We landed in Sydney a little a head of schedule (yay!). As we got off the plane, we were hit by how cold it was. I think it might have been the coldest destination we'd experience on this trip so far (and Hobart was going to be worse...).
Filling out the customs forms on the plane was interesting. For once, we got to answer 'yes' to the 'have you been in Africa within the last 6 days' question. We had some packaged food (which we think didn't count), but answered 'yes' to the 'have you got any food' question as well.
The immigration guy asked about the Africa thing, and then said it was all good when we said it was just Egypt. We then went into customs. The guy asked us how we were. To which I replied "Good thanks, and yourself?" He seemed pleasantly surprised by my concern for him, as I would expect most people would barely acknowedge his existance after flying for so long. He asked us about the food we had and then let us go through. Customs can be cool! Sometimes...
We checked in our baggage for the next flight and made our way to Newtown to visit one of my mates (Craig). Turns out that there was some track maintenance for the train to the airport so we got a free bus to Central station. Win!
So we had a pleasant couple of hours with Craig, eating some breakfast, and drinking some smoothies. Afterwards, we whipped out the old hackie sack and had a hack. Despite hacking with old Chinese men, and Egyptian workers, it took me a while to get back into it. Sandra took this opportunity to snooze...
From Central, we took the free bus to the airport again (yay!) and waited for our flight home. To draw out the holiday for as long as possible, it turned out that the winds had picked up, and there was only one runway active. WTF. At this point, I was struggling to stay awake. So we found a quite corner at a gate (not the gate we needed, as that wasn't announced yet) and had a bit of a snooze.
The gate finally got announced, and after another twenty minute delay we got onto our plane. I love flights that are less than 4 hours. So this one was a dream. We arrived in Hobart to a welcoming 12 degrees... Aparently one of the coldest days in a while. Great.
But regardless, it was good to be home again. And so ends the Epic adventure of Sandra and Steve. We hope you all enjoyed our little online updates and forgive us when we tell you stories that we've already written about.
Cheers, Steve and Sandra
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Day 50
Today was our last day in Japan. So our first stop was obviously going to be the fish market! Sandra was keen on this place because it boasts some good food. Me, not eating fish, wasn't so keen on the food aspect.
We made our way to the area via the Metro and found the market. Although where we entered was truely just the fish trading section of the market. Heaps of people, stores that went on as far as you could see and heaps of fish. And despite how fishy it smelt from the outside, the inside seemed quite hygenic.
The workers there often used these strange trolly things to get around. Imagine a tray for placing goods on. Then imagine a drum barrel at the front that stored the engine stearing wheel. That's what these things looked like. The newer ones were electric, but the older ones were still fuel powered.
After some walking we found where all the food stores were. Although the problem is that the lines to get food from these places were massive. A little too massive. So we simply went on our way and got food elsewhere.
We walked up to Ginza. This place has a Sony building with a display area. I was expecting a little more from this, but is was cool enough to play around with. They had an Apple stored down the road as well. this place had a floor for demoing, a floor for signing up to contracts, a floor for public training sessions (like a lecture theatre), a floor for accessories, and a floor for private lessons. The eleveator looked cool, but was annoyingly an automatic elevator. i.e. it stopped as every floor and you couldn't choose which floor you wanted to go to. You could see the finger prints on the floor numbers where people (including myself) had thought they were the floor buttons and pressed them.
It was now time to make our way to the airport. So we went back to the hotel to grab our bags, and caught the train. Now that we had a bit of a clue about the train system, it was much easier to get out than it was to get in.
We had a fair amount of time to kill until our flight to Australia, so we spent it doing the regular time wasting stuff. We managed to use all of our Yen as well. To the stage where I had to haggle for the last drink. I had 109 yen, and the water was 115 yen. The lady wouldn't sell it to me, but said she would sell the milk which was 110 yen. For such a bargain, why wouldn't I get the milk?
The flight to Australia was going to be around 9 hours. And as always, I hardly slept. This was a little harder this time around as I was still recovering from a flight a few nights ago, and this one went over night. Luckily, there were new movies for me to watch!
We made our way to the area via the Metro and found the market. Although where we entered was truely just the fish trading section of the market. Heaps of people, stores that went on as far as you could see and heaps of fish. And despite how fishy it smelt from the outside, the inside seemed quite hygenic.
The workers there often used these strange trolly things to get around. Imagine a tray for placing goods on. Then imagine a drum barrel at the front that stored the engine stearing wheel. That's what these things looked like. The newer ones were electric, but the older ones were still fuel powered.
After some walking we found where all the food stores were. Although the problem is that the lines to get food from these places were massive. A little too massive. So we simply went on our way and got food elsewhere.
We walked up to Ginza. This place has a Sony building with a display area. I was expecting a little more from this, but is was cool enough to play around with. They had an Apple stored down the road as well. this place had a floor for demoing, a floor for signing up to contracts, a floor for public training sessions (like a lecture theatre), a floor for accessories, and a floor for private lessons. The eleveator looked cool, but was annoyingly an automatic elevator. i.e. it stopped as every floor and you couldn't choose which floor you wanted to go to. You could see the finger prints on the floor numbers where people (including myself) had thought they were the floor buttons and pressed them.
It was now time to make our way to the airport. So we went back to the hotel to grab our bags, and caught the train. Now that we had a bit of a clue about the train system, it was much easier to get out than it was to get in.
We had a fair amount of time to kill until our flight to Australia, so we spent it doing the regular time wasting stuff. We managed to use all of our Yen as well. To the stage where I had to haggle for the last drink. I had 109 yen, and the water was 115 yen. The lady wouldn't sell it to me, but said she would sell the milk which was 110 yen. For such a bargain, why wouldn't I get the milk?
The flight to Australia was going to be around 9 hours. And as always, I hardly slept. This was a little harder this time around as I was still recovering from a flight a few nights ago, and this one went over night. Luckily, there were new movies for me to watch!
Day 49
To catch up on some of the lost sleep we had, we didn't get out of bed until close to 11. We could have kept going but since today was our only full day in Japan, it was time to get up.
Unlike most other cities, the Tokyo public transport is run by a few different companies. So this means that you can't just buy a ticket, you have to buy a ticket for a particular transport system. You can by inter-company-all-day passes, but they were more expensive. So we had to make a choice. We went with the JR lines. For no other reason than that their station map highlighted monuments etc to look at, and which stations to get off at to see them.
Our first stop was Ueno Park. This was basically a park with park-type things. It had things like merry-go-rounds, food shops, paddle boats and a zoo. While walking around the water area, we saw these massive fish. Like pigeons, they sensed when humans were around and flocked. Also like pigeons, they did this because they get fed. Amongst these massive fish was a random turtle as well.
Our next stop was a Sensoji temple in Asakusa. Aparently this is one of the big tourist attractions. People from all over Japan come here to get a photo taken. So this was the perfect spot for my handstand picture!
As for the temple itself, it's was cool enough. Outside they had heaps of 'fortune' based things. A pretty clever way to make some cash at a place like this I'd expect.
Sandra's stomach still wasn't feeling too good while we were walking around. Luckily, Japan seemed to have a decent number of well-kept public toilets (that you didn't have to pay to use). Fantastic! The only downside was that I would have to wait for her outside. The waiting I had no problem with. It was the fact that I waited outside so many toilets that I started to feel like some kind of serial toilet stalker.
Next we made our way to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building. As famous as the Tokyo tower is, the tourist centre says that you can get just as good a view from the towers in the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building for free. Win!
From the train station, it was a small walk to the government building. But luckily a lot of the way had travelators! The view was pretty cool at the top of the towers. Although it was really just looking down on a city.
One thing we noticed while walking around Japan was that they tended to lack 2 things. Bins and Seats. For something that you would think were pretty common (and are common enough in most other places), they really didn't have many of these. We guessed that it might be to do with the fact that Japanese people don't like to 'eat on the run' like us westerners. If it's one way to discourage loitering, it's to not put bins and seats outside your building. The big thing for me was the lack of bins at the train stations. If it's one place they should let you throw stuff away it would be there. Although later we were talking to this white guy, and he said that he thinks the lack of bins in the stations was due to making it harder for terrorists to blow stations up due to some summit that Tokyo was hosting.
Our next stop was Harajuku. Sadly, our time in Japan didn't allow us to see this place during the weekend (and therefore not see all the crazy fashions), but it was worth a stop anyway. There were still heaps of 'trendy' clothes stores, and 'trendy' people wearing the clothes.
We then made our way to Tokyo Dome. On our way here, we experienced our first majorly packed train ride. It was so packed that Sandra didn't fit in the doors at first, and we had to squish in a little tighter to get her in. Hmmm cozy.
Tokyo Dome is a massive sports stadium that is encapsulated within a dome. This was ok enough to see, but the real attraction here was the amusement park! As expected, they had the regular assortment of rides. For me, the highlight was the Thunder Dolphin roller coaster! You know how almost all roller coasters start with that first drop? Well this one seemed to be the longest drop I'd ever been on. Looking at Wikipedia, aparently this is the 6th tallest roller coaster in the world. Explains why.
After all the run with rides, we got some food there, then headed off back to the hotel. As with the night before, I couldn't get to sleep. So again, we went for a midnight run to the shop. The hotel gave us pyjamas to wear. They looked too much like nighties for me but Sandra gave them a go. So when we went down to the store Sandra decided to just keep her nighty on. I wasn't convinced, but she did it anyway. On our way back to the room, we saw another Japanese guy walking round in the same nighty. Maybe it's more accepted than I thought...
We shared the elevator back up with a drunk japanese guy who was looking a bit worse for wear and a bit ashamed of himself. It was pretty amusing though as he wandered out of the elevator bowing and mumbling apologies to us. Japanese people are so polite.
Unlike most other cities, the Tokyo public transport is run by a few different companies. So this means that you can't just buy a ticket, you have to buy a ticket for a particular transport system. You can by inter-company-all-day passes, but they were more expensive. So we had to make a choice. We went with the JR lines. For no other reason than that their station map highlighted monuments etc to look at, and which stations to get off at to see them.
Our first stop was Ueno Park. This was basically a park with park-type things. It had things like merry-go-rounds, food shops, paddle boats and a zoo. While walking around the water area, we saw these massive fish. Like pigeons, they sensed when humans were around and flocked. Also like pigeons, they did this because they get fed. Amongst these massive fish was a random turtle as well.
Our next stop was a Sensoji temple in Asakusa. Aparently this is one of the big tourist attractions. People from all over Japan come here to get a photo taken. So this was the perfect spot for my handstand picture!
As for the temple itself, it's was cool enough. Outside they had heaps of 'fortune' based things. A pretty clever way to make some cash at a place like this I'd expect.
Sandra's stomach still wasn't feeling too good while we were walking around. Luckily, Japan seemed to have a decent number of well-kept public toilets (that you didn't have to pay to use). Fantastic! The only downside was that I would have to wait for her outside. The waiting I had no problem with. It was the fact that I waited outside so many toilets that I started to feel like some kind of serial toilet stalker.
Next we made our way to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building. As famous as the Tokyo tower is, the tourist centre says that you can get just as good a view from the towers in the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building for free. Win!
From the train station, it was a small walk to the government building. But luckily a lot of the way had travelators! The view was pretty cool at the top of the towers. Although it was really just looking down on a city.
One thing we noticed while walking around Japan was that they tended to lack 2 things. Bins and Seats. For something that you would think were pretty common (and are common enough in most other places), they really didn't have many of these. We guessed that it might be to do with the fact that Japanese people don't like to 'eat on the run' like us westerners. If it's one way to discourage loitering, it's to not put bins and seats outside your building. The big thing for me was the lack of bins at the train stations. If it's one place they should let you throw stuff away it would be there. Although later we were talking to this white guy, and he said that he thinks the lack of bins in the stations was due to making it harder for terrorists to blow stations up due to some summit that Tokyo was hosting.
