We're cruisin' now!

April 20 – April 24

With the help of some friends we booked a short cruise on the Nile through a local travel agency (SEEgypt). This was definitely one of the highlights of our trip. The volcanic ash cloud coming from Iceland is wreaking havoc on international travel in Northern Europe and as a result a good number of travelers weren’t able to meet their tour boats as planned. Our boat, the Mövenpick Radamis II is a smaller cruise ship, but even so only has about 60 passengers on it.

We’re bummed because our five day, four night cruise comes to an end tomorrow. After about 3 days we’ve bonded with a number of our fellow passengers. It’s been great with the kids because the ship is a contained safe environment and pretty much everyone on the ship knows our kids now. Gavin in particular has befriended a few of our fellow passengers – Nick and Ray. Connor has adopted a temporary set of grandparents, Patricia and John or as he was calling them ‘Patricia and the “other guy”’. Last night Gavin was making up riddles for our corner of the dining room and Cici was getting passed around to her delight.

I’ve got to hand it to them; the kids have been really well behaved. We’ve gotten a number of compliments. Gavin has been appointed “Assistant Tour Guide”, tagging along right behind our Guide Hassan and even getting to hand out the tickets to one of the sights yesterday.

Cruise tour included:

Karnak – Twenty nine temples in this complex built over the span 2400 years. Just amazing. Each Pharaoh trying to outdo the previous one.

Luxor Temple – The ancient temple in the center of Luxor with a road lined with Sphinxes connecting it to Karnak for the annual Amun festival when they’d bring statues down from there for a week.

Valley of the Queens: Amunkirkhepshef

Temple of Queen Hatshepsut [Deir al-Bahri] – Hatshepsut is one of only a handful of women that served as Pharoah. There are images of her as a woman, but also dressed as a male Pharoah even with the fake beard (that all Pharaoh’s wore).

Valley of the

Kings: Ramses III, Ramses IX and Tutank

hamen – Last stop on this day’s tour was the sacred Valley of the Kings. The Pharoah’s realized that the pyramids were amazing works of art and a great tributes to them, but did not protect their tombs from being robbed. They started selecting burial sites in the Valley of the Kings near their holy city of Thebes; the valley is marked by a natural pyramid-shaped mountain and an boat like shape of two hills (boats are the vessels that carry them to the spirit world). We visited tombs of Ramses III and Rameses IX to see what their underground burial chambers were like and see the lavish paintings on the walls and ceiling. Greg then paid the extra to bring Gavin in to check out the tomb of Tutankhamen. That tomb isn’t decorated too much, and none of the loot is in there, but Tutankhamen’s mummy is in there.

Edfu: Temple of Horus – Horus is the falcon god. My favorite fact is that large faclon stonestatues that

flank the doorway to the temple, probably each at least 10 feet tall, had st

one crowns that they wore. They were cut from separate stones so that they could switch the crowns on special holidays!

Kom Ombo: Temple of Haroeris and Sobek – After 20 centuries this temple remains perched on the bank of the Nile, so that it is just a 100 meter walk from the cruise ship! Back in ancient times this area was well known to the crocodile population for a lovely place to take in the sun. Coincidence that this temple is dedicated to Sobek, the crocodile god? I think not.

Aswan High Dam – As a civil engineer I was expecting to be impressed by the High Dam. Maybe because of the design it’s not as dramatic as the Hoover dam I wasn’t wowed by it. I haven’t compared their stats, but it’s kinda low on the to-do-list.

Temple at Philae –This temple built for the goddess Isis is on an island. They

actually had to move this temple when they finished the high dam. We had to take a little boat ride over. What a thrill! Connor sat in the seat next to the motor and the driver let him, and then both he and Gavin steer the boat.

Unfinished Obelisk – Here in the granite quarries of Aswan, they found an obelisk that was not finished being hewn from the rock. Egyptologists know that to separate the sides the ancient Egyptians would split the rock and insert wood splints then soak then with water. The expanded wood would force further cracking. But it remains a mystery of how to cut the surface on the bottom to release the obelisk from the quarry. They estimate that 1200 workers tooled on this obelisk that would have been over 100 tons. Unfortunately for them the reason this obelisk wasn’t finished was that, but there’s a crack in it. We learned that the ancient Egyptians coated obelisks with electrum, a mixture of gold and silver. The obelisks were the needles that sewed together the earth and sky.

Felucca Ride – One of the classic Egyptian Tour experiences is taking a felucca ride. I had shied away from this after reading a write up that it might be stressful taking young kids. It was included in our cruise, so we all went. It turned out to be wonderfully relaxing and enjoyable. The boys were great, we all sat in the middle of the boat. Probably since it was post nap, they weren’t super restless and enjoyed the sail as well.

Here's a family photo from felucca: