Spring Break aka Parent Invasion

So our parents, all four of them, came to visit over spring break. We went on some adventures together, and by the end, our parents morphed into a very funny comedic act reviewing our misadventures with overzealous tour guides and Egyptian craft (crap) sellers.


First stop was, of course, the pyramids. On that particular day, the park was filled with local Egyptian school groups. It was our (Zach and Rachel's) first time seeing the pyramids under circumstances in which the local crowd outnumbered the foreign visitors. It was hot and crowded, but we persevered.



The shopping is over: I (Rachel) have found the perfect stone sarcophagus for my burial chamber.


Adventure #2 begins. The Levinskys flew and the Bermans took the train, but we all arrived in Aswan at about 8:00 am. From Aswan, we embarked on a three day Nile Cruise floating down (which is North) to Luxor. We saw tons of temples (pronounced timble by our enthusiastic guide) and completely undecipherable Ancient Egyptian carvings.

This is the temple of Isis. It was actually under water when the Aswan dam was created to control the annual Nile flood seasons so that the Nile is a more consistent height all year round. They moved the entire temple to higher ground, but we had to take a boat to get to it. Seeing how intact it looked, it was hard to imagine how they moved it. You can see some staining from the water on the base of the temple (picture above). This is the boat we took to the temple (below).



Below, the ancient Egyptian god of fun.



This plant hanging from the fence, is the "loofa" plant - that is the natural object from which our loofa sponges are found. Apparently the plant is not too pleasant to eat, but when dried out, it makes a great body scrubber for the shower.
And now for some local flavor. When the boat was docked in town, we had time to infuse some modern culture with the ancient. This usually involved visiting markets filled with a lot of touristy objects that we have no interest in buying, and fending off the aggressively welcoming vendors.


This is a pile of dried hibiscus petals. Apparently the good hibiscus comes from Sudan, but I don't know the difference. It takes a couple of these petals to make a bright magenta tea.

Spices and something blue.



Back to the tour. Now we have sailed a little further north and we are visiting the temple of Horus.


The Ancient Egyptian carvings tend to show a little round belly for the men and women - some carvings look a little saggier than others.



Is she serving ice cream here?


Here we are floating down the Nile, and watching the river bank scenery through our cabin window. That felt like the most luxurious moment of the trip. Our air conditioned room, fluffy blanket, and the riverbanks of the Nile slowly gliding by.





After all those tours, we took a few days to rest at the Red Sea. We stayed at a small eco-themed resort/hotel that specialized in diving, and was very quiet and relaxing, though we were kind of a strange group there, not rushing in and out of the depths to log another dive. We enjoyed our chalets with the brick dome ceilings. We snorkled the reefs that were close to the hotel's bay, full of flourescent fish of all shapes and sizes.

On returning to Cairo we had a few more touristy visits with the folks before they returned home, a bit tanned, and probably very tired.