Our next stop was Harajuku. Sadly, our time in Japan didn't allow us to see this place during the weekend (and therefore not see all the crazy fashions), but it was worth a stop anyway. There were still heaps of 'trendy' clothes stores, and 'trendy' people wearing the clothes.
We then made our way to Tokyo Dome. On our way here, we experienced our first majorly packed train ride. It was so packed that Sandra didn't fit in the doors at first, and we had to squish in a little tighter to get her in. Hmmm cozy.
Tokyo Dome is a massive sports stadium that is encapsulated within a dome. This was ok enough to see, but the real attraction here was the amusement park! As expected, they had the regular assortment of rides. For me, the highlight was the Thunder Dolphin roller coaster! You know how almost all roller coasters start with that first drop? Well this one seemed to be the longest drop I'd ever been on. Looking at Wikipedia, aparently this is the 6th tallest roller coaster in the world. Explains why.
After all the run with rides, we got some food there, then headed off back to the hotel. As with the night before, I couldn't get to sleep. So again, we went for a midnight run to the shop. The hotel gave us pyjamas to wear. They looked too much like nighties for me but Sandra gave them a go. So when we went down to the store Sandra decided to just keep her nighty on. I wasn't convinced, but she did it anyway. On our way back to the room, we saw another Japanese guy walking round in the same nighty. Maybe it's more accepted than I thought...
We shared the elevator back up with a drunk japanese guy who was looking a bit worse for wear and a bit ashamed of himself. It was pretty amusing though as he wandered out of the elevator bowing and mumbling apologies to us. Japanese people are so polite.
Day 48
We didn't have to leave the hotel till around 8 so we were able to have a relatively relaxed morning. It gave us time to eat some grub and bring our suitcases down. It was here that we said our goodbyes to the folks and went on our way to the airport. Tamer was the representative who picked us up so that was cool.
Because we were flying with Lufthansa, our flight plan was to fly to Munich (Germany), and then transfer to a flight to Tokyo. The Munich flight was 4 hours and wasn't too bad. We had less than an hour for the transfer before the 11 hour Japan flight...
As a rule, I really don't mind flights. I can waste time with the best of them. However, one thing I cannot do is sleep. The flight itself was ok. We watched some movies we'd been meaning to see, I read a bit. Sandra slept in her seat and curled up on the floor. All good. However, we landed in Japan at around 9 am, but my body was telling me that it was around 5 am. So for anyone who has stayed up all night past 5 am, this is how I felt.
We made our way to immigration and found out that we hadn't received the immigration forms on the plane when they were handing them out. Must have been during one of our attempts to sleep. Filled in the forms, went through and then headed to the luggage belt and picked up our suitcases. When we got to Japanese customs there weren't many people but we had to fill in a customs declaration form (which we also didn't get on the plane) before we were allowed through. By the time we had filled out the form there were a few more people at customs so Sandra chose the next freest looking one.
Unfortunately, this one had a nice but fussy lady who made us unlock one of our suitcases and then pull everything out so that she could have a look. This was also unfortunately the bag that had my dutch licorice powder and our Egyptian stone carving that was wrapped suspiciously in newspaper and bubble wrap. Thankfully one of the other guys in another lane had finished up so came over to see what was happening. He was cool. Each time the lady wanted to investigate something closer the cool guy was just like, "These people are cool, chill out". Sandra was pretty annoyed about the suitcase, especially when they couldn't fit everything back in again.
Once we finally made it through customs we changed some money over and then headed down to the train station to get to our hotel. Now, keep in mind, our flight landed around 9 am. We didn't make it to the train platform until 11:30 am and then it took us about two hours to make it to our hotel from the airport. Nuts! At least we got a seat on the train though.
We navigated our way to the hotel with good old Google maps and the iPhone GPS. It was a nice place, with the most space age toilet ever. As soon as you sit down, it starts filling the bidet. This is strange as it sounds like it flushes when you sit. The interesting thing is that I suspect that this is a 'regular' toilet by Japanese standards...
So after getting settled into the hotel, we made our way to Akihabara. This is an area where you can buy a whole bunch of the latest and greatest stuff Japan has to offer.
While walking around Tokyo, you start to realise that every 20th person is wearing one of those face masks. One can only assume this is for either stopping germs from coming in, stopping germs from getting out, or polution (or all of the above). After coming from Cairo, any of these seemed trivial. Yet still, you see them everywhere.
While crusing down Akihabara, we also noticed quite a few chicks dressed in 'maid' outfits handing out brochures. I figured it was best not to ask, and just accept it for the norm. We then found a street-side tourist information place (with a british girl dress in a maid outfit). After talking to her, it turns out that a current fad in Akihabara are 'Maid Cafes'. Well, that explains that then. Apparently, in these cafes the waitresses are all dress in 'maid' outfits, and treat you like a 'master' of a house while serving you drinks etc.
We went into some of the building in this area, and saw all the trading card stores, manga figurene stores, comic stores etc. All the stuff you had hoped they'd sell and more. It was truely and interesting experience. Even though I got Megatron in Greece, I still kept an eye out for him. It came as no surprise that I didn't find the one I wanted. Instead, I found crazier versions of Megatron.
The supermarkets and corner stores were pretty cool. They all had a wicked selection of Japanese style takeaway meals. These were awesome, and pretty much became our steady diet.
Keeping in mind that we haven't had any sleep yet, and our bodies thought it was 1pm now, we were struggling to stay awake. So we made it to the hotel, to get into bed by 7pm.
Annoyingly, I woke up around midnight fully awake and unable to get back to sleep. I also felt a snack attack coming on. But with no food in the hotel, what was one to do? Ah ha! We have a 24 hour convinience store below the hotel! Time to get me some of those awesome Japanese takeaway meals!
After some reading, with a full tummy, it was time to go to sleep again.
Because we were flying with Lufthansa, our flight plan was to fly to Munich (Germany), and then transfer to a flight to Tokyo. The Munich flight was 4 hours and wasn't too bad. We had less than an hour for the transfer before the 11 hour Japan flight...
As a rule, I really don't mind flights. I can waste time with the best of them. However, one thing I cannot do is sleep. The flight itself was ok. We watched some movies we'd been meaning to see, I read a bit. Sandra slept in her seat and curled up on the floor. All good. However, we landed in Japan at around 9 am, but my body was telling me that it was around 5 am. So for anyone who has stayed up all night past 5 am, this is how I felt.
We made our way to immigration and found out that we hadn't received the immigration forms on the plane when they were handing them out. Must have been during one of our attempts to sleep. Filled in the forms, went through and then headed to the luggage belt and picked up our suitcases. When we got to Japanese customs there weren't many people but we had to fill in a customs declaration form (which we also didn't get on the plane) before we were allowed through. By the time we had filled out the form there were a few more people at customs so Sandra chose the next freest looking one.
Unfortunately, this one had a nice but fussy lady who made us unlock one of our suitcases and then pull everything out so that she could have a look. This was also unfortunately the bag that had my dutch licorice powder and our Egyptian stone carving that was wrapped suspiciously in newspaper and bubble wrap. Thankfully one of the other guys in another lane had finished up so came over to see what was happening. He was cool. Each time the lady wanted to investigate something closer the cool guy was just like, "These people are cool, chill out". Sandra was pretty annoyed about the suitcase, especially when they couldn't fit everything back in again.
Once we finally made it through customs we changed some money over and then headed down to the train station to get to our hotel. Now, keep in mind, our flight landed around 9 am. We didn't make it to the train platform until 11:30 am and then it took us about two hours to make it to our hotel from the airport. Nuts! At least we got a seat on the train though.
We navigated our way to the hotel with good old Google maps and the iPhone GPS. It was a nice place, with the most space age toilet ever. As soon as you sit down, it starts filling the bidet. This is strange as it sounds like it flushes when you sit. The interesting thing is that I suspect that this is a 'regular' toilet by Japanese standards...
So after getting settled into the hotel, we made our way to Akihabara. This is an area where you can buy a whole bunch of the latest and greatest stuff Japan has to offer.
While walking around Tokyo, you start to realise that every 20th person is wearing one of those face masks. One can only assume this is for either stopping germs from coming in, stopping germs from getting out, or polution (or all of the above). After coming from Cairo, any of these seemed trivial. Yet still, you see them everywhere.
While crusing down Akihabara, we also noticed quite a few chicks dressed in 'maid' outfits handing out brochures. I figured it was best not to ask, and just accept it for the norm. We then found a street-side tourist information place (with a british girl dress in a maid outfit). After talking to her, it turns out that a current fad in Akihabara are 'Maid Cafes'. Well, that explains that then. Apparently, in these cafes the waitresses are all dress in 'maid' outfits, and treat you like a 'master' of a house while serving you drinks etc.
We went into some of the building in this area, and saw all the trading card stores, manga figurene stores, comic stores etc. All the stuff you had hoped they'd sell and more. It was truely and interesting experience. Even though I got Megatron in Greece, I still kept an eye out for him. It came as no surprise that I didn't find the one I wanted. Instead, I found crazier versions of Megatron.
The supermarkets and corner stores were pretty cool. They all had a wicked selection of Japanese style takeaway meals. These were awesome, and pretty much became our steady diet.
Keeping in mind that we haven't had any sleep yet, and our bodies thought it was 1pm now, we were struggling to stay awake. So we made it to the hotel, to get into bed by 7pm.
Annoyingly, I woke up around midnight fully awake and unable to get back to sleep. I also felt a snack attack coming on. But with no food in the hotel, what was one to do? Ah ha! We have a 24 hour convinience store below the hotel! Time to get me some of those awesome Japanese takeaway meals!
After some reading, with a full tummy, it was time to go to sleep again.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Day 47
Today, we found the boat docked in Aswan. We were right near the high dam wall that we checked out with the other cruise.
This was the day that we had to leave the boat, so we got all our bags packed and out of the room before we went for the tour of the day. We were a little late, because everyone on our tour didn't realise that all the drinks bills had to be paid before we went and although we would be back from our excursion at 10, we had to vacate the rooms completely before we left...
When it was tour time, we left for the Kalabsha Temple. The same routine as before, get on the small boat, get taken out there, visit the temples. I found that a lot of the temples had similar styles. You could be forgiven for not knowing the difference.
This temple was, like most of the others, moved from its original place. It had a 'nile-ometer' as well, but this doesn't work so well now that the temple is situated well above the height of the dam...
Like the other stops, there were a couple of temples in the one spot. So we also visited Beit El Wali and the Kiosk of Kertassi.
On our way to one of the temples, the guide showed us some stones engraved with the most childish looking carvings. They looked almost like cave man pictures. Well, turns out that we were on the right track, these were over 7000 years old, and are the oldest carvings known in Egypt. I don't care if I've seen better in Kindergarden, their raw ages made them awesome. I wonder if these were the ancient fridges that ancient parents hung the drawings of their ancient children on...
One of the carvings had both gazelles and giraffes on it. Although it looked like the guide was pointing at the giraffe when he said gazelle, and gazelle when he said giraffe. The next one had just a giraffe, and he proved to us he had the names wrong when he called it a gazelle....
Sadly, Sandra wasn't feeling well that day. A lot of us weren't, but she was feeling a bit worse than the rest. But Sandra's a trooper, even when you want her to rest and get better.
We got back around 10:30 so had half an hour to kill before the tour company came to pick us up. Unfortunately as we had checked out of the boat all we could do was sit around in the foyer and people watch. The transfer arrived and took us to the Aswan airport again. This airport and Cairo airport were the only airports in the whole trip that we flew out of twice... So it was wierd coming back and knowing the way.
