Amun Calls

Post 19 - The Giza Pyramid

I saw many impressive sights in Egypt and none more impressive than the great pyramids at Giza. It was perhaps the highlight of my trip. I'd seen them from long distance, but now they were up close and personal.

My first real view

At the start, the weather was very cold by Cairo standards. There was a strong wind and we could've used warmer clothing. Emily was frozen and tried to hide behind the first layer of pyramid rock to avoid the wind.

Emily being comforted by Macey.

Summer trying to brave the wind

A fun thing Adam and I did (Emily refused) was to enter a nearby smaller pyramid. The shaft was pretty steep with no lighting. And, because of the ceiling height, you had to go down backwards. It was a bit unnerving and certainly not for the claustrophobic.

The best part of all was how warm it was down in the burial chamber. After being so cold topside, I actually started sweating with my jacket on.

Okay, it's the tourist thing to do

Look out Macey, you're being watched!

Hey, whose that guy in the background?

Macey checking out the Solar boat pit

Covering stones from the pit

The solar boat - which was way cool

Summer and Macey checking out our desert wheels

I got a bad feeling about this

Traveling in style

Emily and Macey on the way up. Hey wait, Norah's in there too!

Adum, the gamel driver

Macey getting a smile out of the camel

Wait a minute, what this doing here?

Post 18 - El Alamein

After a night in Alexandria we headed west along the Mediterranean coast toward the city of El Alamein. I wanted to see the place because of it's World War II significance. I'm not sure what I expected, but I was surprised at what I found. In my mind I thought I'd see a small, quiet, undisturbed village. Instead I found literally mile after mile of beach front condos, town-homes and resorts. Unfortunately, most of it appeared speculative in nature and was empty. Very weird.

Clandestine photo of our police escort

As we drove toward El Alamein and deeper into Egypt, I became concerned about being so deep without any protection. It was like we could be victimized and nobody would know.

As it turns out, when we left Alexandria we had picked up a new passenger. At first I thought it was a friend of the driver or guide and we would drop him off somewhere along our route. But we never did.

Later I learned that he was a policeman hired to join our tour. It truly eased my mind.

When we arrived in the town we drove to the El Alamein cemetery and then visited a nearby museum.

Entry into the cemetery

The setting for the cemetery was beautiful, simple and quiet. Land for the cemetery was donated by Egypt and the site is maintained by the British government. There was a German site, but we didn't visit it.

El Alamein Museum
The museum was created by Egypt and maintained by them. It contains displays for most of the countries involved in the conflict, which included primarily Britain and Germany, along with other countries like Italy and Australia.

Here are few photos from the museum

Unfortunately, the creators of the museum didn't check their English very closely

I thought the German desert campaign insignia was interesting (palm tree)

I liked this picture because it was a milk brand I saw growing up in Arizona

Summer getting down with the Arab look. It made the museum keepers laugh.

These were real bullet holes in the side of this half-track vehicle

Group photo in front of a U.S. Sherman tank

Post 16 - Sailing The Nile

An item on my Egypt bucket list was to sail the Nile. I envisioned this romantic setting, quietly traversing the river. Unfortunately, the day we went (and it was the only day we could go) there was a lot of wind. It wasn't so much romantic as it was amusement park. The sail would catch a lot of wind and roll the boat way up on it's side. The kids thought it was great, but a few times I thought we might roll over. Not very romantic.

It turns out that our boat driver wasn't ready for the wind either. He sailed across the river to a protected cove and lowered the sail. He showed us a burn on his hand where the sail rope pulled through too quickly.