Recollections and writings on four holidays in Egypt in 2017, 2019, 2022, 2023. Exploring the ancient sites, and a doing a bit of meeting the locals, with my views on a few things.
I had allowed myself 4 days in Cairo to visit the new Grand Egyptian Museum, that isn't open yet. I was looking at 2 days, possibly 3, in the GEM which is only a short walk from my hotel, and then a day deciding what to do next. A visit to Alexandria is still on the cards to explore an old family connection there, but the weather in Alex in February is not good...
In any case I have two days to fill which is easy enough because I have not been to Saqqara since 2017, and since my last visit things have changed.
And I have also been told I should visit the New Museum of Egyptian Civilisation.
Saqqara is a little bit of a journey out from Giza, the time varies with how fast the taxi driver can go... But about 45 minutes is average...
The boss in my hotel is only too happy to sell me a car and guide for the morning, except I don't want the guide, which is going be either him or his father. (The father has lived in the The States I believe so his English is very good, the son's not so good).
He looks a bit disappointed but to be honest I find that guides get in the way, and want to rush you from one place to another too quickly, which is what happened on my last visit. As it turned out my driver was quite a good guide anyway and in exchange I bought him lunch.
The trip cost 60 USD, (I could have used LE but he preferred USD), which included my lunch and the basic entry ticket to Saqqara, I opted to buy the 'extras' ticket which cost a further 180 LE on top of the 200LE I had already paid via the driver. If you have the time an the inclination I would recommend going the whole hog and buying the 440 LE ticket which cover just about everything as it works out cheaper.
Arriving outside the actual site there were the usual souvenir sellers, but of course you are not obliged to buy anything! And anyway they charge far too much, but you are allowed to haggle to your heart's content, but i wouldn't bother because they don't have a very good range of stuff, better to reserve a day and go to proper shops. One of them spoke with a strong West Midlands accent,mainly because he had lived in Wolverhampton for a lot of his life.
Inside Saqqara I was not disappointed as I could now see the Step Pyramid properly, last time I was here it was covered in scaffolding,and also there were fewer visitors so it was quite uncrowded, and I managed to tag on to a group that had an English speaking guide... Always a plus! Somewhere along the line I completely lost my sense of direction during the short video clip, that's not Cairo in the distance at all! Some of the nobles tombs are included in the extras ticket others are not even included in the full ticket.
The Museum of Imhotep is not open as they are giving it a makeover, but all around Saqqara there is more digging going on...
I didn't get a chance to see this on my last visit because the guide was in a hurry...
Just a few pictures but not enough to spoil your visit!
And now we come to a bit about the dreaded mobile phone syndrome.
I don't know how we coped before we had them, 50 years ago if you went on holiday you contacted your family and friends by sending them a picture postcard, depending on where you had gone, and for how long, it was quite usual for you to get back home before the cards did.
These days we seem to have to be in almost constant communication with the rest of the world all of the time, why this should be i really don't know, but I suppose I am as bad as everyone else!
Apart from the normal landlines which is how the internet is still done in most countries, not even fibre optic in many places, Egypt has a fully developed mobile phone system with generally excellent coverage, unless you are in the desert of course because the camels don't use the internet..... The technology of the system is such that you can bring your own mobile with you and it will work.... Generally the coverage is on the 4G network, during my recent trip, over 8 weeks, there was only one occasion when the signal was less than 4G, and that was in a taxi in an underpass in Cairo...
There are 4 main operators, Vodafone, EtiSalat, Orange, and We (Telecom Egypt), to date on various visits I have used 3 of them and found the service overall to be very good, reliable, and economic. You can look them up on the internet to see what deals they are doing for visitors and then buy a SIM card at the airport.
I don't do this because there are always queues at the airport desks, and also I have found that if you find a mobile shop near to where you are staying you will often get a better deal than the standard tourist ones!
This time around I used We where the shop in Giza gave me 4 SIM cards, ideal if you a family or group, for 156LE which included 22.5 Gb of data and 1000 minutes of local calls, (useful because I have friends there I like to chat to), but only 30 SMS, certainly enough for me. Unless you are going to be streaming movies 22.5 Gb is a lot. Each SIM had its own account and could be recharged separately. the basic credit lasted a month but could be topped up which some tourist cards cannot.
Contrary to what you might hear, you can get access to Facebook, Messenger, and WhatsApp. I don't know why some people have the idea they are banned in Egypt, but what I can tell you is that some of the packages sold by the companies might not include some features, for instance I have friends there who can use WhatsApp for pictures movies and general messaging, even audio messages, but they cannot make an audio or video call. for that they use Messenger or Skype.