From here, we were going to fly to Cairo again and spend the night there. Sticking with the 'familiar' theme, when the plane landed we were met by the same tour representative that came on the first cruise with us (Tamer).
The previous tour guide said that laptops were cheap in Egypt. Mum was interested in getting one, so while we were driving to the hotel, we told Tamer this. He was then kind enough to take us to one of their computer stores.
This wasn't part of the tour, so we had to take a cab rather than use the tour driver and car. We ditched dad at the hotel, as there wasn't room for all of us, and, well, he's simply the most useless out of us all for buying a laptop for mum.
We got dropped off at the spot, and then had to cross the road. Remember how fullon the traffic was in Cairo? Yeah, that made for an interesting time crossing. We trusted that Tamar knew what he was doing...
The computer store was just like any other department store. I was expecting something more shabby. Either way, the computers weren't that much cheaper, so we decided to leave it.
Getting a cab back to the hotel proved to be harder. Unlike Australian cabs, taxis in Cairo have the right to refuse a job. So each time Tamar said where we were going, the driver would simply keep on driving. We figured it was due to rush hour, so we crossed the road again went for a drink and a snack at a sports bar.
After hanging at the sports bar with Tamer, we decided to try the cabs again. Still, the little bitches just didn't want to take us. Tamer then suggested we take a cab to his place (which was close) and he would drive us instead. Cool, cheers. The cab stopped straight away...
So we made it to Tamer's place. I had no idea which apartment was his, but then, we weren't there to see his apartment. We made our way round the back to where the car was parked. Hey, some dude parked his car in the middle of the road! Oh, that's your car... Ok then. Turns out that if there aren't any parks, they simply park people in.
The whole trek to the computer store and back was actually pretty cool. Despite the fact that it yielded no results, it was a great way to see a little of the everyday life (which tours tend to hide from you).
Now, a while ago, we started feeling bad for dad as he was still at the hotel for all of this. When we got back, we found that he had left. No surprise really. My money was on finding him in the restaurant next door. And luckily, that's exactly where he was.
We all had dinner there, and then went up stairs. Sandra and I had to pack (not that we had really taken that much out of our suitcases) to leave the next day, where as the parents weren't going to fly out till the day after. Thankfully our transfer was at a normal time tomorrow instead of some stupidly early hour.
This was the day that we had to leave the boat, so we got all our bags packed and out of the room before we went for the tour of the day. We were a little late, because everyone on our tour didn't realise that all the drinks bills had to be paid before we went and although we would be back from our excursion at 10, we had to vacate the rooms completely before we left...
When it was tour time, we left for the Kalabsha Temple. The same routine as before, get on the small boat, get taken out there, visit the temples. I found that a lot of the temples had similar styles. You could be forgiven for not knowing the difference.
This temple was, like most of the others, moved from its original place. It had a 'nile-ometer' as well, but this doesn't work so well now that the temple is situated well above the height of the dam...
Like the other stops, there were a couple of temples in the one spot. So we also visited Beit El Wali and the Kiosk of Kertassi.
On our way to one of the temples, the guide showed us some stones engraved with the most childish looking carvings. They looked almost like cave man pictures. Well, turns out that we were on the right track, these were over 7000 years old, and are the oldest carvings known in Egypt. I don't care if I've seen better in Kindergarden, their raw ages made them awesome. I wonder if these were the ancient fridges that ancient parents hung the drawings of their ancient children on...
One of the carvings had both gazelles and giraffes on it. Although it looked like the guide was pointing at the giraffe when he said gazelle, and gazelle when he said giraffe. The next one had just a giraffe, and he proved to us he had the names wrong when he called it a gazelle....
Sadly, Sandra wasn't feeling well that day. A lot of us weren't, but she was feeling a bit worse than the rest. But Sandra's a trooper, even when you want her to rest and get better.
We got back around 10:30 so had half an hour to kill before the tour company came to pick us up. Unfortunately as we had checked out of the boat all we could do was sit around in the foyer and people watch. The transfer arrived and took us to the Aswan airport again. This airport and Cairo airport were the only airports in the whole trip that we flew out of twice... So it was wierd coming back and knowing the way.
From here, we were going to fly to Cairo again and spend the night there. Sticking with the 'familiar' theme, when the plane landed we were met by the same tour representative that came on the first cruise with us (Tamer).
The previous tour guide said that laptops were cheap in Egypt. Mum was interested in getting one, so while we were driving to the hotel, we told Tamer this. He was then kind enough to take us to one of their computer stores.
This wasn't part of the tour, so we had to take a cab rather than use the tour driver and car. We ditched dad at the hotel, as there wasn't room for all of us, and, well, he's simply the most useless out of us all for buying a laptop for mum.
We got dropped off at the spot, and then had to cross the road. Remember how fullon the traffic was in Cairo? Yeah, that made for an interesting time crossing. We trusted that Tamar knew what he was doing...
The computer store was just like any other department store. I was expecting something more shabby. Either way, the computers weren't that much cheaper, so we decided to leave it.
Getting a cab back to the hotel proved to be harder. Unlike Australian cabs, taxis in Cairo have the right to refuse a job. So each time Tamar said where we were going, the driver would simply keep on driving. We figured it was due to rush hour, so we crossed the road again went for a drink and a snack at a sports bar.
After hanging at the sports bar with Tamer, we decided to try the cabs again. Still, the little bitches just didn't want to take us. Tamer then suggested we take a cab to his place (which was close) and he would drive us instead. Cool, cheers. The cab stopped straight away...
So we made it to Tamer's place. I had no idea which apartment was his, but then, we weren't there to see his apartment. We made our way round the back to where the car was parked. Hey, some dude parked his car in the middle of the road! Oh, that's your car... Ok then. Turns out that if there aren't any parks, they simply park people in.
The whole trek to the computer store and back was actually pretty cool. Despite the fact that it yielded no results, it was a great way to see a little of the everyday life (which tours tend to hide from you).
Now, a while ago, we started feeling bad for dad as he was still at the hotel for all of this. When we got back, we found that he had left. No surprise really. My money was on finding him in the restaurant next door. And luckily, that's exactly where he was.
We all had dinner there, and then went up stairs. Sandra and I had to pack (not that we had really taken that much out of our suitcases) to leave the next day, where as the parents weren't going to fly out till the day after. Thankfully our transfer was at a normal time tomorrow instead of some stupidly early hour.
Day 46
We got up and wandered into the restaurant for breakfast. Fares was in the freshly cooked area again so when I went in over for an omelette he also made me a pancake with fresh banana this time so we shared both of those. As we were packing a few rolls of bread and cheese for snacks during the day, Fares cooked some felafels and arranged them with some vegetables and sauce and gave them to us as a traditional breakfast. It was tasty but we felt bad because we had to go so we had to wolf it down a bit.
We boarded another motor boat to head towards the shore and had the awesome plank and handrail again. This time when we got off, there were wild watermelons on the shore... Awesome!
We visited the temples of Dakka (built by the Greek Romans), Wadi El Seboua (built by Ramses II as a test run for Abu Simbel) and Meharakka which was rescued because it had the world's earliest spiral staircase. We had to do some desert trekking again to get to each of the temples but it was nicer than yesterday because it was early morning so the sun wasn't quiet as high or as hot. We did almost get run over by some run away camels which was kind of amusing.
For all of our offshore visits, we had armed guards accompanying us. Dudes in white with machine guns. I asked our guide if they were to protect the ancient temples or us. He said both...
As we headed back to the motor boat, there was a little Egyptian man waiting with some baby crocodiles! Steve's dad got a photo holding one and as we left there was a lady taking a photo with the baby croc on her head. They were pretty cute, mainly because their mouths were also bound so they couldn't bite you.
We boarded the motor boat and headed back to the ship before setting sail for Aswan. There were no more excursions until tomorrow so we were forced to have to relax and do nothing for the rest of the day apart from eating and drinking and whatever we felt like - terrible isn't it?
Like the other boat, we had 'towel art' waiting for us in our cabin. This one was a dude riding an elephant. I have to admit, even though the art was better on this boat, it didn't have as much of an impact as the first boat because it was 'already done'. But we still liked it.
We went on the managers tour of the ship where we visited the kitchen - all the poor chefs had to line up for inspection (except Faris, who was busy cooking) - and then headed upstairs to visit one of the grand suites (which was what we were in so no biggy) and the massive royal suite! The bathroom was about the same size as our bedroom at home. Nuts! We found out that it costs 350 Euros per night to stay in a grand suite and 900 Euros per night to stay in the royal suite. Now, I don't know about the other people but we totally did not pay that much money for our room...
After the rooms we headed to the bridge where we met the captain and his second in charge, his brother. Turns out that around 95% of all the boat captains on the lake come from the same 3 families. These guys spend all their lives on the lake, and know it well. So well in fact that they do not even use the radar. They also don't use it because they don't know how...
On the bridge, we all took turns driving the boat. At first, this sounds like we all took turns making it do donuts and fish-tails, but it really was just us grabbing the knob (yes, not a wheel. Damn new boats) and looking out to the water. This is where the tour left off.
The rest of the day involved simply chilling out on the luxury boat... Oh yeah!
We boarded another motor boat to head towards the shore and had the awesome plank and handrail again. This time when we got off, there were wild watermelons on the shore... Awesome!
We visited the temples of Dakka (built by the Greek Romans), Wadi El Seboua (built by Ramses II as a test run for Abu Simbel) and Meharakka which was rescued because it had the world's earliest spiral staircase. We had to do some desert trekking again to get to each of the temples but it was nicer than yesterday because it was early morning so the sun wasn't quiet as high or as hot. We did almost get run over by some run away camels which was kind of amusing.
For all of our offshore visits, we had armed guards accompanying us. Dudes in white with machine guns. I asked our guide if they were to protect the ancient temples or us. He said both...
As we headed back to the motor boat, there was a little Egyptian man waiting with some baby crocodiles! Steve's dad got a photo holding one and as we left there was a lady taking a photo with the baby croc on her head. They were pretty cute, mainly because their mouths were also bound so they couldn't bite you.
We boarded the motor boat and headed back to the ship before setting sail for Aswan. There were no more excursions until tomorrow so we were forced to have to relax and do nothing for the rest of the day apart from eating and drinking and whatever we felt like - terrible isn't it?
Like the other boat, we had 'towel art' waiting for us in our cabin. This one was a dude riding an elephant. I have to admit, even though the art was better on this boat, it didn't have as much of an impact as the first boat because it was 'already done'. But we still liked it.
We went on the managers tour of the ship where we visited the kitchen - all the poor chefs had to line up for inspection (except Faris, who was busy cooking) - and then headed upstairs to visit one of the grand suites (which was what we were in so no biggy) and the massive royal suite! The bathroom was about the same size as our bedroom at home. Nuts! We found out that it costs 350 Euros per night to stay in a grand suite and 900 Euros per night to stay in the royal suite. Now, I don't know about the other people but we totally did not pay that much money for our room...
After the rooms we headed to the bridge where we met the captain and his second in charge, his brother. Turns out that around 95% of all the boat captains on the lake come from the same 3 families. These guys spend all their lives on the lake, and know it well. So well in fact that they do not even use the radar. They also don't use it because they don't know how...
On the bridge, we all took turns driving the boat. At first, this sounds like we all took turns making it do donuts and fish-tails, but it really was just us grabbing the knob (yes, not a wheel. Damn new boats) and looking out to the water. This is where the tour left off.
The rest of the day involved simply chilling out on the luxury boat... Oh yeah!
