Day 10: Old City and Kahn al-Khalili Market

Today was a pretty laid back day.  I went out with our guide, Noah in the afternoon.  We went to one of the oldest parts of the city that part of a walled city.

The main street has mosque after mosque after mosque.

We stopped at a famous coffee house, Fishawi's that plays the songs of a famous Egyptian singer, Umm Kulthum.  They have statues of her up around the place that are a bit creepy.

There is huge market in this part of town--Kahn al-Khalili.

We ate dinner at Naguib Mahfouz restaurant.  This is where the Noble Prize winner used to hang out. I brought one of his books along with me to read--but I haven't gotten that far.

This is Noah and me after dinner listening to local music.

It's hard to see, but I still have a henna design on my right hand from a village in Aswan.  Noah has been great.  We were lucky to have her as a guide.

Day 9: Egyptian Museum and Old Cairo

Today I woke up and saw the Nile from my hotel room—very cool. 

Cousin Stephen is sick today so it was just Connie and I going to the Egyptian Museum.

We are glad we are seeing this near the end of our trip since we have already seen the major temples and tombs.  Hopefully, we’ll be able to make better sense of this amazing collection of artifacts.

We were greeted at the entryway by our old friend, Ramses II.

I especially like these figures.  The first one is scribe and the second a reader.

 This was surprising.  We had seen color that has survived on structures, but never green.

 There were way too many pieces to put on the blog, but here are a few.

The inner sarcophagi paintings are really detailed. 

We ended with King Tut.  This was a real treat. It's astounding how many artifacts came out of that one small tomb.

These are jars that were filled with essential oils.  Tut's tomb was actually raided, but they only got into a very outer chamber.  It was filled with these alabaster oil containers.  They took the essential oils, but left the containers.  Lucky for us.

This is his throne.

At lunchtime, Connie went back to the hotel to be with Stephen.  I had lunch on the river with our female guide Noah before going into old Cairo.

I loved the street scenes as we drove from one side of town to another.

Our first stop was to visit the Citadel—a huge fortress started by Salah-Al-Din.  It’s gigantic. 

Inside is the Mosque of Mohammad Ali.  It is covered in Alabaster. The inside is beautiful.

We then went through old Cairo which is quite a ways below the level of the city.  We went into the Ben Ezra Synagogue and a Coptic Church.

Unfortunately, Stephen is really sick.  The hotel got a doctor to him really quickly.  Hopefully he'll be better soon.

Day 8: Aswan, Temple of Philae, & Cairo

Today was our last day in Aswan and the Nile cruise.  It is such a lovely area. We started the day by visiting a granite quarry close to town where there is a huge obelisk that cracked during it's production.  It was commissioned by Hatshepsut, the female pharaoh.   It was really cool to see how these giant monuments were constructed--right in the quarry.

Then we went over the old Aswan dam to catch a boat to the Temple of Philae, which is on an island. You can see the old dam in the background.

The temple is honor of Isis and is absolutely stunning.  She is the goddess of magic and was very popular. It is also the temple of Hathor.

Also on the site is the Roman Kiosk of Trajan.

We went to the top of the new Aswan Dam.  It is amazing how far away the waters of the Nile come from.

Then we flew back to Cairo and had a wonderful Peking Duck dinner at our hotel.