What is difficult is if for some strange reason you try to use a VPN because these are not allowed and they are blocked although there are a couple that the government haven't found out about yet so I was able to use those if I needed to appear as though I was in my home country.
So in a small nutshell there is a bit about mobiles and the internet!
Many hotels have a data cap, as do a lot of people in their homes, so although you might apparently have an internet connection nothing seems to happen. What happens here usually is that the staff manage to consume all the data watching videos on YouTube and there is nothing left for the guests!! A bit unfair but life rarely is fair.
A little note about mobiles if you are over 60 and can stay longer than 30 days...
Theoretically your SIM card should be cut off as you cannot get one without a valid visa, and if you are over 60 and staying for a longer period then your visa has expired so you cannot still have an active SIM card.
In practice I have found this doesn't happen because it seems it has to be cut off manually!
As every Egyptian will be happy to tell you without being asked, Egypt is currently going through a bit of a crisis and the Egyptian Pound, LE, has been allowed to float, the follow on as a result of the Egyptian Govt using the import 'escrow' to pay for other things rather than the imports it was supposed to be used for.....
While prices have risen in the last few months because of the fall in the value of the LE it also means that visitors are now getting more LE for their USD/GBP/Euro.
The end result of this is that many prices for tourists have fallen because for instance the rate of exchange for LE to GBP has risen by almost 50%.
This makes Egypt an even cheaper place to go than it was before!
Many tourists are still taking wads of cash with them and it really is not necessary because there are ATMs available almost everywhere, so by all means take some cash with you, indeed you will have to because your hotel if you have not already paid for it in advance will need to be paid using foreign currency, it's the law.
Many hotels will now take a card of course, but for small amounts cash is still preferred! They will take USD, GBP, or Euros (as a last resort), but do keep an eye on the exchange rate bearing in mind that the Euro is now worth more than a USD.
And note that some places do not actually have access to an exchange facility so they will want LE!
If you have to round the bill up by a couple of dollars/pounds/euros because you only have larger foreign bills then don't be frightened to do so as the hotel owner probably will not have small bills or even coins to give you change, and in true Egyptian style you probably will not get any change anyway!
To be honest, as a Westerner, I feel their pain with the way prices are going at the moment, especially for energy and gasoline which in Egypt is now around 12 LE a litre, up from 6LE four years ago. (I will do the sums for you 12 LE is almost exactly 33 pence in UK money).
It is becoming increasingly difficult to change cash these days as none of the banks will now do it and there are fewer official licensed money shops that will give you the top rate, beware of people that will change money for you including your hotel as they are going to make a profit out of it. There are also illegal money dealers who will meet you in dark alleys and them give you only 20 or 25LE to the USD when it should be about 30!
So the first thing to do is get some local currency at the airport from one of the many ATMs available, there is a huge 'bank' of them in the baggage reclaim area.
Get yourself a card that allows you to make cash withdrawals without charge. For people in the UK this means something like the Halifax Clarity card, which makes no charge for using it to buy goods abroad or take cash from an ATM, and also gives you top whack exchange rates through the Mastercard system. Some people, of course, have a similar card that works through the Visa system. either way the exchange rates are good.
Avoid the use of ordinary ATM cards because they will charge you a commission and give you a crap exchange rate, unless you have one that does otherwise.
Use the ATMs that give you the choice of it exchanging the money for you or allowing you to let your home bank do it because they give you a rotten exchange rate and sometimes charge you commission for changing it as well.
Avoid Euronet ATMs at all costs because they either change the money up for you at a really bad exchange rate or if you choose to let your bank do it then they charge you 100LE for the pleasure of using their machine. 100LE/EGP at 36 LE to a GBP doesn't sound like much but it is 3 quid or two beers!
There are also 'cyberbanks', like Revolut, that give excellent exchange rate but you do have to pay for a physical card.
Don't forget that carrying a card is also more secure than carrying cash wherever you go, innocent and inexperienced tourists are a target for thieves. I personally have not carried a lot of cash on me for years because there is now no need! But for added security I do have two cards I can use leaving one in a safe place in my room just in case.
If you are looking for an ATM head to the nearest mobile phone shop as they normally have one if not two ATMs outside.