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Day 45
We woke up just in time to feel the ship start to set sail. The ship parked in front of the temples of Abu Simbel for about 15 minutes before heading down the lake. We were luckily on the side of the ship facing Abu Simbel so could sit on our bed and enjoy the view of the temples. There were hundreds of people there already. Mina had told us the day before that there are three convoys a day from Aswan to Abu Simbel leaving at 4:30 am, 6:30 am and 11:00 am. The people we saw must have been the 4:30 am crew. Gross.
Breakfast was cool! We haven't really been talking about the meals but I felt that I had to mention something about it because in the freshly cooked food area they were making omelettes and pancakes! We had one of each :) We only wanted omelettes but we had made friends with one of the chefs (Fares) and he was working in the cooking area so he decided that we needed to have one of each.
After breakfast we went and sat up in the lounge area on the sun deck and read, blogged, chatted with the others in the group and enjoyed the scenary. We could see why the Pharoahs were inspired to build pyramids because all around us were the tops of mountains. Mina informed us that Lake Nasser is 500 kilometres long and 10 kilometres wide as well as 140 metres deep. All the mountain ranges we saw were those that had not been submerged when the lake was created which meant that they were huge and that there were hundreds of mountain ranges in the lake.
At 11 the ship stopped near Kasr Ibrim, an old fortress that sat atop a mountain that saw the last of the Egyptian Culture as Christianity swept through the country, became a church for the christians before the Muslim religion began to spread and then became a mosque and a meeting area for trading before it was destroyed by natural events. When we sailed past Kasr Ibrim, we were nearly level with it but Mina informed us that before the construction of the High Dam, Kasr Ibrim stood on a mountain about 80 metres high.
We had a bit of a swim and then went down for lunch. After lunch the ship stopped for an on shore excursion. To get from the ship to the temples, we had to get onto little motor boats that ferried us to the shore. There was a make shift gangway of two planks to get from the motor boat to the shore and a handrail that consisted of a long thick piece of wood held besides the planks by two guys from the boat. It was pretty awesome.
We visited the temples of Amada, Derr and the tomb of Penout (the viceroy of Nubia). All these places had been relocated from their original sites due to the High Dam and had been placed nearby each other. Although it was the afternoon it was still fairly hot but it was nice to stroll casually through the desert between each of the sites. Some people took camels to get from site to site but we chose to walk. Once we finished we got back on the motor boat and were ferried back to the ship.
The rest of the afternoon was very casual. We hung out in our room reading and blogging until 5:00 pm when we went and met Mina in the lounge bar so that he could show us a movie on the rescuing of Egypts monuments. The movie was very cool. It showed how they built a barrier around the temples of Abu Simbel and broke the temple into hundreds of giant pieces to relocate it 60 metres higher and how they reassembled it and rebuilt the mountain around the temples. It also showed the rescue of some of the other temples that we had visited, although not in so much detail, and gave a detailed account of the saving of Philae temple which was already flooded due to the construction of the first Aswan dam.
The movie was followed by cocktails in the lounge bar with the manager of the ship. It was all very swish. The manager introduced himself and gave us information about the El Khayam and introduced his chief staff on the ship. He also invited us all to a tour of the ship the next day to visit the kitchen and the bridge and said that he might even let us steer the ship! There were alcoholic and non-alcoholic cocktails. We stuck to the non-alcoholic fruity cocktails which were delicious and disappeared within minutes.
After the cocktails was dinner in the restaurant. Mina informed us that we had a 7:20 am start in the morning to visit Wadi El Saboua so after dinner we retired to the room (we're such nannas) to read and blog before getting an early night.
Breakfast was cool! We haven't really been talking about the meals but I felt that I had to mention something about it because in the freshly cooked food area they were making omelettes and pancakes! We had one of each :) We only wanted omelettes but we had made friends with one of the chefs (Fares) and he was working in the cooking area so he decided that we needed to have one of each.
After breakfast we went and sat up in the lounge area on the sun deck and read, blogged, chatted with the others in the group and enjoyed the scenary. We could see why the Pharoahs were inspired to build pyramids because all around us were the tops of mountains. Mina informed us that Lake Nasser is 500 kilometres long and 10 kilometres wide as well as 140 metres deep. All the mountain ranges we saw were those that had not been submerged when the lake was created which meant that they were huge and that there were hundreds of mountain ranges in the lake.
At 11 the ship stopped near Kasr Ibrim, an old fortress that sat atop a mountain that saw the last of the Egyptian Culture as Christianity swept through the country, became a church for the christians before the Muslim religion began to spread and then became a mosque and a meeting area for trading before it was destroyed by natural events. When we sailed past Kasr Ibrim, we were nearly level with it but Mina informed us that before the construction of the High Dam, Kasr Ibrim stood on a mountain about 80 metres high.
We had a bit of a swim and then went down for lunch. After lunch the ship stopped for an on shore excursion. To get from the ship to the temples, we had to get onto little motor boats that ferried us to the shore. There was a make shift gangway of two planks to get from the motor boat to the shore and a handrail that consisted of a long thick piece of wood held besides the planks by two guys from the boat. It was pretty awesome.
We visited the temples of Amada, Derr and the tomb of Penout (the viceroy of Nubia). All these places had been relocated from their original sites due to the High Dam and had been placed nearby each other. Although it was the afternoon it was still fairly hot but it was nice to stroll casually through the desert between each of the sites. Some people took camels to get from site to site but we chose to walk. Once we finished we got back on the motor boat and were ferried back to the ship.
The rest of the afternoon was very casual. We hung out in our room reading and blogging until 5:00 pm when we went and met Mina in the lounge bar so that he could show us a movie on the rescuing of Egypts monuments. The movie was very cool. It showed how they built a barrier around the temples of Abu Simbel and broke the temple into hundreds of giant pieces to relocate it 60 metres higher and how they reassembled it and rebuilt the mountain around the temples. It also showed the rescue of some of the other temples that we had visited, although not in so much detail, and gave a detailed account of the saving of Philae temple which was already flooded due to the construction of the first Aswan dam.
The movie was followed by cocktails in the lounge bar with the manager of the ship. It was all very swish. The manager introduced himself and gave us information about the El Khayam and introduced his chief staff on the ship. He also invited us all to a tour of the ship the next day to visit the kitchen and the bridge and said that he might even let us steer the ship! There were alcoholic and non-alcoholic cocktails. We stuck to the non-alcoholic fruity cocktails which were delicious and disappeared within minutes.
After the cocktails was dinner in the restaurant. Mina informed us that we had a 7:20 am start in the morning to visit Wadi El Saboua so after dinner we retired to the room (we're such nannas) to read and blog before getting an early night.
Day 44
We slept in as late as we could this morning to try and make full use of our late wake up time but alas, all those early mornings had ruined us and we were up and about by 7:00 am. It gave us ample time to finish packing though so that was useful. We put our bags out in the hall for collection and handed our key in then headed down for breakfast. After breakfast we made our way up to the sun deck for one last time and made ourselves comfortable until 9:30 when our transfer to the airport arrived.
We farewelled the Dolphin and piled into the mini bus with two other Australians who were also doing the Lake Nasser cruise. Our driver was a bit of a maniac even though the traffic wasn't that bad because it was a Friday (Fridays and Saturdays are the weekends here). We arrived at the airport and checked in and then had to kill two hours before our flight. Boring.
The flight itself was incredibly short. Total boarding, taxiing and flight time was only about 45 minutes. I slept the whole way :) When we arrived we were greeted by a representative from the tour group who waited until we collected our luggage and then showed us to the minibus before disappearing into another car with other people. We were told that there would be a representative somewhere else waiting for us. Umm, ok...
So the driver takes us off and after about 10 minutes of driving we pull up on what appears to be the edge of a rocky hill where some guys are sitting in the shade of a tree. The driver says to us "Khayam?" I'm like, that vaguely sounds like what I remember being written on our voucher for checking in so, "Yes!" Next thing I know the porters are hauling the luggage out and another guy jumps in the van and we're like, umm, ok? We start to get off the minibus and the new guy says "No" and points further down the hill. So, we sit back down, our luggage gets taken out and then we drive another couple of hundred meters were all of a sudden we see a huge ship docked in a small bay with a large staircase leading down to it. Right, this is it!
As we file off the bus the new guy says something to us like, "I'm calling reception to let them know that you're coming. Just go down the steps and when you arrive, tell them your with " insert random name that starts with a V. Umm, ok. So, we walk down the stairs, board this ship and enter the plushest reception area. We had some issues with the name at first but I finally remembered that I'd been given a voucher and handed it over to the reception. We were told to have a seat and then filled in some forms before being given the keys to our room and advised that lunch was currently being served.
Now, the tour representative had told us the day before that we were on a very good boat on this cruise and that we had been upgraded and were in suites rather than cabins but I hadn't realised how good he meant by very good. Our room was twice the size of our room on the Dolphin. We had a giant bed, a desk, a sitting area and there was a bottle of water and fresh fruit platter waiting for us. There was a huge bathroom that had a shower and a bath and two hand basins and a sliding door that led to a little sitting area outside. When we went to the dining room for lunch we were whisked to a specially reserved table and were given silver service. There was a great variety of food and a little area where the chefs cooked fresh food in front of you. For lunch it was macaroni (pretty boring) and freshly battered fish which was delicious!
We found out later that the MS Omar El Khayam is the newest (built in 2008) and largest Lake Nasser cruise ship and had been designed for travellers who enjoyed luxery and being treated like royalty. Whoa. So, we had not just been upgraded up one class as per the previous cruise, we had been upgraded to the best and biggest boat on the lake! This ship was bigger than our previous ship! We spoke to our guide about it later and he said that the ship that we (the four of us) were supposed to be on was currently being refurbished and the ship that the other two ladies was supposed to be on was probably full so they probably had to upgrade all of us to this ship as it was the only other one sailing on the dates that we had booked. Score! I felt very fake being in these fancy pants suites and being waited on almost hand and foot - I didn't pay for this! But I figured I may as well try to enjoy it seeing as we were going to be on this ship for three nights.
We met our tour guide Mina over lunch. He informed us that we would be going to visit the temple of Abu Simbel at 3:30 so after lunch we decided to explore the ship. We found the following:
- 1st floor - Health and beauty spa with a gym, sauna, spa and massages and a night club/bar
- 2nd floor - Reception, four grand suites (our rooms) and two royal suites
- 3rd floor - shops, cabins and another four grand suites and two royal suites
- 4th floor - cabins and a casual lounge bar with board and card games for passengers and a billiards room
- 5th floor - cabins and a more formal lounge bar
- Up top - outside bar, shaded lounge area, shaded sitting area, deck chairs with umbrellas and, once again, a pool!
Somewhere along the way our luggage had miraculously made it to the foyer so we got it brought into our room. We met Mina in the reception at 3:30 and headed up the stairs that we had descended earlier today to reach the ship. Turns out that the ship was just over the hill from the temples so all we had to do was walk up the stairs, through a gate and we stepped into the arrivals area. Mina gave us our tickets and we went down. This temple was amazing due to the sheer size of it and also the intent of it. It was built by Ramses II who was determined to prove himself the equal of the gods. He dedicated his temple to worship three gods and himself. Nice. He also built a smaller temple to the side for his favourite wife, Nefertari. How sweet.
Mina informed us that these temples had also had to be rescued due to the construction of the High Dam in Aswan and were now located 60 metres above their original location. We were given 45 minutes to wander around the temples by ourselves once he had finished with his explanations and then we wandered back up to the cafe.
We decided to get an ice cream and had an interesting conversation with the shop keeper. It went something along the lines of this:
Me: pick up the ice cream and go to the shop keeper - "How much is the ice cream?"
