The end.

After 105 days away from home, our trip is complete.   

Having encamped in Dublin for the night, we fly home this morning.  By the time you read this, we may be home (and maybe I will add a last batch of photos when we are).  I think we are all of the expected mental state of both cherishing our adventure as such a unique growth opportunity and time to get away and slow down, and wanting to get home to the familiar: our sons, our beds, driving on the right, the snow, and my cast iron pans.

We decided that this blog would primarily be a travelogue, recording our adventures in photo form.  It would serve the dual purpose in locking in memories for us, and sharing our lives with our friends.  We didn't really write entries about day-to-day life, like cooking, driving, working, buying groceries, getting gas, using an ATM, cuisine, plumbing, walking the streets, relative prices, friendliness of people, unexpected struggles, and things like that.  Feel free to request any topic in the comments, or just ask us in person.

I thought about writing a post with advice for travelers, but thought that might be better suited for Reddit than our blog with 30 readers. 

Stats: 

If you are curious, we took 7000 pictures in 12 weeks in Ireland, and 4000 pictures in 2 weeks in Egypt (which admittedly was more tour/vacation oriented).  In terms of blog photos, the first month of Ireland which included settling in and the family visit, featured 550 pictures, the next month about 150 pictures, and the final month with the Northern Ireland trip was about 250 pictures.  The two weeks in Egypt were about 250 pictures.  

We've had 6500 visits to the blog, but half of those were probably me double-checking the posts multiple times after publishing them :-).  We posted almost 50 times, which is about thrice per week.  Our two most popular posts, by far with about 175 views, were Sam's post about the castle, and my post about biking the Greenway.  We had two days in September with almost 400 views each.  Most blogs got about 60 views in the first month, and about 40 views in the latter months.

Our top 4 viewing countries (including our own clicks) were the US, by far, and then Egypt, Romania, and Ireland.  Was Romania because of  VPNs, or hackers, or because of my Romania joke in the Cairo GEM blog?

Instead of signing off with Over, Over.  I'll link to one of my favorite Family Guy scenes.

 

Luxor, the end of Egypt

Due to travel constraints, our final day in Egypt was a little crazy.  We awoke at 4 am in Aswan and ended the day in Luxor, where we started 10 hours of flying starting with a 2 am flight that ended with another day in Dublin.  That means we were basically up for 42 straight hours, with some cat naps along the way.

Why Luxor?

• Formerly known as Thebes, Luxor was one of the capitals of Ancient Egypt, and is among the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world.  Luxor has frequently been characterized as the ''world's greatest open-air museum'', as the ruins of the Egyptian temple complexes at Karnak and Luxor stand within the modern city. Immediately opposite the Nile (recall the East/West Life/Death division mentioned yesterday), lie the monuments, temples, and tombs, which includes the famous Valley of the Kings where pharaohs were buried, including Tut.  This city is on many bucket lists.
• It was substantially cheaper to fly out of Luxor than Aswan. 

But we only had one day available in Luxor (3 hours drive from Aswan) - the day we flew out of Egypt past midnight. So we awoke at 4 am, hired a driver at 5 am, arrived in Luxor at 9 am to pick up our hired guide, toured the city until 4 pm, ate an early dinner, checked into a hotel at 5 pm for the evening to nap a bit, checked out and went to the LUX airport at 11 pm, boarded our 2 am flight to Istanbul, had a 3 hour layover at 5 am, and flew to Dublin at 8 am.  We landed at 1 pm Egypt time, marking 32 hours and 3000 miles since we awoke in Aswan.  It would be 3 more hours until our AirBnB was available, and then 7 more hours until we went to bed.

 Things we did in one day of Luxor: 

• McDonald's.  Can't get started until we have our coffee, which turned out to be iced hot chocolate. 
• Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut 
• Valley of the Kings 
• Colossus of Memnon
• Temple of Karnak
• Luxor Temple (our guided tour was over, and we were pretty done at this point, but felt we should see one more main thing)
• McDonald's, this time for mango smoothies
• 30 min walk to hotel
• Dinner at Pizza Roma
• Crash at hotel for some zzz's.