Back to the traffic... I am staying in Giza instead of central Cairo because I am 'hoping' to go to the GEM, I don't think I will stay in Giza again unless it is somewhere central becuase I am out on the Alex Desert Road and it just a tad too far to walk into Giza, but very convenient to walk to the GEM which isn't open. I did try walking but because of the road works I had to take a big detour, and taxis have to do the same, indeed throughout Cairo detours of 3/4 kilometres just to take a U turn and come back again, are not unusual.
In Giza near the Pyramids they are building a new Metro line which has closed Al Haram down to Giza Square.... No wonder that taxis try to avoid some areas!
And lastly on this post the sensitive subject of tipping....
Did you know that you are not obliged to tip anybody??
Personally, having lived in Australia, I don't tip anybody. Other nationalities seem to tip everybody for no particular reason! (You know who you are!)
My idea of a tip is to give a taxi driver a £5 note for a £4.90 fare and tell him to keep the change, because I have enough loose change already.
And I positively loathe the system, widely used in the USA and Canada, where you are paying by card and they have already added on a tip that you have to cancel off the card reader before you tap or insert your card to pay.
Why are you giving them a tip for doing their job?
In Trip Advisor recently I was reading a travel report from somebody visiting Egypt where the writer said keep a good stock of one dollar bills/coins to use as tips. (They also said they felt like a walking ATM machine but that is not surprising either)
Why? There is no earthly reason to tip somebody in Egypt, and indeed a one dollar coin or bill is no earthly use to them because they cannot change it! Similarly with a Pound or Euro coin. And even if the tip is bigger then they might not have any way of getting it changed so it will end up in the hands of an illegal currency dealer who will give them a crap rate for it.
If I feel that somebody has gone over and above the call of duty then maybe I will tip, like lugging a heavy suitcase for me, but they will get nothing for watching me lift it myself.
And the same goes for waiters and bartenders.
Even if you do tip there is a limit. Why give a toilet attendant 5 USD when all they normally get is 1LE, it used to be a lot less but all the small coins seem to have disappeared these days?
If you feel that somebody has done a particularly good job for some reason, then yes, like I did by buying my barman a drink at the end of my recent stay. He got a beer which cost 50 LE.
And wherever did the idea come from that you had to give the chambermaid something everyday just to do her job, but fine if she has gone over the top and give her something at the end of your stay if you wish, much like in days of old when you were staying at an English country house when you tipped the butler, but those days have gone, and so has the tip!
If you do have a stock of foreign coinage give it to the children who ask for baksheesh, they will be delighted they have got something even though it is worthless to them, although it would be cheaper to give them 1 LE coins!
And beware of people asking you for baksheesh too, don't give them anything because some of them actually have businesses. I came across one on the East Bank in Luxor who was asking for baksheesh and the Egyptian sitting next to me shooed him away and then informed me that he owned a tuk tuk but was too idle to go out and drive it!
English people will feel quite at home with the new Egyptian 10LE note..Although this one is not looking good since it went through the wash on a hot wash.
Vaguely familiar perhaps? To start with I thought I had been given a dud note.
Of course there was always going to be a fourth trip because the Grand Egyptian Museum was not open last year, and so one year on almost I am on the trip I planned last August because there were rumours that the GEM would be open by ealry 2023.
Of course it isn't, but am I going to let that spoil my trip? No, of course not!
Unusually for me I arrive at 1.00am in the morning at Cairo airport on a full flight from Athens. Indeed so full they were offering people money NOT to get on it, and at the same time checking the weight of cabin bags. Fortunately I avoided this because mine weighed in at 14kgs and you are only allowed 6kgs. One of the advantages of having ''Special Assistance'' through airports is that you manage to avoid the queues...
Arriving at Cairo was no different from usual, with about 200 people queuing to get a visa, but I of course have already got mine because I did it on line so I was through immigration and waiting for my bags, very fast as usual, while others were still waiting to get their visa label! This is one of the advantages of the eVisa, and also it means you have paid in advance so don't have to budget for it out of your valuable cash balance, if you have one.
Outside are the usual number of people offering you taxis, but I already have a pre-arranged transfer via my hotel. This is 20USD for the ride through the deserted streets of Cairo to my hotel in Giza. Taxis now have to pay for parking at Cairo airport so when I get out I give the man a tip equivalent to the parking fee.
And now before your very eyes I will explain a bit about eVisas and how to get one as some people seem to have real problems getting the web site to work, this is more than likely because they have not followed the instructions, others have noted that the site uses 'old' software but nonetheless it does work! And it does save time at the airport. Others have claimed that they have been charged the money but not got a visa and cannot get a refund but like any country visas are sometimes refused but if you applied you still have to pay for it! And imagine how you would feel if you were queuing at the airport and then were refused entry, and it does happen!
Firstly, there IS ONLY ONE OFFICIAL eVISA WEB SITE ...
And it is this one here.... EGYPT eVISA ...It will open in a new window. You will find other sites that appear to be the right site and indeed most/many of them will get you a visa, but they are third party sites who just fill in the forms for you and the charge exorbitant sums for doing it!!
The first thing you have to do is read the terms and conditions for getting a visa which you will find under the FAQ link. Note that you need a passport with at least 6 months validity, the other things they note there, is a ''travel itinerary'' I have never produced one of these at immigration and indeed, have never been asked for one, I have however been asked where I am staying so I carry my initial hotel booking with me just in case. If you try to get a visa with less than 6 months validity your application will fall over at the first stage.
You will also need to create an account before you start.
The first part of the form are self explanatory, I have deliberately left the 'info' box open on the departure date field, because if you are over 65 and you are not going to get a job, you can stay longer than 30 days if you want to!! But you cannot put more than 30 days in this field
Remember to 'SAVE' each page as you complete it so that if you have to leave the form it will still be there as a draft when you go back to the site
The next sections are easy enough too.... Just remember to put in your correct name as it is in your passport, and get the dates right, it's surprising the number of people who forget this simple fact, and also cannot read the dates either!
Where it asks for your address, it tells you what characters are permitted, and carriage return is not one of them!! Put the address all on one line... If you get the message about inallowed characters look closely at what you have done becuase it mean you have made a mistake somewhere!Make sure your phone number is valid with the country code and no spaces in it!
And then the picture of your passport... TWO IMPORTANT THINGS TO NOTE, AND IT DOES TELL YOU, FIRST THE PICTURE MUST BE LESS THAN A CERTAIN SIZE, AND SECOND IT CAN ONLY CONTAIN ALPHANUMERIC CHARACTERS IN THE FILE NAME.
If you have used your phone to take the picture then the chances are the file will be far too large!! Read the instruction under the photo!! Most phones have a built in editor so you can resize the photo, on my phone I have to take it down to 20% of the original.. And while you are editing rename the file to something logical like ''passport''. When you click on ATTACH a window opens with helpful suggestions as to how your photo should look,
Here's a nice clean image, above that works just fine, I know because it is the one I have used more than once..
The one above is never going to wrok because the software has to read the passport.
There is often a delay before anything happens because internet upload speeds are not that good in many places, and indeed a slow connection means the system 'times out' on occasions too.
When your photo has uploaded you will see this....
When the photo has uploaded you will see the name/DOB/Passport number fields have been populated automatically.... Which is why you cannot fill them in yourself, and people have actually tried to do so!
Saving the information will keep it as a draft and you can come back to it later and amend anything.... Or you can move directly on to the next step which is payment. Make sure your card is valid and can be used for foreign transactions and actually has credit available on it...
See it's easy, and most people already have a copy of their passport on their phone already don't they??
Quite soon after you have filed the application you will get an email confirming so, and a couple of days later, sometimes more quickly, you get the actual visa which you have to print off to present to immigration.
You will also need a landing card which some airlines will give you on the flight but many no longer do so, you can find these in the airports just before the immigration desk.
A couple of weeks have passed since my return from Egypt and I have ''post holiday blues'', particularly as the weather is disgusting and I hoped I would have missed all the rain on Crete....
Looking back at my notes again, it was nice to see quite a few British people travelling in Egypt again. They all seemed to be ''independent'' travellers who elected to fly in through Hurghada and then after a week of 'beach' holiday were travelling inland by private vehicle or coach to the Nile Valley to see the important sites and spend a few days around the area rather than some Hurghada tourists who come inland by coach to see the Valley Of The King's and then leave again.
The general plan after Luxor and Aswan included a few days in Cairo before flying back to the UK. While these plans sound expensive Egypt really is still remarkably cheap, and Luxor has a lot of accommodation for about 5 euros a night if you are staying a while.
As an example in Luxor, West Bank you can find many properties to rent like this one Mahmoud Haseeb Nubian House at very reasonable rates
This one in Al Bairat has some lovely traditional features like domed ceilings!
