Coptic Cairo, The Souk, and The Citadel of Saladin

I think on reflection that a day off between what has gone before, and this day's sightseeing would have been a good idea..... Coptic Cairo is around about the original Cairo before the Nile moved west. The architecture here is a bit of a hotch potch as it was influenced by the Romans, Greeks, Ottomans.... You name it, and there are more Christian churches than you can poke a stick at, and a fair number of mosques as well. The churches date back to when Egypt was a majority Christian country.

I am going to let the pictures do the talking here..... 

There are some interesting doorways, I like door ways because I always want to know what is on the other side of them... Possibly the most notable of the churches are The Hanging Church which is not hanging as much as it used, The Church of St. George, and a visit to Ben Ezra Synagogue is also a must... Nearby is the original ''Old Bazaar in Cairo'', and also The Citadel of Saladin who always seemed to be in TV programmes and films about the Crusades.

This is a busy day and you are going to need a good strong cup of coffee....


There are a fair amount of Roman ruins around as well which are worth a picture or two.

And I must be honest trying to do this amount in a day is difficult, depending on your level of interest I would say that two days might just about be enough, particularly if you wanted to visit a couple of the other mosques.

Sorry to say, but I would have liked to spend more time digging around in the souk and a bit less time in the churches, but there you go. 

There is also a Coptic Museum which I found out afterwards is also well worth a visit!!

 I mentioned somewhere that there is a certain amount of dust and rubbish floating around, here is a typical side street in Cairo......

But finally we get to the souk and even the cats are having mid morning coffee...

And I get to go to  just about the oldest cafe in Cairo, El Fishawy has been in business for 200 years, much frequented by famous people such as King Farouk and Roger Moore. The coffee is of course Turkish coffee, and throughout Egypt they call it that. A hangover from the Ottoman Rulers no doubt. (In Greece we call exactly the same thing Greek coffee)

The souk is a busy place with lots of things going on, and some interesting architecture to boot. During our coffee break there is a ''brochure'' sitting on the table detailing a new property development somewhere on the outskirts of Cairo, I forget the actual name of it, but thought it was a bit of an odd name considering the surrounding area is desert, but I ask Jesus about the vast unfinished complexes I have seen. It seems that many of them are developments by families, each member of which has a share in it, the number of shares depending on how much money they have put it into it. So one person may own more than one apartment in the building, and might complete their part of it before anybody else, which is why you see one finished apartment on the 10th floor when nothing else is finished. It seems there is also a tax reason as nobody pays tax until the who;e lot is finished but as usual the government is being mean about it and now passes laws to make people pay the tax before it is finished! Much like Greece except that I mention the legality of buildings, many of which in Greece are still not legal. The difference here is that the government insist they are pulled down and cannot be rebuilt. Now there's a good idea.

We take a wander around the souk and I find some interesting things to take pictures of..... 

While my guide is getting a bit tetchy because we are running behind schedule, and there is me thinking I have got him trained!!

But we are off to the Citadel, which if nothing else, gives some fine, although slightly smoggy, views across Cairo. 

In the surrounding grounds of the Citadel the are some fine examples of Egyptian topiary which they seem to be very fond of, I am not sure where this originates but I am guessing they inherited it from the Ottomans...

The mosque is an imposing edifice, and well worth a look inside. There are a lot of mosques, nearly as many mosques in Egypt as there are churches in Greece, and the are still building more, the sound of the call to prayer in the evening is quite haunting, especially when you are hearing it from severl directions at once.

The photo outside the mosque makes me look fat........ A couple of months after this photo was taken I was rushed to hospital in an ambulance, initially they thought it might be a pulmonary infection but it wasn't, however it put paid to any flying for twelve months....

Tomorrow is a day off from sightseeing...... And I bid farewell to my guide for the last four days with the promise that I will give him a good review on TA and a handsome tip for him and the driver.....

Cairo to Luxor and on to Dendera and Abydos

My original plan was to take the train from Cairo to Luxor where I am picking up my Nile cruise ship, but a friend was telling me about Dendera and Abydos, and when I looked at it I thought ''Yes. Why not''. But taking the train was going to take up too much time, and flying was cheaper anyway...

Cairo airport departures is a seething mass of humanity, you and your baggage are X rayed and scanned before you even get to the check in desk, and add the fact that I have to go to the Egyptair desk to get my ticket it all makes for good fun. There are people that will walk up to you and tell you that they have special permission to take you the back way through to save you time. 

Don't believe them, they will take your money and your luggage but they will not take you as well. Just ask them where their official ID tag is and they disappear like a puff of smoke.

I lost one trainer in the X ray machine... They proudly presented me with a trainer except it wasn't mine, so at some stage somebody had given up and continued on with only one trainer. I got mine eventually....

Beyond the security and check in the departure gates there is not a soul in sight. Where has everybody gone? The lavatory attendant will let you have a cigarette in the toilet for a small consideration, unnecessary in my case, but there is a smoking lounge anyway that costs nothing.

Arriving at Luxor I don't seem to have any luggage but it finally appears and I walk outside looking for a taxi. My luggage is heaved up on to one shoulder of a total stranger who trots off into the car park with me following. (You get used to this after a while in Egypt, so far the only time I have had to deal with my own luggage is from the taxi into the departure hall at Cairo airport) and I am introduced to Ali my taxi driver who is one of the funniest men I have ever met, certainly the funniest taxi driver for sure. 

Ali is no youngster, speaks excellent English, laughs a lot, and has only one tooth that I can see, which is not difficult because he spends most of the time looking at me not the road. 

''First time in Luxor?''

''Yes''

''I will take you on a tour''

I thought it was going to cost me a fortune but it was about the same amount of money that you have to pay just to get into a taxi in Brighton, without even going anywhere. You don't want his life history and neither did I but I got it anyway.

Arriving at my hotel, The Winter Palace, we have to stop 300 metres away from the entrance because the entire front of the hotel and the road is full of motorbikes. The Egyptian Motorcycling Club are having there annual get together. Ali shouts and whistles, (how can you whistle with only one tooth?), and a ''bellboy'' appears to take my bags. Bags scanned and me too I approach the reception desk to be told that they have suspended the normal dress code, (smart casual), which is not a surprise with the amount of denim, T shirts, and leather floating around. They seem to know who I am and the necessary paperwork is done, my bags have disappeared already, I know not where, and I am guided to my room...... 

Time for a wander around the area before something to eat and then an early night because it is another early start....

And this is one trip that I think is essential if you are doing a Nile cruise then you must find time to do the trip to Dendera and Abydos. It is a shortish journey and the road is not too good in places, but my guide is entertaining, and the driver is excellent especially when we drove through the middle of what appreared to be the local rubbish tip! Again I am surprised that I am the only passenger but it seems this is normal unless you are actually travelling as part of a party. I never mind sharing transport especially doing things like this because it gives you somebody to discuss what you have seen.

If you confine yourself to just going from your 5 star Cairo hotel to Giza and back again, and the sights that you see along the Nile, you are restricting yourself to a very narrow view of Egypt so I make no apologies for the length of this post, nor for the number of photos of the journey where you see things that have been happening for thousands of years such as the making of ''mud'' bricks..

Arriving at Abydos be prepared to see,
and hear many things. Not least of all the story of Dorothy Eady, of which you can believe as much or as little as you like. The best part of this side trip is that although it is a popular place to visit, it is not so crowded as the sites along the Nile, so both at Abydos and Dendera you can see more because you are not being jostled by other groups of visitors.....

The guides also have more time to explain what is going on.


Tim's Tip of The Day: You will only get
as much from your guide as you put in.
If you are interested in what you see and show it, you will get a lot more from your guide.....

At Abydos is not only the Temple of Seti I,  but also the Temple of Ramesses II, and you are going to hear those names again during your further adventures in Egypt. Here you can see the famous hieroglyph said to depict modern technology including the helicopter, a result of the original carving from the time of Set I being plastered over and re-carved in the time of Ramsses II, his son. And the carving depicting Seti I wearing the crown of Lower Egypt roping the sacred bull with his son, then only Prince Ramesses.

Nearby is a cafe, typical of many in Egypt, where you can get a coffee after walking through the site, again my guide is fascinated by my desire for coffee at regular intervals!

 Leaving Abydos we get a police escort through the lunchtime traffic on our way to Dendera.

 

 Dendera is a large complex, parts of which do get crowded because they are not very large, but on the day I visited there were very few visitors.

Like many monuments worldwide it has suffered with the ravages of time, (don't we all?), but here something has happened over time that has given us the chance to see what it was really like. Hundreds of years of soot, presumably from oil lamps and fires within the temple, had been deposited
on the ceiling, preservingnwhat lay beneath, (although as it is a ceilling I suppose that should read ''What lay above''), this soot has been carefully removed to reveal the original painting giving us a view of what it was like when first built.