Historical Sites:

• Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut.  In a pretty convoluted story, there was a series of multiple generations of queens who married their brothers (all of the same name, Thutmose I, II, III, who are different from King Tut) in order to gain legitimacy to the throne.  Hatshepsut was the only one to rule in her own right, and was a very successful queen.  She then created a narrative of being the daughter of Amon-Ra, not this one, rather the most powerful Egyptian god.  She wanted herself portrayed as male for power reasons, and is shown with masculine features and clothing.  This was her burial temple which was massive, and told this narrative in images to claim power.  It is considered to be among the "great architectural wonders of the ancient world."  One interesting note is that for unclear reasons (envy, anger, spite, politics) her son Thutmose III went back 20 years later and scraped her image off the entire temple.  An earthquake in 27 BC also devastated Luxor, leading to a lot of damage to the historical sites.
• Valley of the Kings.  An area where for nearly 500 years rock-cut tombs going quite deep in the mountain were excavated for pharaohs and powerful nobles under the New Kingdom of ancient Egypt (including King Tut). It is known to contain 65 tombs and chambers as of the most recent discovery in 2008.  3 are included in the entry package, but not King Tut's (extra ticket required).  Interesting notes:  
• There are actually 100+ tombs, but most were empty distractions for robbers. 
• King Tut's tomb is famous for being intact (all the others were robbed long ago) but it is actually a crappy tomb.  His original glamorous tomb was stolen by his successor, Ay.  It's possible that his tomb was preserved because another, and a building, were put on top.
• King Tut's tomb contained about $1 billion worth of valuables, but he was only 18 when he died.  Our guide said that Ramses II (who ruled for 70 years and was having his 67th son at age 95) may have had 10x more in his tomb.  
• Ramses II's 67 sons got one large tomb, each with their own chamber.  It is the largest.
• The longest tomb, until the discovery of the sons of Ramses II, was Seti I's at 450 feet deep (1.5 football fields for the Americans). 
• The best preserved tomb, Ramses III,  is part of the package, which we appreciated.
• Colossus of Memnon/Mortuary Temple of Amenhotep III.  These were just restored 2 weeks ago.  The are two 60' tall stone statues of the Pharaoh Amenhotep III, which stand at the front of the ruined Mortuary Temple of Amenhotep III, the largest temple in the ancient world (86 acres). They have stood since 1350 BC in a damaged state.  It's not clear why they are named after the legendary Greek soldier.  Each statue is 720 tons, and one is a single piece of stone, which would have been too large to float down the Nile, which means it was carried over land the 450 miles from Cairo.
• Temple of Karnak.  The second-most-visited historical site in Egypt, to the Giza Pyramids.  It consists of four main parts, of which only the largest is currently open to the public. The key difference between Karnak and most of the other temples and sites in Egypt is the length of time over which it was developed. Approximately thirty pharaohs contributed to the buildings, enabling it to reach a size, complexity, and diversity not seen elsewhere. Few of the individual features of Karnak are unique, but the size and number of features are vast. You may recall that the Newgrange tomb in Ireland illuminates at sunrise of the Winter Solstice.  The same is true of Karnak, and ironically our visit was on December 21, but not at 6 am.
• Luxor Temple.  Unlike the other temples in the area, Luxor temple is not dedicated to a deified version of the pharaoh in death. Instead, Luxor temple is dedicated to the rejuvenation of kingship; it may have been where many of the pharaohs of Egypt were crowned.  To the rear of the temple are chapels built by Amenhotep III and Alexander the Great (recall he liberated Egypt from the Persians and was crowned a pharaoh/god-king). Other parts of the temple were built by Tutankhamen and Ramses II. During the Roman era, the temple and its surroundings were a legionary fortress and the home of the Roman government in the area. There were two obelisks at different distances from the entrance that were built to be different heights so they appeared to be the same height.  Alas one was stolen and is displayed in Paris.  There is a 2 mile long avenue of the sphinx that is lined with sphinx every ~10 feet on both sides from Luxor to Karnak.  Literally hundreds and hundreds.

So that wraps up our Egypt trip!  It was amazing and very eye-opening.  Not just about history, but also about people and culture and language and many other things.  I hope the girls remember this forever.

Did I mention we hit the road early?  This was an hour into our ride.

The girl were understandably tired

There is something both soothing and unsettling about driving through the Sahara with sand as far as the eye can see, and no rest stops, signage, exits, overpasses, etc.

Hatshepsut's Temple, with the mountain above it that crushed the third temple level in an earthquake in 27 BC.  In view is just one plateau of two.

This cool handrail was a falcon grasping a subtle periodic snake that extended the full length (maybe 100 feet?)   Horus defeating Seth (death).

The Valley of the Kings with 64 tombs

Descending into Ramses I.  You were only allowed partway into the tombs, but that only added to the mystique of how large they must be considering how much we still saw.

Pretty cool that this is 3000 years old, just sitting under a mountain in the desert for all these years.  Some tombs have been known since ancient times, others have been discovered in the past couple centuries.