This trip was supposed to be my last and was supposed to included Alexandria where I have a 'family' connection and initially I was planning on 6 weeks until I read on Trip Advisor that it was currently impossible, because of COVID, to get a visa extension unless you were in Cairo and wanted to brave the one and only police station that was issuing them....
Of course I later found out that I didn't even need a visa extension because I was over 60.... And the Passport Office in Luxor was open so don't believe everything you read on TA, unless I wrote it
And of course the new museum in Cairo has not yet opened and I still need to visit that so another visit is already in the planning stage to do that and also visit Alexandria....
I still don't know what it is about Egypt that I love so much.....
One thing is sure this time I will do some reviews of hotels and eateries for Trip Advisor this time as looking at my past reviews I didn't do very many!!
So you can expect some updates to the blog again sometime early next year...
Many years ago I used to travel behind the Iron Curtain for work
All I had to do was send my passport along with my 'work order' to the relevant embassy in London and about a week later I would get my passport back with the necessary visa stamp in it.
That was in the days before somebody decided to put explosives in their shoes and carry bottles of inflammable liquid with them... Back in the days when suddenly our bags were searched and if you had a Sinclair calculator with you you had to turn it on to prove that it was not a small bomb...
Now coronavirus has produced its own form of hysteria and the number of pieces of paper needed to even enter the airport has become ridiculous....
Indeed in Greece you cannot even go and buy a light bulb without wearing a face mask, carrying a copy of your vaccination certificate and your official ID to confirm the person on the vax certificate is actually you etc., etc., etc.,.....
In order to get back in to Greece I must either produce a pcr test valid for 72 hours or a rapid antigen test valid for 24 hours.... I have to have the expensive one because my journey is going to take more than 24 hours because I am flying to Cairo and staying overnight there before taking an onward flight to Athens the following day.
Somebody did suggest, quite sensibly, that I didn't need to get a rapid test until the evening before my departure and I could go into Cairo centre to do this.
This sounds fine until you look at how much the taxi fares are going to be and so I might as well pay the extra and get fully tested in Luxor on the Sunday morning and this would be valid until well after my arrival in Athens on Tuesday....
This is going to cost me of course.. And somebody told me that it would cost me 2,000 EGP or about 100 GBP, except when I went and asked at the private clinic it turns out it is only 1,000EGP, or about 50 quid... I didn't bother to tell the boy who has come up with a price of 1,700 EGP.... He has obviously found out that it is only 1,000 EGP and is going to collect 1,700 from me and then keep 700 EGP. He thinks I am stupid...
And I would get the results in 24 hours time, i.e. 9.30am on Monday morning.
But I am getting ahead of myself because you don't know how I am getting to Cairo yet, because if you have been paying attention then you will remember that my flight was in and out of Cairo.....
As I changed my outbound flight after finding that I didn't need another visa and could stay as long as I liked because I am over 60, I also took the chance to change the flight time as my original flight was at 4.40am, so that became 10.30am... So I have choices, I can go on the day train costing 145 EGP, for nearly 13 hours and stay overnight, or I can take the overnight sleeper train and arrive early in Cairo for 126US$, or I can fly which means getting up really early to get the morning flight from Luxor, or taking the afternoon flight from Luxor and stay overnight at Cairo airport.... In the end flying the previous afternoon won out because it only cost €55 and the hotel at Cairo airport was only US$30 with a free transfer bus,
The man on the free transfer bus seemed to think he was worth a huge tip in US dollars although why he though I might even have dollars I don't know, he got 2 EGP instead...
My trip to Luxor airport was more like a charabanc ride for the boy and his cousins of which there seemed to be two in the back seat....
Family is everything in Egypt, you don't just get one you get the whole family, but give him his due he didn't charge me too much. Here is his FB Page Ahmed-Your-Driver-in-Luxor-Egypt
But arriving at Luxor airport far too early I had to wait before I could go and check in... With the usual Egyptian security which is get all the bags X rayed before you even get to check in.... Luxor airport is only small so you don't really need much in the way of assistance here..
Tomorrow is ''leaving Egypt day'', and I checked with the local Egyptair office in Luxor about my special assistance because I didn't get it on the way in, so arriving 3 hours before my flight is due to depart I have to go to to the 'service desk' window number 3... The man in window number 3 says ''Window number 4'', the man in window number 4 says ''Window number 5'', the man in window number 5 says ''Window number 3''... it turns out it is really number 4 because the man there didn't realise he was the one with the blue wheelchair sign in the window. Apart from that the special assistance is so well organised that I am through emigration, without a visa remember, with the only comment from the young lady on the desk, ''Pull the mask down please, if it wasn't written in your passport I would not have thought you were over 60''......