 Some of the carving at Dendera is quite clearly not Pharoanic, and the columns are more Corinthian than Doric as at Abydos. There are excellent examples of Ptolemaic art including the carving of THE Cleopatra, (overheard in the background, ''You mean she really existed? I thought she was just a part played by Elizabeth Taylor), with her son one of the last Ptolemy's who was fathered by Julius Caesar!

The Romans might have thought their occupation of Egypt was a good thing,
whether the Egytpians did is a different

 matter!

Also at Dendera you can see the famous Zodiac ceiling, well actually you can't because what you are looking at is a copy. Napoleon's army took it and it is now in The Louvre, as are many other
artifacts.
I will not dwell on the political side of this because I live in Greece and there are ongoing demands for the return of The Marbles....

 Meanwhile in The Louvre the Venus de Milo,and the statue of Winged Victory are still to be found....

Enjoy the rest of the pictures because we are heading back to Luxor for something to eat!

Part of the revealed ceiling to the right.
A wonderful shade of blue....

A Day in Luxor, and Boarding The Good Ship MS Mayfair....

I have a day to spare in Luxor until I board my cruise ship late in the afternoon so I have plenty of time for a wander around and stick my nose into places it really shouldn't go..... 

Did I say somewhere you don't get hassled?? Well in Luxor you will, by boatman and carriage drivers. Indeed until you get the hang of getting rid of them it does quite spoil the walk along the Corniche on the Nile Bank,

especially in the stretch from the Museum to just down past The Winter Palace.

It seems to be a common misconception with a lot of Egyptians that because somebody is there on holiday it means they have got a lot of money. Well I am there because it is cheap, and so are a lot of other people..... I found that the best thing to do was engage them in a bit of conversation completely avoiding the fact that they are trying to get you on to their felucca or into their horse drawn carriage. Some of the carriages are genuine antiques by the way held together with ''Pop rivets'' and bits of rope... Having passed the time of day you can then happily walk off leaving them wondering what has happened.

This was the day I met Abdul.

Abdul has a felucca, and unless you like sailing in small boats you don't really want to go on one, but Abdul is not that keen on doing much. He quoted me a ridiculous price of US$300 for an hour. I had already asked them in the hotel how much it should be, GBP20 or maybe US$30 at most.... if you really want to take a sail on a felucca then by all means do, it is part of the Egyptian experience, and you will be sailing in a vessel the design of which has not changed much in a 1000 years. Indeed some of them look as though they have been around that long! Just don't pay too much!

Continuing my walk I realised that what actually happens is that as soon as you have got rid of one boatman another one will appear so it takes a while for them all to realise that you are just not doing it!

The carriage drivers are even more persistent. Returning back towards my hotel I come across Abdul again, so I ask him where is a good place to get coffee.... He shows me, but for that information I have to buy him a coffee, and breakfast as it turns out. Food is cheap so don't worry about it.....

There is a market in Luxor... 
I love markets! 

And I have to buy saffron....

Abdul knows just the the right shop, (it probably belongs to a cousin so he gets a cut out of the sale, but who cares?)
Lead on Adbul, there he is looking to see that I am following....

This is still the ''touristy'' end of the market, you can go further and find all the fruit and veg and so on, and it gets cheaper as well!!

There is also the famous camel market.... Another day.... I get my saffron EGP 25.00 per gram (about GB£1), and I have bought 20 grams, buying it by the gram makes it sound like some sort of drug, but it is one of the most expensive spices in the world, and you don't need a lot of it.

And it is time for coffee again, and Abdul needs feeding again.... I think I mentioned that donkeys are a common sight in Egypt? Well the same goes for horses, even in the middle of towns you will find horses still used as transport, and they have diggers as well.... 

And you see a lot of these Chinese motor bikes. But it is getting towards the time when I have to go back to my hotel and collect my luggage and wait for somebody to pick me up to take me to my Nile cruise ship, a lot of the Nile fleet are ''laid up'' and it is a fair bet that this one will not be going anywhere in the near future....

I don't know why..... But for some reason boarding a ship always seems to be chaotic. Coming to Greece by ferry from Italy seems to involve driving down backstreets in the dodgy parts of town, (Piraeus is even worse), and there doesn't seem to be any system to it all. I found the same in Punta Arenas in Chile, I was told to wait at a certain dock gate, and an hour after we were due to sale somebody arrived and let us in the the docks... 