Shop keeper: "25 pounds"
Me: "I only paid 15 pounds in Philae" - which I knew was still over priced but at least an acceptable over priced, not ridiculous over priced
Shop keeper: "More expensive here because it's further away"
Me: "It's too expensive" - start walking to put ice cream away
Shop keeper: "20 pounds"
Me: Pause and think about it before putting the ice cream into the freezer - "No thank you. Too expensive"
We start to walk away.
Shop keeper: "Ok, 15 pounds!"
I'd kind of given up at that point and was pretty unconvinced but Steve said that he'd buy it for me so 15 pounds later we were enjoying our expensive ice cream. We talked to Mina and Steve's parents about it too and Tina mentioned how she had a similar experience with the same shop keeper just a few minutes ago regarding some mints. Ah, Egypt.
We sat in the cafe and finished our ice cream before heading back to the ship. The other two ladies with us were going to the sound and light show at 6 so they stayed at the cafe along with Steve's parents who were keeping them company. We decided to go for a quick dip only to find out that the pool is actually really cold! Not freezing but there are lines painted along the bottom so I suspect the pool was designed to be a lap pool, hence the cooler temperature. Steve just stuck his feet in while I went the whole hog and jumped in.
Dinner wasn't until 8 so we came back to the room and hung out in our bath robes (life is so tough) before making ourselves decent to go to the dining room. We had a nice relaxing program the next day with nothing scheduled until 11 so we could have a bit of a lie in. Some of the others went up to the lounge to have a cuppa after dinner but we were so tired that we just came back and crashed in bed.
We farewelled the Dolphin and piled into the mini bus with two other Australians who were also doing the Lake Nasser cruise. Our driver was a bit of a maniac even though the traffic wasn't that bad because it was a Friday (Fridays and Saturdays are the weekends here). We arrived at the airport and checked in and then had to kill two hours before our flight. Boring.
The flight itself was incredibly short. Total boarding, taxiing and flight time was only about 45 minutes. I slept the whole way :) When we arrived we were greeted by a representative from the tour group who waited until we collected our luggage and then showed us to the minibus before disappearing into another car with other people. We were told that there would be a representative somewhere else waiting for us. Umm, ok...
So the driver takes us off and after about 10 minutes of driving we pull up on what appears to be the edge of a rocky hill where some guys are sitting in the shade of a tree. The driver says to us "Khayam?" I'm like, that vaguely sounds like what I remember being written on our voucher for checking in so, "Yes!" Next thing I know the porters are hauling the luggage out and another guy jumps in the van and we're like, umm, ok? We start to get off the minibus and the new guy says "No" and points further down the hill. So, we sit back down, our luggage gets taken out and then we drive another couple of hundred meters were all of a sudden we see a huge ship docked in a small bay with a large staircase leading down to it. Right, this is it!
As we file off the bus the new guy says something to us like, "I'm calling reception to let them know that you're coming. Just go down the steps and when you arrive, tell them your with " insert random name that starts with a V. Umm, ok. So, we walk down the stairs, board this ship and enter the plushest reception area. We had some issues with the name at first but I finally remembered that I'd been given a voucher and handed it over to the reception. We were told to have a seat and then filled in some forms before being given the keys to our room and advised that lunch was currently being served.
Now, the tour representative had told us the day before that we were on a very good boat on this cruise and that we had been upgraded and were in suites rather than cabins but I hadn't realised how good he meant by very good. Our room was twice the size of our room on the Dolphin. We had a giant bed, a desk, a sitting area and there was a bottle of water and fresh fruit platter waiting for us. There was a huge bathroom that had a shower and a bath and two hand basins and a sliding door that led to a little sitting area outside. When we went to the dining room for lunch we were whisked to a specially reserved table and were given silver service. There was a great variety of food and a little area where the chefs cooked fresh food in front of you. For lunch it was macaroni (pretty boring) and freshly battered fish which was delicious!
We found out later that the MS Omar El Khayam is the newest (built in 2008) and largest Lake Nasser cruise ship and had been designed for travellers who enjoyed luxery and being treated like royalty. Whoa. So, we had not just been upgraded up one class as per the previous cruise, we had been upgraded to the best and biggest boat on the lake! This ship was bigger than our previous ship! We spoke to our guide about it later and he said that the ship that we (the four of us) were supposed to be on was currently being refurbished and the ship that the other two ladies was supposed to be on was probably full so they probably had to upgrade all of us to this ship as it was the only other one sailing on the dates that we had booked. Score! I felt very fake being in these fancy pants suites and being waited on almost hand and foot - I didn't pay for this! But I figured I may as well try to enjoy it seeing as we were going to be on this ship for three nights.
We met our tour guide Mina over lunch. He informed us that we would be going to visit the temple of Abu Simbel at 3:30 so after lunch we decided to explore the ship. We found the following:
- 1st floor - Health and beauty spa with a gym, sauna, spa and massages and a night club/bar
- 2nd floor - Reception, four grand suites (our rooms) and two royal suites
- 3rd floor - shops, cabins and another four grand suites and two royal suites
- 4th floor - cabins and a casual lounge bar with board and card games for passengers and a billiards room
- 5th floor - cabins and a more formal lounge bar
- Up top - outside bar, shaded lounge area, shaded sitting area, deck chairs with umbrellas and, once again, a pool!
Somewhere along the way our luggage had miraculously made it to the foyer so we got it brought into our room. We met Mina in the reception at 3:30 and headed up the stairs that we had descended earlier today to reach the ship. Turns out that the ship was just over the hill from the temples so all we had to do was walk up the stairs, through a gate and we stepped into the arrivals area. Mina gave us our tickets and we went down. This temple was amazing due to the sheer size of it and also the intent of it. It was built by Ramses II who was determined to prove himself the equal of the gods. He dedicated his temple to worship three gods and himself. Nice. He also built a smaller temple to the side for his favourite wife, Nefertari. How sweet.
Mina informed us that these temples had also had to be rescued due to the construction of the High Dam in Aswan and were now located 60 metres above their original location. We were given 45 minutes to wander around the temples by ourselves once he had finished with his explanations and then we wandered back up to the cafe.
We decided to get an ice cream and had an interesting conversation with the shop keeper. It went something along the lines of this:
Me: pick up the ice cream and go to the shop keeper - "How much is the ice cream?"
Shop keeper: "25 pounds"
Me: "I only paid 15 pounds in Philae" - which I knew was still over priced but at least an acceptable over priced, not ridiculous over priced
Shop keeper: "More expensive here because it's further away"
Me: "It's too expensive" - start walking to put ice cream away
Shop keeper: "20 pounds"
Me: Pause and think about it before putting the ice cream into the freezer - "No thank you. Too expensive"
We start to walk away.
Shop keeper: "Ok, 15 pounds!"
I'd kind of given up at that point and was pretty unconvinced but Steve said that he'd buy it for me so 15 pounds later we were enjoying our expensive ice cream. We talked to Mina and Steve's parents about it too and Tina mentioned how she had a similar experience with the same shop keeper just a few minutes ago regarding some mints. Ah, Egypt.
We sat in the cafe and finished our ice cream before heading back to the ship. The other two ladies with us were going to the sound and light show at 6 so they stayed at the cafe along with Steve's parents who were keeping them company. We decided to go for a quick dip only to find out that the pool is actually really cold! Not freezing but there are lines painted along the bottom so I suspect the pool was designed to be a lap pool, hence the cooler temperature. Steve just stuck his feet in while I went the whole hog and jumped in.
Dinner wasn't until 8 so we came back to the room and hung out in our bath robes (life is so tough) before making ourselves decent to go to the dining room. We had a nice relaxing program the next day with nothing scheduled until 11 so we could have a bit of a lie in. Some of the others went up to the lounge to have a cuppa after dinner but we were so tired that we just came back and crashed in bed.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Day 43
The wake up call came in, which we answered and then slept in for another half an hour. We weren't the only ones looking slightly bleary eyed at breakfast. We had arrived in Aswan overnight so walked up to the street and got onto the bus which took us to a small wharf where there were squillions of motor boats waiting to ferry passengers to the Temple of Philae. We precariously hopped on one and headed over.
The Temple was dedicated to the Isis, the goddess of love and beauty, so Ibrahim called it the romantic temple. He told us that the temple had been relocated because the original island of Philae was flooded when the Egyptians built their dams. UNESCO came and divided the temple up into hundreds of large blocks and relocated the temple 60 metres away onto the island of Agilkia, where it now resides.
The temple was fantastic, the location on the river meant that there was a lovely breeze blowing around and through the temple and the carvings on the temple wall were fantastic. Once we finished we had a seat at the cafe near the temple in the shade and enjoyed the nice view. We left Philae/Agilkia island and headed back to the main land.
Our bus headed up to the High Dam where we got to marvel at the massive piece of engineering. It was pretty cool. The dam is 110 metres high and 3800 metres long and generates 2.1 GW of electricity which is enough to supply all of Egypt and enables Egypt to export power to other nearby countries.
From the High Dam we went to a red granite quarry that was used by the ancient egyptians for their temples. The granite quarry was only included in one person on the tour's itinerary but the rest of us were given the option to visit the quarry if we paid the entrance fee. Another lady and I took up the offer while the others waited on the bus. The quarry was amazing - you could see evidence of the ancient egyptians and remnants of their work. There was also a humongous obelisk still lying in the quarry. Ibrahim informed us that it was commissioned by Queen Hetshepsut and was going to be the biggest at 42 metres long (they're usually only 25 or so) but it cracked as they were attempting to lift it up so they had to abandon it but the granite had already been carved into an obelisk shape.
We got back on the bus and had a quick stop at a few banks to change some more money (damn tips!) before heading to the waterfront to board our felucca. It was fantastic. We were sailing peacefully along the Nile with the wind in our hair and the sun shine coming in from the sides. Our captain and his sailors were Nubians so they got us to sing and dance along with them at one point. They then used the opportunity while we were on there to try and sell us some stuff but they did it nicely so we actually bought something.
The felucca stopped at Kitchener Island where the Botanical Gardens of Aswan are located and we disembarked for a stroll through the gardens. I managed to get separated from the group because a heap of them went off to the loo and the rest of us were standing around waiting for them when this local guy started following me around, trying to show me stuff and giving me stuff from the gardens. During this time, the rest of the party had returned and started walking up through the gardens, leaving me behind with the dude. He asked me for a tip (surprise surprise) which I gave him and then kind of expected him to go away. Unfortunately, he didn't stop there and proceeded to climb a lotus tree and bring me a lotus blossom, which he then asked for another tip. I told him no because I'd already tipped him and I didn't ask for the flower. Needless to say it didn't end well with the guy taking the lotus flower and going off in a huff and me being cranky at Steve because I couldn't be angry at the group for abandoning me to the hawkers.
Other than that irritating experience, the gardens were actually quite nice. There was a fantastic view on one side of the desert and on the other side of the river. We sat in the cafe at the end of the gardens until our boat came and picked us up and then headed back to the ship. We were meant to go back on the felucca but the tour company had been worried that the wind might have died down so we wouldn't be able to sail so they had organised for a motor boat instead. Not quite as atmospheric but still nice. Unfortunately as we approached the wharf being in a boat wasn't quite so nice as we had to go in between a set of cruise ships to disembark and the ships were all spewing out diesel fumes.
We struggled through the noxious fumes and boarded the ship in time for lunch. After lunch we had a really relaxing afternoon in the pool and on the sun deck. I had a snooze while Steve read. We then dragged ourselves down to the cabin and started packing our suitcase ready to leave the next day. We had been given the choice to go on an excursion to a Nubian village but we had declined because we were a bit excursioned out for the day which was unfortunate as the members of the group who had gone said it was fantastic. Nubians keep live crocodiles in tanks in their homes to ward off evil spirits and scare any would be robbers. Crazy!
We had a meeting with Ibrahim and the company representative at 6:30 to find out about flights for the next day so we headed down to the lounge. We winced in pain as one group got told that they had a 3:30 am wake up call. Thankfully ours wasn't until 7:45 am so there was lots of joking about trading tours and early wake up calls during dinner. We exchanged contact details with the ones that we wanted to keep in touch with and then headed upstairs to watch a Nubian performance. There was singing and dancing and they even dragged the whole room up on the dance floor at one stage. We headed off to bed soon after due to tiredness and the fact that one of the instruments they had just brought out was some sort of horn thingy like what snake charmers use and it was loud!
The Temple was dedicated to the Isis, the goddess of love and beauty, so Ibrahim called it the romantic temple. He told us that the temple had been relocated because the original island of Philae was flooded when the Egyptians built their dams. UNESCO came and divided the temple up into hundreds of large blocks and relocated the temple 60 metres away onto the island of Agilkia, where it now resides.
The temple was fantastic, the location on the river meant that there was a lovely breeze blowing around and through the temple and the carvings on the temple wall were fantastic. Once we finished we had a seat at the cafe near the temple in the shade and enjoyed the nice view. We left Philae/Agilkia island and headed back to the main land.
Our bus headed up to the High Dam where we got to marvel at the massive piece of engineering. It was pretty cool. The dam is 110 metres high and 3800 metres long and generates 2.1 GW of electricity which is enough to supply all of Egypt and enables Egypt to export power to other nearby countries.
From the High Dam we went to a red granite quarry that was used by the ancient egyptians for their temples. The granite quarry was only included in one person on the tour's itinerary but the rest of us were given the option to visit the quarry if we paid the entrance fee. Another lady and I took up the offer while the others waited on the bus. The quarry was amazing - you could see evidence of the ancient egyptians and remnants of their work. There was also a humongous obelisk still lying in the quarry. Ibrahim informed us that it was commissioned by Queen Hetshepsut and was going to be the biggest at 42 metres long (they're usually only 25 or so) but it cracked as they were attempting to lift it up so they had to abandon it but the granite had already been carved into an obelisk shape.
We got back on the bus and had a quick stop at a few banks to change some more money (damn tips!) before heading to the waterfront to board our felucca. It was fantastic. We were sailing peacefully along the Nile with the wind in our hair and the sun shine coming in from the sides. Our captain and his sailors were Nubians so they got us to sing and dance along with them at one point. They then used the opportunity while we were on there to try and sell us some stuff but they did it nicely so we actually bought something.
The felucca stopped at Kitchener Island where the Botanical Gardens of Aswan are located and we disembarked for a stroll through the gardens. I managed to get separated from the group because a heap of them went off to the loo and the rest of us were standing around waiting for them when this local guy started following me around, trying to show me stuff and giving me stuff from the gardens. During this time, the rest of the party had returned and started walking up through the gardens, leaving me behind with the dude. He asked me for a tip (surprise surprise) which I gave him and then kind of expected him to go away. Unfortunately, he didn't stop there and proceeded to climb a lotus tree and bring me a lotus blossom, which he then asked for another tip. I told him no because I'd already tipped him and I didn't ask for the flower. Needless to say it didn't end well with the guy taking the lotus flower and going off in a huff and me being cranky at Steve because I couldn't be angry at the group for abandoning me to the hawkers.
Other than that irritating experience, the gardens were actually quite nice. There was a fantastic view on one side of the desert and on the other side of the river. We sat in the cafe at the end of the gardens until our boat came and picked us up and then headed back to the ship. We were meant to go back on the felucca but the tour company had been worried that the wind might have died down so we wouldn't be able to sail so they had organised for a motor boat instead. Not quite as atmospheric but still nice. Unfortunately as we approached the wharf being in a boat wasn't quite so nice as we had to go in between a set of cruise ships to disembark and the ships were all spewing out diesel fumes.
We struggled through the noxious fumes and boarded the ship in time for lunch. After lunch we had a really relaxing afternoon in the pool and on the sun deck. I had a snooze while Steve read. We then dragged ourselves down to the cabin and started packing our suitcase ready to leave the next day. We had been given the choice to go on an excursion to a Nubian village but we had declined because we were a bit excursioned out for the day which was unfortunate as the members of the group who had gone said it was fantastic. Nubians keep live crocodiles in tanks in their homes to ward off evil spirits and scare any would be robbers. Crazy!
We had a meeting with Ibrahim and the company representative at 6:30 to find out about flights for the next day so we headed down to the lounge. We winced in pain as one group got told that they had a 3:30 am wake up call. Thankfully ours wasn't until 7:45 am so there was lots of joking about trading tours and early wake up calls during dinner. We exchanged contact details with the ones that we wanted to keep in touch with and then headed upstairs to watch a Nubian performance. There was singing and dancing and they even dragged the whole room up on the dance floor at one stage. We headed off to bed soon after due to tiredness and the fact that one of the instruments they had just brought out was some sort of horn thingy like what snake charmers use and it was loud!
Day 42
We enjoyed our sleep in and then headed down to breakfast. I think the other members of the group also appreciated the sleep in. During the night the ship had docked at Edfu so we all gathered in the reception at 7:30 am and ventured off the ship. This time we were five ships in so we had to go in and out of their ships before we made it to the dock which was fun!
Our mode of transport to the temple was horse carriage! It was four to a carriage so Steve rode up front with the driver and his parents and I rode in the back. It took about 10 minutes to get to the temple but it was an amusing way of arriving there. We unfortunately had to fight our way through the hawkers to make it to the temple this time. We definitely weren't looking forward to coming back through that. The temple itself was amazing. It was dedicated to Horus by the Greek/Roman Pharoahs at the time. This is where they found the first depiction of an ancient Egyptian story regarding the battle between Horus and his Uncle Seth to avenge the death of his father Osiris.
Afterwards, Ibrahim surprised us with a video in an air conditioned room next to the temple. It showed the discovery of the temple, the restoration of the temple to its current state and gave a tour through the temple which was good because some of our group had not come in due to not feeling well.
We fought our way back through the hawkers and found our ride back to the ship. Wim rode up front this time so we hung out in the back and enjoyed the ride. Unfortunately it got spoilt a bit when we tipped the guy
(more than we'd been told already because he'd been cool and we'd taken some photos) and he asked for more (for his horse apparently). We crossed the other ships to ours and arrived in the reception to another awesome hot towel and drink.
The ship set sail at 10:00 am so with nothing else to do we figured we'd go in for a swim! We got changed, jumped in and jumped back out again because it was freezing! Surprising what 4 hours of sun shine on the water can do. So, found somewhere comfy to sit down and read our books instead. We ended up getting really hot so jumped in again for a bit before lunch.
We reconvened at 3:30 in the reception to visit the Temple of Kom Ombo. The ship had docked really close to the temple so we could walk from the dock. We still had to walk through three ships to make it to the dock though.
Kom Ombo was lovely. It was a fantastic time of day to be out, there was the slightest breeze which cooled everything down and we were all relaxed and refreshed from the break in between. The temple had been dedicated to two gods, Sobek and Horus, so was split into two identical halves apart from the carvings. The sun had started to set by the time we started to go back so it was nice to stand at the temple on the top of the hill and watch it go down. The temple also had a working Nile-o-meter which was pretty awesome - a device invented by the Greek Romans to determine how much tax to charge the people based on how much the Nile flooded. Nice.
Sandra's just gone to have a shower, so Steve is back on the blog:
On our way back to the boat, we stopped off at some local stores to get some galabeyas (the long Egyptian robe things), because tonight was the Egyptian party! By local stores, we mean dudes setup market style along the water.
Ok, now the locals are annoying enough while trying to sell you stuff you don't want. They are worse when you actually want something. I'd arranged with our guide to simply go and get the cheapest one they could find (I doubt I'm going need it to withstand years of use). The mission was simple, with minimal haggling. I got it for 30 Egyptian pounds ($6), score.
To avoid being hassled by more store folk, I kept my galabeya on so that they could all see I already had one and didn't need to buy more. But these veteran salesman then saw this as opportunity to supply me with accessories.... How many times can a man say "La Shocran" (no thank you).
While all this fun was going on, Sandra was battling the hordes with other tour group members. After getting dragged around, there was finally a galabeya worth keeping. Now comes the fun of haggling. Instantly, the guy gave her the 'good price' of 60 pounds, backing up his claim by telling Sandra "that's what she paid" pointing to a tour group member. Despite this being true, Sandra then asked another tour group member next to her how much hers was. 40 pounds you say. Ok, 40 pounds, no less. Seeing defeat, the salesman relented and accepted her price. Despite this feeling like a victory, I'm still sure the guy made an awesome profit on it anyway.
Sadly, I was not the only one who attracted the 'accessory' sellers. Sandra, too, had to brush off wave after wave of locals putting scarves and crap on her.
After our successful shopping trip, it was time to get back on the boat. Our lovely room cleaning crew had created another piece 'towel art'. This one was a towel man sitting on a chair wearing my t-shirt, shorts, hat and glasses. He was right near the door, giving Sandra a bit of a fright when she entered our room.
We all dressed up ready for the Egyptian night. Like most people, we did it before we went to dinner as well. The food that night was traditional Egyptian food as well. It was awesome.
After dinner we went upstairs to the bar where the Egypt night was supposed to occur. It was a fun night, involving things like Egyptian dancing, regular dancing and much laughing. Dad got up as well which was awesome! Mum decided not to, but we did get her up once.
Our mode of transport to the temple was horse carriage! It was four to a carriage so Steve rode up front with the driver and his parents and I rode in the back. It took about 10 minutes to get to the temple but it was an amusing way of arriving there. We unfortunately had to fight our way through the hawkers to make it to the temple this time. We definitely weren't looking forward to coming back through that. The temple itself was amazing. It was dedicated to Horus by the Greek/Roman Pharoahs at the time. This is where they found the first depiction of an ancient Egyptian story regarding the battle between Horus and his Uncle Seth to avenge the death of his father Osiris.
Afterwards, Ibrahim surprised us with a video in an air conditioned room next to the temple. It showed the discovery of the temple, the restoration of the temple to its current state and gave a tour through the temple which was good because some of our group had not come in due to not feeling well.
We fought our way back through the hawkers and found our ride back to the ship. Wim rode up front this time so we hung out in the back and enjoyed the ride. Unfortunately it got spoilt a bit when we tipped the guy
(more than we'd been told already because he'd been cool and we'd taken some photos) and he asked for more (for his horse apparently). We crossed the other ships to ours and arrived in the reception to another awesome hot towel and drink.
The ship set sail at 10:00 am so with nothing else to do we figured we'd go in for a swim! We got changed, jumped in and jumped back out again because it was freezing! Surprising what 4 hours of sun shine on the water can do. So, found somewhere comfy to sit down and read our books instead. We ended up getting really hot so jumped in again for a bit before lunch.
We reconvened at 3:30 in the reception to visit the Temple of Kom Ombo. The ship had docked really close to the temple so we could walk from the dock. We still had to walk through three ships to make it to the dock though.
Kom Ombo was lovely. It was a fantastic time of day to be out, there was the slightest breeze which cooled everything down and we were all relaxed and refreshed from the break in between. The temple had been dedicated to two gods, Sobek and Horus, so was split into two identical halves apart from the carvings. The sun had started to set by the time we started to go back so it was nice to stand at the temple on the top of the hill and watch it go down. The temple also had a working Nile-o-meter which was pretty awesome - a device invented by the Greek Romans to determine how much tax to charge the people based on how much the Nile flooded. Nice.