An uneventful flight after having all my papers checked at check in and all the plfs and certificates checked and I am at the gate 2 hours before my flight is due to leave.
Arriving in Athens it is considerably cooler and inclined to rain... On landing the have got the flash new hoist out for me even though I am quite capable of walking down the steps but it is in a wheelchair from now on through immigration... Where.... Wait for it they scan the code on my PLF, (Passenger Location Form if you don't know by now), don't even bother to ask for my vaccination certificate or for the pcr test results, which you will notice is just an image of the paper turned into a pdf..
And wheel me straight into the testing department at Athens airport for a rapid test, which they text me the results of later... This has happened before.. All the expense of a test and they don't even bother to look at it...
With some hours to wait for my connecting flight and my bags not on transfer because the two legs were booked separately, I am at a loss as to what to do with my luggage in Athens airport for the next 5 hours, but Aegean to the rescue and speaking to the man on the check in, they take my bag check me in and give me a voucher to the Business Lounge, not only that when I go to board the flight they have upgraded me to Business Class!!
I have already remarked on the similarities between Egyptians and Greeks and yesterday another one reared its head.... The boy sent me a message on WhatsApp the other evening, (and while we are at it if you plan on visiting Egypt then get WhatsApp on your mobile because they all love using it, and even if you pay for data it is cheaper than a mobile phone call!), to say his aunt had died and could I help him with some money. Obviously not presumably he was having a whip round for flowers?
The following morning more people told me that their aunt had died etc., etc.,, so naturally I assumed it that their had been a sudden dramatic increase in the death rate of aunts throughout the West Bank at Luxor.
Mentioning this to the boy he confirmed what I already guessed, that all these dead aunts were indeed the same dead aunt. I can only assume that the requests for assistance was to help pay for the funeral, but here we get the similarity with Greeks in that everybody is related somehow to everybody else even though the relationship is not even a blood tie, everybody is part of the same family..
But getting back to a bit of out and about... Egyptian cafes are very variable, some are quite swish with proper floors, some only have rugs on the dirt floor, but whichever you end up in invariably they tend to be 'richly' furnished with wall hangings and somehow I always get the feeling that Rudolph Valentino is about to make an entrance.
This morning ridiculously early I am on the East Bank at Luxor because I have to get a full pcr test done, and for that I am going to a private clinic on Television Street, and that peeps is the official name for it because of this...
Yes it is the TV transmitter.
When I asked Abdul why Television Street he just pointed at it and didn't bother to even speak..
And my electrician at my house complains that my wiring is old, and he really needs to get out a bit more because this is normal power pole wiring in Egypt...
Abdul tells me that this whole area is quite new much in the same way that the 20th Dynasty is newer than the 18th Dynasty looking at it, but this is a good place to go shopping, there is even a supermarket that sells Egyptian Smoked Salmon, I wouldn't have thought that salmon fishing was a full time occupation in Egypt.......
But something even more interesting caught my eye recently and here we have laid out in a field well have a guess first...
And did you guess right??
These are tomatoes being laid out in the sun to dry!
And so back to the river Nile and boats, and I am fascinated by one boat in particular, called the Mazag it is what is known as a ''dahabiya'' and doesn't really have its own 'power' and like many others is pulled by a tug.
I still haven't been able to find much information on this one except that somebody described it as futuristic but for some reason it reminds me of The Nautilus from the James Mason movie 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea!
There ae several of this type pf vessel around and you can rent them all to yourself and your private party, typically many of them take only 10 passengers with a crew of 10... At a price of course... I seem to remember that Joanna Lumley did part of her Nile journey on one of these...
Other dahabiyas moored on the Nile, they come and go at regular intervals...
I would love to be able to rent one of these for a week and bring my bestist friends for my 70th birthday!!
And while I was on the East Bank I decided to get my very dusty Gant loafers cleaned up a bit the gentleman was just in the process of finishing the second shoe when two policemen arrived and lifted bodily and took him away.
I don't know why they do this along the Corniche... But I never got the chance to pay the man so if you are there and you hear a shoe shiner complaining that a British tourist never paid him you can tell him it was me and give him 5 LE from me..
After my last visit I did a couple of updates on new discoveries but didn't include the 'Dazzling'' city of Aten not far from the Colossi of Memnon...
Excavation work has been continuing apace here for a while but as yet it is not open to the public....
So you are saved one bit of history!!
Moving right along... The Valley of the Queen's gets a bit neglected I am sorry to say, mainly I supposed because it is not quite so ''exciting'' and doesn't contain the tomb of King Tut, Seti, etc., etc., etc.,
Indeed I myself have neglected it in the past and so time to make amends..
Mentioning my thoughts to the boy, he promptly offered to take me there at a 'special rate' which means I am going to have to buy lunch again, and that as we are heading that way it will probably be in the subterranean cafe in Al Qarnah, their speciality is pigeon by the way... As it turned out the price i had to pay was to get the car fully valetted for the occasion, this cost me the grand total of about £3.50 (70 LE), plus two cups of tea, 20 LE..
This again was an experience which most tourists don't get, i never knew that washing a car needed so much shouting, and while it was being done I was sat on a bench with 3 elderly Egyptians who insisted on speaking German to me, in the end I gave up telling them I was English and replied with my very limited German.
Now one thing we all know about the Valley of the Queen's is that is contains the tomb of Nefertari which is the main reason for going there..... Or so I thought until I looked at the price of the tickets..... To see the tomb of Queen Nefertari will set you back a whopping 1400 EGP or 70 quid in English money.
And I am sorry I am just no paying that so I settle for the normal ticket of 100 EGP (a fiver)..
The Queen's Valley is a lot less crowded than the King's indeed it is quite pleasantly uncrowded and there is a really strong north west wind blowing straight down the valley which means I had to take the Panama off.
And like the King's Valley the landscape is somewhat alien and pitted with holes everywhere..
I must say the tombs here are impressive, not in size perhaps but in the quality of carving and in the colours that have survived thousands of year. Oh if only modern paint manufacturers could make paint that lasted that long today..
i have already made the comment that one camera has given up the ghost, and the Canon is rapidly depleting its battery so I am reduced to a phone camera which means I can at least take a video.
The Egyptian Govt has given up charging for using cameras these days, mainly because every phone is now a camera and they couldn't make people leave their phones at the ticket office as there would be thousands of them in cubby holes, they do still charge for a camera tripod though...
So I got to see three tombs, which from the set up appear to be the only 3 that are open, apart from Nefertari's, although if you look around the place is full of burial shafts and other 'walk in' tombs which are not open... For some reason the tomb of Queen Titi, (Teyet) ahs a large sign on the door saying NO PHOTOGRAPHS, and the man in charge was applying this quite rigourously, although no doubt a 100LE note pressed into the palm of his hand would have changed his mind.
I did take a couple of stills inside but the conditions for photography are difficult because all the walls are protected by perspex screens to keep sticky fingers at bay, and of course the screens are not only dusty but do have sticky finger marks on them so you have to contend with that and also the reflections from the lights.
Hopefully though you can still see the carvings and colouring sufficiently well to be impressed!
By the way on the way out the the man in charge of the ''very clean toilets'' has taken the price for Nefertari's tomb to heart and is asking a piss taking price of 5 LE as against the normal 1 LE, (it used to be less than that but they seems to have stopped using all the piastra coins these days).
Needless to say he only got 1 LE from me and nothing from some other people,,, so on with the videos..
Firstly the tomb of Prince Amenkhopshef...
And second the tomb of Prince Sethherkhopshef...
And sadly I am now getting near to end of my stay because it is Saturday 19th February and tomorrow I have to get a pcr test, but still more time for a bit of out and about!! Meanwhile a picture of the resident dog at the Valley of the Queen's, and like the King's Valley the people trying to sell you alabaster and papier mache statues and replicas are a bloody nuisance....
I really should be doing more than I am but Egyptians are so chatty and on my morning walks they do like to stop me and show me around their gardens which of course does interest me and they always want to know what I grow in my garden..
This is a very elderly vine planted by Imad's grandfather... At the moment all the leaves on it are dead because it's winter, during the summer it will provide shade but I can't help feeling that it could do with a prune.
I will try and get a photo of Imad because when you look at him you see an Egyptian as depicted on the many carvings and wall paintings in the ancient temples.
Elsewhere in his garden he has citrus trees, avocado's, tomatoes, onions, and a henna tree which is much prized for its scent as well as the colour!
And he grows gardenias too... Except he doesn't know the name of them...
During the course of an hour he lets drop that he also owns the hotel next door, and that he has two feluccas on the Nile, and he cannot leave because, like many others, ''The Nile is in my blood''
Not so far away and nearer into 'town' we find today's bread being made using a method that probably has not changed for thousands of years in a traditional oven plonked on the side of the road.