A fun piece of art.  All snakes w=represented evil, except cobras, which represented power.

The entrance is all hieroglyphics

Ramses III.  A fun star ceiling we saw in many historical sites in Egypt, representing the pharaoh/god up in the stars.  This was the most impressive tomb.

So detailed

Ramses IV

The colossi of Memnon.  These are just the door decorations, if you want to picture how big the temple must have been.  It was the largest temple in the world.  It was basically destroyed by annual Nile flooding over millennia (which, to connect to yesterday's blog, ended when the Aswan Dam was installed, which was one of the goals).

Model of the Temple of Karnak, which is now the largest temple complex in the world.

Part of the Avenue of Sphinxes.  Head of ram (wisdom), body of lion (strength), figure of Amon-Ra (divinity) between paws.

Another hippostyle (we saw another one on our first day at Saqqara) it's a massive roofed courtyard supported by massive pillars - roof no longer present.  The hall alone is 2 acres supported by 134 columns, 80' tall, in 16 rows.

Scale.

The central path where the sun rays shine through on December 21

With us on December 21, but not at sunrise

3 obelisks in view.  Pyramids, by themselves and at the top of obelisks, represent the rays of the sun fanning out.  Fun fact, since the Valley of the Kings is under "pointy mountains," those were close enough to pyramids to not require further construction for those tombs.

Bros

The Avenue of Sphinxes at the entrance to Luxor Temple.  You can see they extend to the horizon, and almost 2 miles in total.

Big guys.  Luxor Temple was very similar to the Temple of Karnak.

A mosque was accidentally built on top of the temple, which tells you what the ground level was back then.  The mosque is still functioning (and has a more inviting entrance, until somebody corrected us and directed us to the Temple entrance; in our defense recall we were guide-less at this point, and running on fumes).

Obelisks, colossi, and pylons, oh my.

We may have been a little hungry and forgot to take a picture when the pizza arrived.

Treats from our hotel for the plane

Dublin airport is as festive as expected

Riding to our Dublin AirBnB.

 

 

 

A week in Aswan

We lived in Aswan for a week, which is a mix of tourism and day to day life, so I am not going to break this into different days, but rather just show the things we have done.  But since it represents 7 days of periodic activities, there a few more pictures than the Cairo posts.

Things we have done, which might not all be in photos, and some of which were done multiple times.

• Walk the corniche (river walk) in Aswan along the Nile.  It's a nice marbled walk along the rivers, and is the lifeblood of Aswan.  
• Walk and shop the souq, which is a mile-long market right outside the front door.  I love seeing markets with all the colors and textures and smells and trinkets.  But you have to be able to handle the vendors.
• Ride a felucca at sunset (Nile sailboat).  A nice relaxing ride in an iconic vessel.  Sorry, there are a lot of photos below.
• Dine at several nice local restaurants with delicious food and sunset views.  The food was amazing, the views were amazing, the company was amazing, and the prices don't break the bank.
• Eat delicious home-cooked meals!
• Drink mango, mint, pear, doum, ginger, karkadeh/hibiscus, watermelon, pomegranate, lotus.
• Shop for groceries in stores, which are also fun to explore.
• Tour the Nubia Museum (history explained below, #2)
• Tour Philae Temple (history explained below, #2) 
• Walk the corniche (river walk) in New Aswan along the Nile.  Aswan has expanded into New Aswan across the river (history explained below, #1)
• Ferry to, and walk along, Elephantine Island (an inhabited island in the Nile at Aswan and a former seat of government. Elephantine refers to ivory, which was traded here)
• Kayak on the Nile.  There are a lot of small islands to investigate, but they all have dogs, so you don't get out. 
• Hike the West Bank to see tombs, including Qubbet el-Hawa/Tomb of the Nobles and the mausoleum of Aga Khan (III buried in 1959, and IV in 2025) now closed to the public
• Pack 8 in a small car. 
• Ride in a microbus (15 seat van with hop on and off)
• Ride in a tuk-tuk (a motorbike carriage)
• Discover mummies in the mountainside (human skeletal remains, some still wrapped in linen, no photos included below in case that's disturbing to some viewers)
• Ride a camel
• Swim in the Nile
• Hold a crocodile 

Historical footnote #1.  Since ancient history the East Bank of the Nile is for the living (sunrise, life, temples, inhabited), while the West Bank is for the dead (sunset, afterlife, tombs, uninhabited).  So we are staying on the bustling East Bank, and we get to see sunsets over the desert landscape each night.  As population increases, there is some movement to the West Bank (like New Aswan). 