Sandra's just gone to have a shower, so Steve is back on the blog:
On our way back to the boat, we stopped off at some local stores to get some galabeyas (the long Egyptian robe things), because tonight was the Egyptian party! By local stores, we mean dudes setup market style along the water.
Ok, now the locals are annoying enough while trying to sell you stuff you don't want. They are worse when you actually want something. I'd arranged with our guide to simply go and get the cheapest one they could find (I doubt I'm going need it to withstand years of use). The mission was simple, with minimal haggling. I got it for 30 Egyptian pounds ($6), score.
To avoid being hassled by more store folk, I kept my galabeya on so that they could all see I already had one and didn't need to buy more. But these veteran salesman then saw this as opportunity to supply me with accessories.... How many times can a man say "La Shocran" (no thank you).
While all this fun was going on, Sandra was battling the hordes with other tour group members. After getting dragged around, there was finally a galabeya worth keeping. Now comes the fun of haggling. Instantly, the guy gave her the 'good price' of 60 pounds, backing up his claim by telling Sandra "that's what she paid" pointing to a tour group member. Despite this being true, Sandra then asked another tour group member next to her how much hers was. 40 pounds you say. Ok, 40 pounds, no less. Seeing defeat, the salesman relented and accepted her price. Despite this feeling like a victory, I'm still sure the guy made an awesome profit on it anyway.
Sadly, I was not the only one who attracted the 'accessory' sellers. Sandra, too, had to brush off wave after wave of locals putting scarves and crap on her.
After our successful shopping trip, it was time to get back on the boat. Our lovely room cleaning crew had created another piece 'towel art'. This one was a towel man sitting on a chair wearing my t-shirt, shorts, hat and glasses. He was right near the door, giving Sandra a bit of a fright when she entered our room.
We all dressed up ready for the Egyptian night. Like most people, we did it before we went to dinner as well. The food that night was traditional Egyptian food as well. It was awesome.
After dinner we went upstairs to the bar where the Egypt night was supposed to occur. It was a fun night, involving things like Egyptian dancing, regular dancing and much laughing. Dad got up as well which was awesome! Mum decided not to, but we did get her up once.
Day 41
Our wake up call came in at 5:45 am on the dot. All of our tour group except the Canadians were on the 4th floor and our cabines were next to/opposite each other so you could hear the chorus of telephones going off. We got up and made our way down to the restaurant for breakfast. Surprisingly, we were the second ones there being beaten only by the Canadian family. Breakfast and afternoon tea are the only meals of the day when drinks are free. Unfortunately, the drinks are tea and coffee which didn't really help us although there was a really sweet orange drink that we had at breakfast instead.
At 7:00 am sharp we were all ready to head off. We piled on to the bus and headed out to the Valley of the Kings! We had to ride these little open buses from the entrance to the area around the tombs. Our entrance tickets gave us entry into three tombs in the valley. Special tombs, such as Tutankahmun, were extra so we decided not to take up the extra tombs. I can't remember which ones we visited now but they were all of the Ramses dynasty. The tombs were pretty cool, there was still lots of the original carvings and colours inside. Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take any photos. There were also hundreds of people already there and it was shaping up to be a hot day so we could understand, if not appreciate, the reason for the early start.
We left the Valley (had to fight our way through a group of hawkers whom had all set up shop around the exit - nasty( and headed to Queen Hatshepsut's Temple. On our way we stopped by an alabster shop where the workers still find, carve and paint alabaster stone in the same method that the ancient Egyptians used to. We succumbed and bought our first souvenir of the trip - a little limestone carving for home.
Queen Hatshepsut, or as Ibrahim joked, "Hot Chicken Soup", was the only woman to rule Egypt as a Pharoah. Her temple was carved into the side of a mountain but unfortunately a lot of the temple was damaged due to natural disasters, such as earth quakes and floods, and vandalism. One of the really sad things is that a lot of the carvings in a lot of the temples were vandalised by early Christians that were using the temples as refuges before Christianity was legalised. They found the carvings offensive so defaced them. The interesting this about this temple was that this was one of the few temples that hadn't been defaced by early Christians. This had been defaced by Hatshepsut's step son. There was a struggle for power between her and her step son and when he finally won he ordered her name and all carvings bearing her face to be destroyed.
We had to catch little open buses from the car park to near the temple again. The temple was hot. Really hot. There was absolutely no shade and it was midday and there were three different tiers. Needless to say, we didn't spend too long on each one before making our way back to the shade of the cafeteria. We caught the bus back and once again had to duck and weave our way through the hawkers lining the exit.
From here we went to see the Collosus of Memnon, two large statues that are all that remains of an ancient temple. It was just a quick stop, out of the bus for some photos and then back on the bus to the ship for lunch and to start sailing up the Nile. One of the best things was walking back onto the ship to find warm towels and refreshing lemon drinks waiting for us. It was a fantastic cure to feeling hot, sweaty and dirty.
We had all had lunch and were sitting around chatting when we realised that the ship had started moving so we all dashed up to the sun deck and watched the ship leave. We changed into our swimmers and bobbed around in the pool while we watched the scenary pass. We didn't have any other excursions planned for the rest of the day so we spent it swimming and reading on the sun deck. Hard, I know.
We had to meet Ibrahim that evening for an information session regarding our visits and the harsh reality of working in the Egyptian tourism industry. Most people working in tourism earn bugger all so the way they make their living is off tips. So he informed us when we should tip, who we should tip, how much we should tip, etc. In summary, we should tip almost everybody - the porters, bus drivers, the cruise crew, the toilet cleaners,the cats and dogs... It wasn't so much the amounts as when you do the conversion, it's a few dollars here and there. But it's a few dollars constantly and it's just such a different culture to what we have at home that we were quite uncomfortable about it. He did mention that tipping wasn't obligatory and that if you were happy with your service then you could but sometimes it didn't quite feel that way, especially when the people asked for a tip!
We were starting at 7:30 am the next morning so we had dinner, sat around chatting with the other people in the group and then retired to our room for the night. There was meant to be a disco at 9:30 in the bar but when we walked past it looked pretty unlively.
At 7:00 am sharp we were all ready to head off. We piled on to the bus and headed out to the Valley of the Kings! We had to ride these little open buses from the entrance to the area around the tombs. Our entrance tickets gave us entry into three tombs in the valley. Special tombs, such as Tutankahmun, were extra so we decided not to take up the extra tombs. I can't remember which ones we visited now but they were all of the Ramses dynasty. The tombs were pretty cool, there was still lots of the original carvings and colours inside. Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take any photos. There were also hundreds of people already there and it was shaping up to be a hot day so we could understand, if not appreciate, the reason for the early start.
We left the Valley (had to fight our way through a group of hawkers whom had all set up shop around the exit - nasty( and headed to Queen Hatshepsut's Temple. On our way we stopped by an alabster shop where the workers still find, carve and paint alabaster stone in the same method that the ancient Egyptians used to. We succumbed and bought our first souvenir of the trip - a little limestone carving for home.
Queen Hatshepsut, or as Ibrahim joked, "Hot Chicken Soup", was the only woman to rule Egypt as a Pharoah. Her temple was carved into the side of a mountain but unfortunately a lot of the temple was damaged due to natural disasters, such as earth quakes and floods, and vandalism. One of the really sad things is that a lot of the carvings in a lot of the temples were vandalised by early Christians that were using the temples as refuges before Christianity was legalised. They found the carvings offensive so defaced them. The interesting this about this temple was that this was one of the few temples that hadn't been defaced by early Christians. This had been defaced by Hatshepsut's step son. There was a struggle for power between her and her step son and when he finally won he ordered her name and all carvings bearing her face to be destroyed.
We had to catch little open buses from the car park to near the temple again. The temple was hot. Really hot. There was absolutely no shade and it was midday and there were three different tiers. Needless to say, we didn't spend too long on each one before making our way back to the shade of the cafeteria. We caught the bus back and once again had to duck and weave our way through the hawkers lining the exit.
From here we went to see the Collosus of Memnon, two large statues that are all that remains of an ancient temple. It was just a quick stop, out of the bus for some photos and then back on the bus to the ship for lunch and to start sailing up the Nile. One of the best things was walking back onto the ship to find warm towels and refreshing lemon drinks waiting for us. It was a fantastic cure to feeling hot, sweaty and dirty.
We had all had lunch and were sitting around chatting when we realised that the ship had started moving so we all dashed up to the sun deck and watched the ship leave. We changed into our swimmers and bobbed around in the pool while we watched the scenary pass. We didn't have any other excursions planned for the rest of the day so we spent it swimming and reading on the sun deck. Hard, I know.
We had to meet Ibrahim that evening for an information session regarding our visits and the harsh reality of working in the Egyptian tourism industry. Most people working in tourism earn bugger all so the way they make their living is off tips. So he informed us when we should tip, who we should tip, how much we should tip, etc. In summary, we should tip almost everybody - the porters, bus drivers, the cruise crew, the toilet cleaners,the cats and dogs... It wasn't so much the amounts as when you do the conversion, it's a few dollars here and there. But it's a few dollars constantly and it's just such a different culture to what we have at home that we were quite uncomfortable about it. He did mention that tipping wasn't obligatory and that if you were happy with your service then you could but sometimes it didn't quite feel that way, especially when the people asked for a tip!
We were starting at 7:30 am the next morning so we had dinner, sat around chatting with the other people in the group and then retired to our room for the night. There was meant to be a disco at 9:30 in the bar but when we walked past it looked pretty unlively.
Day 40
Despite our guide wanting us to wake up at 4:30, we decided to wake ourselves up at 4:50 instead. 20 minutes of sweet sweet sleep was worth it. It would have been later but we had to get the suit cases out by 5.
We got down to reception a bit early but the tour guy was already there (this was the guy who met us at the airport). The hotel was kind enough to prepare some breakfast boxes for our travel. Score!
While getting into the bus, we noticed there were others already on from another hotel. We were the last stop, so thankfully we got to sleep in the longest!
After finishing the breakfast box, we arrived at the airport. Our tour guy pretty much babied us through the whole check in process. To our surprise, we were flying business class. I was filled with both sadness and joy. Joy, because it is the first time I have EVER flown business class. Sadness because out of all the flights I have ever been on, it's the shortest. A pathetic 45 minutes. The plane hardly gets to full altitude before it starts to descend again...
The plane landed, and as with every other flight we have ever been on, we waited to let the impatient people out (especially since you have to get into a bus and stand anyway). But turns out that in business class, they don't let the cattle out until we've gone. Crap, so we had to quickly get our stuff and move out. The cool thing is that the business class bus leaves as soon as the business class people are on. So you get a seat and don't have to wait. But again, this isn't as good as it sounds because you still have to wait for your bags. And since we were the first to get off, we had to stand in the stupid baggage hall with everyone else waiting for the bags to even start coming rather than be in our comfy business class chairs. Once we finally got the bags, it was time to experience Luxor! The first stop was our cruise boat, the MS Nile Dolphin. This was an upgrade to the one that we were supposed to be on because it must have been more cost efficient for the tour company to just put us with the other people on the tour so score!
The number of ships on the river was amazing! Our ship was the closest to the dock but there were five boats docked abreast of each other so passengers on the other ships had to walk through our reception area to get to theirs which was quite cool. There were probably about 20 boats docked in the area where we were but our guide told us that there were about 500 ships that sail this section of the Nile with at least 100 ships sailing at any point in time. Crazy!
We got the to ship and went straight to the bar. More because that's where we were told to go and meet, not so much because we're alcos. After some administration stuff, we went to our rooms. These were pretty nice. Much better than many hotel rooms I've been in. Lunch was still a little while away, so we started with an exploration of the boat. We found the following:
- 1st floor - Dining area.