And on the main road a car accessory shop selling fluffy dice..... And flashing lights that no motorbike or took took can be seen without.
And I am pleased to see the bridal shop has changed its display... I think I might go for the Guinevere look in the middle,
Returning to the banks of The Nile for the all important morning coffee we notice that the buffalo has finally been moved from its island because of the new height of the water level...
AS usual there are a couple of cats in attendance. Don't bother trying to make friends with them because Egyptian cats are even more up themselves than normal cats and they are bad enough.
Clearly modern cats have not forgotten that they were once revered in ancient Egypt.
AS you can see everything went completely wrong with the alignment there but i will soldier on..
So walking back to my apartment through the back streets gives a chance for a bit more local architecture..
I am not sure of the significance of the writing or pictures on the outside of the houses...
Aircraft seem to be a popular theme on many buildings...
The pink building is one of the many hotels tucked away in the back streets... I have had a look at some of these and they are actually quite nice once you get inside, don't be put off by the surroundings!
And I am going to leave you here with one of my little videos that was taken in the El Gezira Gardens hotel in Ramla, bearing in mind I have been here three times I had never been in here until the other night, and I must say I was impressed with the garden.
In the course of my wanderings in Egypt and around the world I have taken thousands and thousands of photographs so it is hardly surprising that my little Olympus 'pocket' camera has finally given up the ghost and no longer works.... This leaves me with just the Canon SLR and hopefully the battery will hold up for the rest of my stay because I don't have the charger with me...
But note that some of these photos have been taken on my mobile!!
Bob Marley again...
And a pit bull called Diesel which is quite a good name I think...
Keeping the streets clean... The woman in the distance is sweeping the dirt road.
Around my walking route there are several date palm trees that have been felled and will be used for building materials, in particular the really long ones are used as roof trusses, the ones on the left have been used to make a bridge across the irrigation canal.
The irrigation canal is low at the moment because they are draining it to clear out the culvert further up the road and also while the local council make this flash new canal with concrete walls!
Every butcher's shop comes complete with a built in dog....
And one lucky dog has found a whole skip full of meat!!
Not sure how that dog got up into the skip but it did..
You might have noticed that there are a number of motorbikes in some of the photos??
These are Chinese motorbikes and very popular here, they run out at about 20,000 EGP a pop, or about 1,000 English Pounds which is quite a reasonable price until you consider that an average wage is perhaps only 600 EGP a month, and a school teacher earns 2,000 EGP per month.
The ''farmer's'' version has a fixed trailor on the back, much like the things you see in Greece except new. The ones in Greece are all about 100 years old...
I have been given a lift in the back of one of these.....
And talking about transport... On the right is an official licensed cab with the orange stripe along the top of the plate..
You will also see plates with a red stripe, they are commercial vehicles.
This is a a private plate with the blue stripe, a lot of the people offering you a taxi are driving one of these so they are not supposed to be hiring themselves out. You can have good fun when you don't want a taxi by telling the driver that you are not a taxi, ''Shall I call the police?''
The car on the right is an official ''tourist'' car with a yellow stripe along the top of the plate, you can use these for airport/hotel transfers, and also getting from hotel to the various sites around the area. They don't have meters but you can negotiate a price with the driver. Be generous with him though because he might not get paid anything for official tourist business his only reward is the use of the car. (See previous blog about transfers to Hurghada!)
Other forms of public transport.... The dreaded took took which I will only get into if it is not moving....
I don't think they should let people of advancing years even get into one of these...
And one of the local minibuses, (note the orange stripe!). This is quite a smart new(ish) one most of them are banged up Volkswagen Camper vans, and in country towns they are a ute with bench seats along the side. I have yet to work out how these work although I have been in one in Cairo and used one a couple of weeks ago. You sort of stand on the side of the road looking hopeful (years of practice on that one), and eventually one will stop..... You give the driver money and if you give him paper money you seem to get most of it back in change...
And to finish up a ''Benny Hill'' moment as a man hoses down the dirt road to 'lay the dust' a bit...
Tourist: 'Why are you watering the road?'
Waiter: 'To keep the dust down'
Tourist: 'Is it water from the Nile?'
Waiter: 'No. it's bottled water'
Tourist: 'Isn't that expensive?'
Waiter: 'Yes. That is why the tea costs so much money'
(Assembled company is falling off their chairs laughing....)
