Cairo to Jerusalem

The Nile River – taken from my hotel room. First impression flying over the Nile delta and toward Cairo is the absolute enormity of the city. It took half an hour to fly over it to get to the airport. There, we were met by a rather striking man, both in features and in demeanor, named Hassan who guided us through customs and to the waiting vehicle to bring us to our hotel. It was hard to take in much information. Our flight was roughly 24 hours after the delays and...

Great Pyramid at Giza Woke up this morning at 7am and by 8 had eaten breakfast, met our guide Magda, and were crossing the city to Giza to visit the three most famous of the 118 known pyramids in Egypt. First, let me correct last night’s description of Cairo. It is perhaps a bit more cacophonous and unruly than I had perceived in the dark the previous night. The population density is staggering. Most folks live in a sea of largely unfinnished appartment blocks (owners...

The Nile from my hotel room window in Luxor I’m going to try to be quick here cause it was a long hot day and I’m up again early in the morning. So I may leave out a detail or two for now and come back and fill in later. Rikk and I flew out of Cairo early this morning and landed in Luxor by 9am. Luxor is the great city of the Upper Kingdom (southern Egypt – I know it sounds wrong but trust me.) Across the Nile on the west bank is the ancient necropolis...

This will be very brief. We saw another amazing temple this morning before catching a flight back to Cairo where we were immediately taken to the Egyptian Museum for the rest of the afternoon. We saw, among other things, the contents of Tutankhamen’s Tomb. To see this stuff is overwhelming. Of course we weren’t allowed to take pictures (really this time.) Now Rikk and I are back at the hotel and have both been sideswiped with exhaustion so I’m not going to...