From Russia With Love

Egypt was…incredible! It is probably my most favorite vacation and my favorite place that I’ve visited (I so would have gotten deported for this trip). I think I’ll tell you about it day by day, and this post will probably be really long because we did so much stuff and packed our days full! If you actually make it to the end of this post, well you must not have much to do or I must be really interesting :) Just kidding. Anyway, here goes...

Saturday night: We arrived in Cairo after a 4-ish hour flight from Moscow. It took a little while to find our driver from the hotel but we did and when we asked him his name, he said “the most popular name in Egypt, Mohammed.” And he wasn’t kidding. We met about 7 other Mohammeds. When he asked our names he repeated all of them and when Becca told him her name, he thought it was about the funniest thing he’d ever heard and he kept saying it over and over. Anyway, we got to our hotel and decide what to do the next day.

Sunday: We decided to go to the pyramids first since this was number one on our list of things to see. The hotel arranged for a car to drive us around the whole day so we met our driver named Mahmoud and we started out. We first stopped on a bridge over the Nile River and took some pictures and then kept driving to Giza. It was weird because it was sunny and bright but there was this sort of cloud over the whole city and you could just tell it was the pollution and smog. Mahmoud took us to the stables and arranged for us to ride camels to the pyramids and the Sphinx. It seemed really shady (the guys giving us the camels) but we kind of just had to trust them because we didn’t really have another choice. Anyway, so we get our camels and mine was named Shakira and our guide was named Abdul. They took us through the stables area and we had to go through this security checkpoint where they searched through our bags. We kept having to get on and off the camels so I was a pro by the end of the day. But it was still really hard to climb up on Shakira and when the camels ran we kept bouncing up and down so I was sore the next day (like after you ride a waverunner kind of sore). So we start off into the desert and it’s just sand as far as you can see one way and then you can look back and see the city the other way. It was so cool but there were all these men around on horses and camels and some with rifles and then just us girls. Out in the desert. We rode through until we got to this point where you had a really good view of all the pyramids from the back but Abdul kept riding off on his horse and then he would come back and say, “Welcome back!” It was really funny. He had us do all these poses and took our pictures and then we rode up to the center pyramid and we were able to climb up on it. It’s way bigger once you get up right next to it. So we walked around a little bit and there’s all these tourists everywhere and then we rode down to the Sphinx and you go through all these tombs. It was weird looking at the desert and imagining people building the pyramids with just their hands and to imagine all those Bible people that traveled through the desert (like Moses and the Wisemen and all them) and how that would have been. So when we got to the Sphinx, the thing that struck me the most was how small it was! I mean, it’s not small, but when you look at pictures, it looks like it should be the size of the pyramids but you can’t even see it until you’re right up next to it. There were so many tourists and it was really crowded so we just took a quick look. You can’t touch it or get real close to it so we got as close as we could. Then this guy took our picture with it and told us we had to give him money and then gave us these turquoise scarab things so we gave him money but we learned later how to say no because everyone there asks for tips for everything and anything they do.
After the pyramids, our driver took us to the Perfume Museum which he told us was really cool (and that we would do this instead of going to Memphis) and I’ll admit, I was a little skeptical at first. But when we got there and it was air-conditioned which was a very nice change and there were these glass bottles everywhere. We went to the bathroom because we didn’t know the next time we’d find a clean bathroom (you have to have your own toilet paper, though, which luckily sometimes you do in Moscow, too, so we were used to this). Then they sat us down and gave us this sort of sales pitch about the perfume but it was more fun than a sales pitch. We got to smell it all and it’s actually called “pure essence” ha. They let us try some and we learned stories behind some of the more famous scents. The guy was really open about everything, like there were some taboo stories about some of the scents and he just came right out and said them! Julie and I both bought a little bottle but trust me—it’s better than just perfume. After that we went next door to the Papyrus Museum where they showed us how to make paper out of papyrus and how to tell if it’s real or fake (you should see how the strips are crossed rather than just vertical…). The guy told us the story of the painting about the Judgment where they weigh the guy’s heart and a feather and ok, I bought a couple of papyrus paintings, too but you could get them with something written in hieroglyphics on them so of course I did.
After the museums we drove out to Saqqara and had lunch at this amazing restaurant. It was just like a tent covering with plastic tables but when you walk in they play music to welcome you at the door (these guys playing oboes and drums and all this Egyptian-y music). We had had such a busy eventful morning and we were starving! We had humus and flatbread and chicken and beef shishkabobs and you didn’t really order, the guy just asked if you wanted chicken or beef or mixed.
After lunch we hurried to Saqqara and only had about an hour there because they were closing but we ended up being able to stay a little longer than that. We saw the step pyramids (so crazy! How in the world did they make those?) And we got to go inside a pyramid! If you are claustrophobic, don’t even try. You have to duck down and walk all squatted down this wooden plank to squeeze in but it opens in the end. The walls were all covered in hieroglyphics and there was a sarcophagus in there. After that, we went into this above ground tomb which was so beautiful inside—all these paintings and carvings on the wall and it was like a maze in there. We walked around some more tombs and looked around and then we headed back to the hotel.
We decided to go on a Nile dinner cruise that night so we got all dressed up and another driver took us to the cruise. His name was Mohammed and we joked around and asked him if he would drive us the next day. The cruise was really relaxing and fun. We had a buffet dinner and there was a belly dancer and a Sufi dancer. The Sufi guy kept spinning and spinning and he did all these things while he spun like pouring himself a glass of water! It was really cool. We went up to the roof and just enjoyed the view for awhile cruising down the Nile and seeing Cairo at night.
Then we went back and went to bed because we were exhausted!

Monday: On Monday we woke up and had breakfast and then met Mohammed and he took us to the Egyptian Museum. It was really busy but we saw all these old things that were in the pyramids or just out in the desert and the museum was packed FULL of stuff. The big highlight of the museum, I think, was all of King Tut’s stuff. All of his golden sarcophagi were in there and they were huge and so ornate! They have his coffins (I think there are like 3 of them) which are beautifully painting and all kinds of things that were just found in the tomb with him. His mummy is still in his tomb in Luxor, which I think is nice that since they took everything else out of his tomb that the people so painstakingly put in there, they respected him enough to leave him in his original tomb. They had all this really pretty jewelry and we even saw some mummified animals!
After the museum, we went to the citadel that was built as a fortress against the Crusaders. It seems like it must be a game with Egyptians to see who can get the tourists to say hi because people kept saying, “hi! Where are you from? What is your name?” And if you said hi back, they would giggle and run off. It was funny. It made me feel like a celebrity. The citadel is huge and overlooks the city so we had a really good view. We came upon a mosque inside and you had to remove your shoes to go in but as soon as you went it, it was so peaceful and quiet. All the nice even from inside the citadel was blocked out and you just got to walk around in the shade barefoot. There was another, bigger mosque at the top of the citadel so we made our way up there and it was really beautiful inside. The ceiling was huge and so ornate with all these chandeliers. And we went in just in time for the call to prayer. The men (even the guards) came in to pray but no women.
After the citadel, we went to Old Cairo where all of the Coptic churches are. We wandered around and saw these chapels and convents and even a Jewish synagogue and then we finally found the Hanging Church. It was beautiful inside. We went into the Coptic Museum where they had all these old Bibles and garments and other really neat stuff.
After that, Mohammed took us into the oldest mosque in Egypt (I cannot ever remember the name) and we had to go into a different entrance than he did because we are girls. We also had to wear these robes to cover ourselves and they had hoods and everything. It was so beautiful inside and Mohammed told us all about it. There were places to sit and study and they had the Quran there in case you needed a copy. I’m not Muslim, but I wish our churches were more like mosques. They are just so peaceful and quiet and beautiful. Anyway, so while we were there we saw someone waving to us but we just ignored him, thinking it was someone waving because we were tourists. We were walking back to the exit to leave and Mohammed, our driver from the airport, comes running up and we were like, “we know him!” So both Mohammeds talk (they knew each other, too) in Arabic and then we left. Mohammed didn’t believe that we knew him because like 23 million people live in Cairo and what are the chances that we would see someone we knew?! So then we had a late lunch and Mohammed asked what we were doing that night. We told him we were going to Khan al Khalili (this huge open-air marketplace) and he asked what we were doing after—if we were going to bed early. We decided that since it was our last night in Cairo and we had no plans for the next day that we could go out and do something fun so he told us tell Ahmed (at the hotel) to call him when we got back from the market and they would take us out. So we went to the market and it was so fun! We had to hail a taxi to get there and it was my first time to hail a cab and I felt like such a grown-up after I did it. At the market, they have all kinds of things and it is just HUGE. You can bargain with them and everyone is yelling at you to come have a look and that you are so beautiful and if you don’t say anything, they’ll try different languages on you. Some people think that they hassle you, but I loved it. I think being in Russia, I’ve been so deprived of talking to people and interacting with anyone that I was soaking it up. I felt like such a celebrity because they all wanted me to come to their café or store! I ended up buying a bunch of stuff and I got really good at bargaining ha. There was this one time when I felt like I was in a movie because I was in this back alley in this store looking at bracelets and the “boss” (that’s what they called him) just sat there with his black eyeliner smoking sheesha and there was Arabic music playing softly and he told me he would lower the price if I smiled. Creepy but it was so something you would see in a movie.
When we got back from the market, we told Ahmed about going out and we had to wait until he got off work at 11. The hotel manager invited us out for his birthday but he was old and a little creepy so we told him no (plus we already had plans). So we called Mohammed but he had car problems and didn’t show up until about 3 hours later. Ahmed took us to a café and we had Egyptian coffee and tea and he told us story after story and I’m sure most of it wasn’t even true but they were really funny stories. I tried apple sheesha (it’s like hookah) and after the café we decided to walk down to the Nile while we waited for Mohammed. Crossing the street in Cairo is really scary—there are basically no traffic laws and to cross, you just go. Really, you just have to walk out and dodge the cars. It was so scary but we did it! We walked down the Nile and took some funny pictures and hung out and finally Mohammed pulls up. We decided to go get something to eat and then we brought it back and ate at another street café. By this time it was about 3:30 am and there were no women out. We asked where they all were because there were men everywhere and they told us that women go to bed early and we were like, “what about us?” They told us it didn’t count for us. It’s weird because there is kind of a double standard between tourist women and Muslim women. The whole trip we didn’t really meet any women. But Cairo is really the city that never sleeps. Everything is open until about 4 am! By the time we finally went to bed, we could hear the day’s first call to prayer…

Tuesday: We walked around Cairo on our own and just looked in different shops and we were so exhausted. We went back to the hotel and chatted with this Turkish guy until it was time to go to the airport for our flight to Sharm El-Sheik. It turns out that our driver back to the airport was Mohammed from before! He told us that when he saw us at the mosque he was in a class to learn to be a tour guide and he was going to invite us to stay and sit in on the class but we looked like we were in a hurry. We were really sad we missed out on that but he gave us the spiel and practiced on us what he would have said if he was our tour guide and he was really excited about it and asked how his English was. We got to the airport really early and security there is really laid-back, almost non-existent. I took a little nap but this German lady came up and talked to Julie and Becca while I was asleep at the gate. To board the planes there, they actually take you by bus out to the plane and you walk up the steps. It was only an hour flight and Becca ended up sitting by the German lady who we found out pretty much hated America but she lived in Dahab which is where we were going. She tried to talk us out of climbing Mt. Sinai (“it’s just a mountain”) so we didn’t really trust her…We found our driver to take us the hour drive to Dahab and who else is going with us? The German lady. We had to go through this border patrol type thing and they told us to tell them we were German and not say we were American. We asked why (how shady is that?) and they said they just check Americans’ passports more thoroughly and it would just take a lot of time. So when the patrol asked, we just didn’t say anything because we felt weird about lying. The German lady said she was from Germany and I guess they figured we were with her. We got to our hotel and we were exhausted but our hotel was about the most amazingly beautiful place!

Wednesday: Becca talked to the scuba dive people to find out when she could go diving that day and when she came back we all went and had breakfast together. I put my swimsuit on under my pj shorts and a t-shirt figuring I would have time to change later. We finished breakfast and they came to pick up Becca for diving so I went with her to ask the guy about snorkeling that afternoon. He said it was too windy to snorkel but would I like to try diving? I had never done it before but he said it was ok so I ran and got my wallet and we drove into town to scuba dive! So I was still wearing my pajamas just with my swimsuit but it was ok because I was being a beach bum. When we got there we had to sit and talk to the dive instructors and it was this place where there’s just a bunch of pillows on the floor and really low tables and it’s not inside but there’s sort of a roof. My instructor guy was named Rashad and he was really laid back and so nice. He taught me how to do all the stuff that I would need to do and then we put on our wetsuits and gear (I was legit and had all the stuff: air tanks, regulators, weight belt, everything) and got into the Jeep to go to the dive place. So I went scuba diving! In the Red Sea!! It was one of the coolest things I’ve ever done. Rashad said we were down about 2-3 meters and we went for about 40-45 minutes. I saw the reef and all these cool looking fish and at first I was so scared (for those of you that know my phobia of the deep and of ocean creatures…this is a huge deal) but once I was down there is was so cool that there was no way I could have been scared. It was so quiet and relaxing and you could look up and see the waves crashing over us but you couldn’t feel it. There were just so many fish! It was awesome. It’s tied (with Mt. Sinai) for my favorite event of the trip. After diving, we went back to get Julie and decided to walk into town (about 30 minutes, we had been there to dive but we wanted to look around). We walked in and took pictures of the amazing mountains and the Red Sea and of all the goats and camels and sheep just in the road all around town. There are basically no women in Dahab unless they’re married but they stay close to home. The only women you see are tourists. We walked down the boardwalk and the town is full of hippies and scuba divers and we bought some postcards and walked to the bridge. The town is small enough that the bridge is sort of the point of reference. If you want to tell someone where a place is or meet anyone, you just tell them “it’s left from the bridge,” or “right from the bridge” or “I’ll meet you at the bridge at 9.” So we’re walking over the bridge and we see Kristin, Rick, Kelsie, and Hannah! They had gotten in that afternoon from Cairo and had gone swimming so we shared stories from Cairo and decided to meet up the next night for dinner. We went back to our hotel and had dinner and then took little naps to re-energize for our hike up Mt. Sinai!