Historical footnote #2. You may know there is a large dam (actually two) in Aswan.  Long before the dams, there have been many cataracts/waterfalls/rapids in the Nile here, and it has historically been an interruption in the Nile for navigation/communication/commerce purposes; there is a reason all cruise boats from the north end at Aswan.  It also forms a soft border between people groups, with mostly Arabic people in northern Egypt, and mostly Nubian people in southern Egypt and northern Sudan. That is one reason you have to be careful to describe Egypt as Arabic, because that ignores an entire people group.  Nubia is actually the Biblical land of Kush.  The reason this is important from a historical point of view is that when the large Aswan dam was created, it led to a large reservoir Lake Nasser upstream, which flooded/displaced parts of Nubia.  In the years of dam construction in the 1960's, there was an international effort to preserve Nubian built culture, which involved moving a lot of historical temples and churches out of the flood plain, but many were lost.  You can read more here, but I mention this just so you understand the significance of the Nubia Museum in Aswan, and that the Philae Temple we visited is famous because it was moved piece by piece and reconstructed on an island in Aswan.  Because there was so much to preserve, Egypt gifted some temples to assisting countries, which is why the small Temple of Dendur from Nubia is now in the Met.

Nice morning wake-up view of the Nile

A corniche is a river-walk, in this case it extends nearly the length of Nile.  I think it is mostly polished granite, which adds to its elegance.  Not seen in this picture are the vendors which almost make it a second market (although for services more than goods, like pictures, sailboats, ferries, cruises, taxis, horse carriage rides, microbus rides, tuk-tuk rides, etc)

The souq/market that went on for a mile.

One of many felucca (sailboat) pictures

The contrasting geology around the Nile is fascinating (rocks, cliffs, sand, green, islands, etc)

Sailboats at sunset

Entrance to the Nubia Museum

Some people have noticed a resemblance.  I can neither confirm nor deny.

One of our sunset dinners was a little bright.  No complaints!

I think one reason I like these boats is because Zach plays Assassin's Creed, which is an open-world video game set in ancient Egypt, and it features these boats and views.

Is this picture the cover of the video game, or from my camera?  We'll never know.

Philae Temple

The two main pylons.  Lots of carvings of Horus, Osiris, and Anubis.  Later Christians scraped off a lot (like the entire left pylon which you can tell was a copy of the right)  

A Roman addition to the temple.  The Roman leaders were still carved as pharaohs with hieroglyphics.

Why yes, I did find more galvanized steel showing grain structure.  And yes, I do need a haircut after 100 days.

When we say there wasn't a cloud in the sky in the driest city on Earth, this is what we mean

Heron in flight.  Gray and purple were the two main varieties here.

Very colorful

Grocery store

Spices!

Can you guess what this is?

Overlooking the Nile and Aswan on the far bank

I was wondering if the lush greenery near the Nile was naturally irrigated from the river.  No.

I've never seen this branching, Dr Seuss-y palm tree variety before.

A dung beetle up close.

Sunset again

A stock image of Elephantine Island (I didn't bring my camera on the kayak trip).  It was an interesting juxtaposition of simplicity (narrow dirt alleys between mud buildings) and island hotels/restaurants and new construction.   And a former seat of government.

Another view

Kayaking the Nile

Egyptian breakfast cereal

A tuk-tuk.  This is a stock image because I didn't want to take pictures of people.  It would have been fun to have photos from the inside.

A microbus.  This is also a stock image.  Jumping in a microbus cost a whopping 10 cents per adult (kids free) for a 1 mile trip.  Getting in and out was a bit of an adventure.

The temple of the nobles in Aswan.

Pictures of pictures

So many cool landscapes when hiking desert dunes along a fertile river

I swear I am not this tall.  I feel like Gandalf in LOTR here.

Wasn't me, I promise!  I wasn't even here in 2007.

The human remains were often found near pottery shards.

Descending into the desert.  We hiked about 3 miles of this, up and down, which took about 4 hours, and we finished just before the sun peaked.

Landscape

Contrast

Swimming in the Nile at Barber beach.  Two of us went all-in.  After 2 weeks in Egypt, I was a little uncomfortable with my shirt off, or even in shorts.  I kept asking whether it was okay.  The answer: trust me, people already know you are not from here.

Let sleeping dogs lie.  Do you see all 5 blond labs?

Camel rides along the Nile

And through a Nubian Village

Kate pondering life at the end of our journey

Wrestling a fierce crocodile that was twice my size.  I managed to defeat it, shrink it, and wrap its mouth for everyone's safety.  This is the after picture.