Here is it the same, and because they moor the ships side by side out into the Nile you have to walk through two other ships to get to yours, minus luggage of course because that has already disappeared... But finally I am on board the MS Mayfair, a relatively new vessel. I have already asked if there is a passenger called Poirot on board and got a blank look. It i a lot smarter than the ship boarded by Peter Ustinov in the film of ''Murder on the Nile''....

And I get to see my first Nile sunset...

I did wonder how they were going to organise us into groups allowing for several different languages, but at dinner it became clear that we were divided up by language each with its own guide, so in my group there are 6 of us, all English, two couples and 2 singles.

The two couples are travelling together and already I am a bit jealous because they started their trip off by staying at Mena House in Cairo, part of the Agatha Christie route that I didn't follow, but copious amounts of wine, (there are some very good Egyptian reds), thawed us out and got us away from the '''first day at school'' atmosphere. WE also found out that not all passengers are created equal, as one of the couples is not on the drinks included package. This didn't stop the waiter pouring them glasses of wine!! The food at dinner is distinctly ''western'' and I am a great one for cooking my veggies ''al dente'', but the green beans were positively rock hard.... Heigh ho, luckily we didn't get green beans every day!

And tomorrow morning we are off on our Nile Cruise....

The Nile Cruise Part The 1st., Valley Of The Kings, Temple of Hapshetsut,

It is the first day of the cruise except we haven't gone anywhere yet because the first stop is the Valley of The King's, which is on the west bank of the Nile opposite Luxor..... The ancient city of Thebes was located here.

And at this point I have to go into the pros and cons of taking one of these cruises. First I recommend that you take the full 7 night trip to Aswan and back to Luxor because you get to see more, and as an extra plus being on board ship you do not have to worry about finding breakfast lunch, and dinner.

And the biggest plus it getting a guide thrown in for free, (well not quite, because you have to tip him at the end of the cruise!).

On the downside you have 200+ people all doing the same sightseeing trips, along with the other cruise ships doing the same itinerary, and this tends to make for crowds wherever you are going, and also limits your time at each place. But it depends how ''in depth'' your want your experience to be, and how interested you are in it all....

The Valley of the Kings is probably one of the most famous sites in Egypt after Giza, every man and his dog goes there....... The ticket you have (pre-purchased by the guide so you don't have to queue for a ticket), allows you entrance into three tombs. Which tombs varies daily because they are not all open at the same time. Entrance to some of the more famous tombs, like Tutankhamun's and

Ramesses VI's are not included on the normal ticket. 

In other words you can expect a lot of people 
around....

To be going on with some more pictures of the treasures from King Tut's tomb on display in the Egyptian Museum...

And the best of luck fighting your way through the tourist bazaar when you go in and out from the main gate to the car park, if you are sneaky there is a way around it!

Cameras are not allowed, but unfortunately this does not extend to mobile phones, and although you are not allowed to use them you will find people (our Japanese friends again), blocking up the walk ways taking selfies which really is unfair on the rest of us that follow the rules.... 

On the day I visited there was a new tomb opened for the first time, that of Ramasses IX, which had never been open before so I got a bit of a treat there! The tomb of Seti I was also open that day but it is a long deep tomb with lots of stairs and I don't do stairs so I was happy to forego that one and spent some time talking to our guide instead. (Guides are not allowed inside the tombs by the way). And don't worry if you are a bit claustrophobic like me, most of the tombs have high ceilings, are airy, and have lots of lighting and the wall paintings and hieroglyphics are so interesting it will take your mind of things! 

Leaving the Valley of the King's heading for the Temple of Hatshepsut we pass by an alabaster workshop, quite a lot of these tours include visits to papyrus or linen workshops, you don't have to buy anything and quite often the free coffee is excellent! 

From a distance the Temple of Hatshepsut is impressive and has some things of interest, according to our guide, not least of all is the fact that the people we can see running about on the surrounding cliffs are soldiers from the army base over the hill.

 Hatshepsut ruled Egypt as a man but was actually a woman, her tomb is in the Valley of The King's rather than the Valley of the Queen's, possibly I would imagine because she was a ruler and not the wife of a ruler, if you see what I mean...

Me in my Howard Carter hat looking every part of the ecccentric...

Last stop of day 1 is the Colossi of Memnon quite spectacular in themselves and part of the history of the surrounding area much of which is now lost. Perhaps one of the interesting features is that the stones used came from a quarry near Cairo 420 miles away, and supposedly are too heavy to have been brought via ship on the Nile so would have come overland.

My mind springs to Stonehenge of course, which is older, but with stones brought from Wales. You can do anything if you have the will and sufficient manpower.




Returning to the ship I find this ensconced on my bed.