Thursday: I’m categorizing the hike as Thursday because it pretty much was and I slept all day Thursday anyway, so there’s nothing exciting to tell you about that. We left for the hike at about 11:00 pm and it is about a 2-hour drive. Me and Becca and Julie went and there were two other guys in our group: Shaun from South Africa and Damien from Australia. We drove through the desert to the place where we would start our hike and bought flashlights and went to the bathroom and then we met our guide, Yussef. He is Bedouin and only 20 years old. I was really impressed with him because he hikes it every night and doesn’t need a flashlight, knew exactly where to go in the pitch black, was never out of breath (we were all panting and had to rest and he looked like he was taking a Sunday afternoon stroll) and knew all the shortcuts. Plus, he was super nice. He lives a 30-minute walk away but sometimes he rides a camel ha. Anyway, the hike up took about 2 hours (we left at 1 ish) and anytime we would stop it was so quiet (like silent) and we would look up in the sky and you could see hundreds of thousands of stars and I even saw some shooting stars (my first time!). I saw more stars there than I’ve ever seen. You could kind of see the outline of the mountains against the sky and sort of the clouds moving in when we got to the top but otherwise we had no idea how high we were or what we were walking through. Along the way there are these “coffeeshops” which aren’t really coffeeshops but more like little huts/shelters where you can sit and rest and buy coffee or hot chocolate and blankets. At the top, there are about 750 stone steps that were laid by a monk (using the word “steps” is very generous…). It was really an exhausting hike and I kept trying to imagine Moses doing it. We got to almost the top and Yussef took us to his friends coffeeshop (coffeeshop number 4) and since we were the first ones to the top we had to wake everyone up (it was like 3 am). We got some hot chocolate and the boys that worked there were really young and they were so friendly and funny. One kept saying, “easy come, easy go.” They taught us how to say “let’s go” in Arabic, too. After we warmed up a little bit and rested, we went the rest of the way and Yussef told us he had a good spot for us and he wasn’t lying. It was on the roof of this little abandoned hut that looked out directly to the east where the sun would rise and there was a cliff to our backs to block the wind. We covered up with blankets and sat and watched the stars while we waited for the sun to rise. When the sun came up it was just sort of gray on the horizon and you could tell the stars were disappearing. Then it became more yellow and you could look around and see exactly what you had just climbed up. I didn’t realize how high we were or how many mountains there were around us. Then you could see that the sun was coming and it was so bright when it did. I just kept snapping pictures and trying to soak it all up. It was truly spectacular and breathtaking and I don’t think there is a word that really describes it. We hung around taking pictures for awhile and I just kept looking around me not even believing where I was or what I was doing. Then we went back to coffeeshop number 4 and gave back the blankets and the boy built a fire for us to warm up. Then we headed back down. On our way, we saw this circle rainbow in the clouds! It was so amazing to see God’s creation in such a different way. On the way back down, my legs were shaking so bad because my muscles weren’t used to that kind of work (I did workout before we went, though…). When we got to the bottom, St. Catharine’s Monastery wasn’t open yet so we sat on some boulders and waited while Yussef told us more about his life and showed us how to wrap scarves around our heads like the Bedouin (well, like the men). We went into the monastery and looked around a little but it was really crowded. We saw what they claim is the actual burning bush and it looks like a big tree. Then we went into this little room that had these cases full of bones in one and skulls in the other. I’m still not sure what exactly they were from but it was a little weird. After that we drove back to Dahab and I slept the whole way back and the whole next day!
That night we met up with the others for dinner at this nice Thai restaurant and we had a little time before our taxi was going to pick us up (at the bridge ha) so we walked around and I got a henna tattoo! The guy asked me where I was from and I told him America and he went on and on about how much he loved Obama. Everyone there loves Obama and everyone hates George Bush. It was pretty interesting. This guy told me that Obama came to Dahab and he went to his henna shop and he gave Obama a henna tattoo but it was white instead of black, which I thought was pretty funny.

Friday: I woke up at about 7 am and decided to get up and go down to the beach since it was our last day to be able to enjoy it! When I got back to the room, Becca and Julie were awake so we went down and had breakfast and Becca decided to go diving and Julie and I decided to stay by the pool. We laid by the pool reading and sleeping all day except for a short lunch break. Then in the afternoon we treated ourselves to hour-long massages that relaxed me so much all I wanted to do was sleep. I went back down to the pool to tell Julie I was finished and I ended up standing and talking to some of the guys that worked at the restaurant. One of the guys, Nemo (like the fish) invited us to hang out with him in town at this pub that his cousin owns so he told us he’d meet us on the bridge at 9. Becca got back and we got ready to go to town for dinner with the others at Ali Baba. We met them for dinner and it was this really Egyptian type place with benches covered with pillows and right on the sea (you could look over the edge and it was on the water). When we left, we decided to go back to the hotel to check out since we had to leave so early in the morning but we met Nemo on the bridge and he talked with us for a little while. We got back and decided to treat ourselves to milkshakes while we watched a movie and packed. It was the perfect ending.

Saturday: We got up really early on Saturday to catch our van to the airport and we were up in time to see the sunrise over the Red Sea. Dahab is right across the gulf (the Gulf of Aqaba) from Saudi Arabia and you can see the Saudi mountains in the distance. It was a beautiful morning. We went down to leave and even though it was before the restaurant had opened, they had everything ready and told us we could eat (they loved us there—they pretty much made any exception for us!) so we sat down and had one last breakfast in the perfect morning before leaving. I was so sad to go and tried to soak up every last minute of Egypt that I could…

I decided this post was way too long to also incorporate pictures, but you can click here to see my album!