dropping the dogs off at the farm, we head to the Austin airport to catch our Continental flight to Houston to start our journey to Cairo. We are so excited! Little do we know what's in store for us in Houston.

We arrive in Houston with no problems, have a nice lunch buffet at Papadeux. While finishing lunch we learned that our flight to London had been delayed by 4 hours and we would miss our connecting flight to Cairo. Thanks to Continental, they also printed the wrong boarding passes for our new connecting flight in London to further frustrate our travel. They didn't apologize or make up for this mistake on their part and told us good luck!!

Arriving into London was fine, even though the flight was long. Once we arrived to the check-in counter for our Egypt Air flight (after dealing with printing new boarding passes), we had another 2 hour delay before take-off. The trip on Egypt Air was very nice and probably the best leg of the flight.

We finally arrived into Cairo around midnight. The airport is very nice and not stressful at all. We rented a van to the hotel and the driver was very friendly. Thanks to Dad's diamond Hilton status, checking into the hotel was extremely easy and took place on the 26th floor of the building ;-)

The room was awesome and had a balcony overlooking the Nile!! The NILE! Here was the first picture of Egypt we took from the balcony.

11/11

2009-11-11T13:42:00.000-08:00

11/11/09

Right now we are at the Windsor Hotel in Cairo - located in the heart of downtown, the place built at the turn of the last century as the baths of the Egyptian Royal Family, the Windsor served for many users as a colonial British Officers Club. The place retains an ambiance of faded grandeur and we fell in love with the 19th century caged lift elevator and the spiral stairs to our 5th floor room. Now we're in the barrel bar drinking Egyptian brandy and writing postcards.

Earlier today we toured the ancient pyramids and temple ruins Memphis and Sakara. Not much remains of Memphis except some impressive statues of Ramses II (approx. 4k years old). At Sakara we saw the most amazing hieroglyphs in the world's oldest stone monument (the step pyramid). It was the best tour we have ever been on. Our guide was an Egyptologist with a degree in archeology and 25+ years experience as a guide. We learned that ancient Egyptians kissed pigs (for medical reasons), performed circumcision, could tell the sex of a child in utero, fished with modern fishing equipment, and used sleds and oil to move heavy objects in the sand. The detail of the drawings/carvings down to the expression on the faces and every last finger nail and sandal strap was amazing. They venerated nature, worshiped one god (the sun god Ra), and diefied all other creators as Christians do saints.

The afternoon tour got us close and personal with the three pyramids of Giza and the famous sphinx. We got to visit the center of one of the pyramids and see the burial chamber and sarcophagus. Very few words can describe seeing the pyramids in person, so we'll let these pictures do the talking.

One sleazy thing the happens at the ruins (there are many) is that the guards try to bribe you for tips so that you can touch the ruins (not permitted) or take pictures of the ruins in areas that are forbidden for cameras.