- 2nd floor - Reception and rooms for the guides
- 3rd floor - shops and guest rooms
- 4th floor - the bar and guest rooms (our room was on this one)
- Up top - outside bar, sitting areas, deck chairs (both unshaded / shaded. So really Europeans / everyone else) and most importantly a pool!
After finding the pool, the number one priority was to get on the bathers, and get in it. The water was fantastic. The weather was so hot, and the water was so warm. But in the water, it was just right. I don't think I have ever been in pool or beach water that is too warm.
Lunch time came, so we went to the dining floor and got allocated our table. There were heaps of tables with heaps of people, but turns out that there are many different tours for many different languages. Our English speaking tour had only 14 people. All the people are pretty cool. There were us, 5 other Australians, a family of 3 Canadians and 2 Brits. No Americans, which surprised me a little. I think the other nationalities were Spanish and Italian, but I obviously hadn't talked to them about that.
It was now time for our first ancient Egyptian tour on the cruise. We met our guide (Ibrahim. Sounds like Abraham) and went to the Karnak temple. This place was massive. It wasn't so much one massive building, but a few buildings and halls mixed with open areas and a small lake. It was roughly the same size as a small theme park (Egyptopia perhaps). It was also incredibly hot, even though it was 3:00 in the afternoon.
To make things easier, our guide gave our group a name - Habibi, meaning darling or something along those lines in Arabic. We didn't get a choice in this name, he just gave it to us. I have a sneaking suspicion that he's used this name before, like, for every other tour group he has. When we asked him about this he laughed and said that we were "Special Habibis". Thanks.
From Karnak we went to Luxor temple which was smaller than Karnak but better preserved. There was a mosque on the top of one of the old ruins. Ibrahim explained that it was because when the Arabs had settled in Luxor, the temple was covered in sand so when they built their mosque, they didn't realise that it was being built on the ruins of the old temple. Luxor temple was also hot but in a different way. By the time we got to this temple the sun was setting so we didn't have to worry about hats, sunglasses and scarves so that was good. Unfortunately though, the whole temple was emanating heat from the stones that had been baking in the sun the whole day. Can't have everything I guess.
We finished up and went back to the ship and hung out in air conditioned comfort until dinner time. There was a belly dancing show on at 10:00 pm in the bar that evening but all thoughts of going to the show vanished when Ibrahim announced that we would be starting at 7:00 tomorrow morning, meaning a 5:45 am wake up call. After a 5:00 am start, the thought of a 5:45 wake up call really didn't sound appealing so we wrapped up the evening after dinner and had an early night.
We got down to reception a bit early but the tour guy was already there (this was the guy who met us at the airport). The hotel was kind enough to prepare some breakfast boxes for our travel. Score!
While getting into the bus, we noticed there were others already on from another hotel. We were the last stop, so thankfully we got to sleep in the longest!
After finishing the breakfast box, we arrived at the airport. Our tour guy pretty much babied us through the whole check in process. To our surprise, we were flying business class. I was filled with both sadness and joy. Joy, because it is the first time I have EVER flown business class. Sadness because out of all the flights I have ever been on, it's the shortest. A pathetic 45 minutes. The plane hardly gets to full altitude before it starts to descend again...
The plane landed, and as with every other flight we have ever been on, we waited to let the impatient people out (especially since you have to get into a bus and stand anyway). But turns out that in business class, they don't let the cattle out until we've gone. Crap, so we had to quickly get our stuff and move out. The cool thing is that the business class bus leaves as soon as the business class people are on. So you get a seat and don't have to wait. But again, this isn't as good as it sounds because you still have to wait for your bags. And since we were the first to get off, we had to stand in the stupid baggage hall with everyone else waiting for the bags to even start coming rather than be in our comfy business class chairs. Once we finally got the bags, it was time to experience Luxor! The first stop was our cruise boat, the MS Nile Dolphin. This was an upgrade to the one that we were supposed to be on because it must have been more cost efficient for the tour company to just put us with the other people on the tour so score!
The number of ships on the river was amazing! Our ship was the closest to the dock but there were five boats docked abreast of each other so passengers on the other ships had to walk through our reception area to get to theirs which was quite cool. There were probably about 20 boats docked in the area where we were but our guide told us that there were about 500 ships that sail this section of the Nile with at least 100 ships sailing at any point in time. Crazy!
We got the to ship and went straight to the bar. More because that's where we were told to go and meet, not so much because we're alcos. After some administration stuff, we went to our rooms. These were pretty nice. Much better than many hotel rooms I've been in. Lunch was still a little while away, so we started with an exploration of the boat. We found the following:
- 1st floor - Dining area.
- 2nd floor - Reception and rooms for the guides
- 3rd floor - shops and guest rooms
- 4th floor - the bar and guest rooms (our room was on this one)
- Up top - outside bar, sitting areas, deck chairs (both unshaded / shaded. So really Europeans / everyone else) and most importantly a pool!
After finding the pool, the number one priority was to get on the bathers, and get in it. The water was fantastic. The weather was so hot, and the water was so warm. But in the water, it was just right. I don't think I have ever been in pool or beach water that is too warm.
Lunch time came, so we went to the dining floor and got allocated our table. There were heaps of tables with heaps of people, but turns out that there are many different tours for many different languages. Our English speaking tour had only 14 people. All the people are pretty cool. There were us, 5 other Australians, a family of 3 Canadians and 2 Brits. No Americans, which surprised me a little. I think the other nationalities were Spanish and Italian, but I obviously hadn't talked to them about that.
It was now time for our first ancient Egyptian tour on the cruise. We met our guide (Ibrahim. Sounds like Abraham) and went to the Karnak temple. This place was massive. It wasn't so much one massive building, but a few buildings and halls mixed with open areas and a small lake. It was roughly the same size as a small theme park (Egyptopia perhaps). It was also incredibly hot, even though it was 3:00 in the afternoon.
To make things easier, our guide gave our group a name - Habibi, meaning darling or something along those lines in Arabic. We didn't get a choice in this name, he just gave it to us. I have a sneaking suspicion that he's used this name before, like, for every other tour group he has. When we asked him about this he laughed and said that we were "Special Habibis". Thanks.
From Karnak we went to Luxor temple which was smaller than Karnak but better preserved. There was a mosque on the top of one of the old ruins. Ibrahim explained that it was because when the Arabs had settled in Luxor, the temple was covered in sand so when they built their mosque, they didn't realise that it was being built on the ruins of the old temple. Luxor temple was also hot but in a different way. By the time we got to this temple the sun was setting so we didn't have to worry about hats, sunglasses and scarves so that was good. Unfortunately though, the whole temple was emanating heat from the stones that had been baking in the sun the whole day. Can't have everything I guess.
We finished up and went back to the ship and hung out in air conditioned comfort until dinner time. There was a belly dancing show on at 10:00 pm in the bar that evening but all thoughts of going to the show vanished when Ibrahim announced that we would be starting at 7:00 tomorrow morning, meaning a 5:45 am wake up call. After a 5:00 am start, the thought of a 5:45 wake up call really didn't sound appealing so we wrapped up the evening after dinner and had an early night.
Day 39
Today we met our tour guide George. George was cool. He was an Egpytologist who spoke very good english with a slight British accent. He explained to us that Egyptologists have to study for four years before they can be qualified to undertake guided tours. As part of their degree they have to select a language to specialise in and then the WHOLE COURSE is taught in that language. That's right folks. Imagine going to uni, choosing to study Medicine, Law or Engineering and then having to study it in Mandarin, Spanish, Italian, etc. Nuts! One of the perks they get as a tour guide is free entrance to all the archeological sites in Egypt and free entrance to all tourist sites around the world if they visit another city due to their tour guide union. Awesome!
Anyway, as I said, George was cool. We headed off to the Egyptian Musuem where George told us the history of the musuem and then took us inside. We did a bit of a whirlwind tour as we only had three and a half hours in there to look and get some lunch but it was good. The musuem was amazing but it was so higgledy piggledy with stuff kind of everywhere and not really enough room for everything and NO AIRCONDITIONING. You can imagine how awesome the building was with 2000 bodies inside and no airconditioning. Gross. Apparently the government are building a new musuem that they think may be one of the biggest musuems in the world but that's not for a few more years. We weren't allowed to take any photos inside the museum because the Egyptian government banned the use of cameras around Egyptian artifacts because they found the flash was affecting the colour but they couldn't control the tourists using the flash so they've just made a blanket ban on cameras in any sensitive areas.
After the musuem we headed off to the pyramids, for the second time but this time it was daylight! George gave us some history on the pyramids as we drove there so that we weren't waiting inside the bus once we arrived and gave us some advice on some of the scams that the locals try on tourists sometimes.
Steve, Wim and I decided to go into Khufu's pyramid (the second biggest one) so once we entered the area, the bus driver took us to the car park nearest and then we headed to the entrance. The passage way was amazing. The walls were completely smooth on all four sides. They had installed little wooden ramps to help people get in and out otherwise it would have been a bit dangerous to go in.
The passage way was only wide enough for two people to pass and one person to go through comfortably. The roof was quite low for the first 25 metres of the passage (about 1.5 m) so we had to crouch down a bit. The passage way then opened up and we could stand up straight again for about 10 metres before we started heading down a second low roof passage way before it opened up again into another open hall which I could stand up in but Steve and his dad had to tilt their heads slightly (take that tall people!) before we headed into a third low passage way, but this time heading up, into the burial room.
The room was, well, a room. What was amazing was how they made the room. It was one piece of rock, carved and smoothed with an apex in the roof. The old sarcophogus was still there but it was empty. I felt sorry for the poor buggers who had to drag the sarcophogas into the pyramid because it looked heavy and the passage way in wasn't that big!
We had been told by George that we weren't allowed to take photos inside the tomb. Ok, fair enough. This was due to stupid tourists not respecting the 'no flash' rule. While we were down there, it was only us, a guard, and one other tourist. The other tourist asked the guard if he could take a photo, to which the guard said yes after looking around to see if anyone else was there. We joined in the opportunity, but still respected the 'no flash' rule (as the reason they do it is to stop the degradation of the colours in the carvings). The other guy was flashing away (tourists....). The guard held out his hands as we started heading out of the room - nothing is for free I guess. So, we lined the palms of the guard with some dosh and made our way out. As we exited the tomb, some lady was being told to leave her camera at the top. We chuckled amongst ourselves quietly.
At that point, we made our way back to the largest pyramid for some 'free time'. The tour guide recommended walking around the great pyramid, as that's something a lot of poeple like to do. So we took him up on the recommendation. It took us about 15-20 minutes to make it all the way around in the heat. The pyramid was roped off and there were guards watching so that people couldn't climb up the sides. George told us it was because too many people had climbed up and gotten stuck and not been able to come back down, resulting in having to call in helicopters to get them off. On a more morbid note, he also said that some people tried to climb the pyramids to throw themselves off...nasty.
There was a section that you could go up near the entrance of the tomb. There were steps carved out so people could easily go up and it also meant that you could walk a little bit along one of the large pyramid steps. We saw one guy wander too far and get told off by a guard so we stayed within the allowed areas.
We returned to the van and made our way to the Panaroma - a large hill where you can get a great view of the three pyramids in the background, before heading down to the Khufu's temple where the Sphinx was located. George gave us some information on the history of the temple and the Sphinx and then we got to go up a walkway and take some photos of the Sphinx. As you can imagine there were tourists everywhere but it was still cool.
After we finished at the Sphinx, George asked us if we would like to visit a papyrus shop or perfumery. I felt a bit sorry for him as Tina and I both have no interest in perfume but Tina was interested in getting some blank papyrus paper for her artwork so we went to the papyrus shop and learnt how they made the paper. Apparently it's still the exact same process that the ancient egyptians used thousands of years ago. There was some beautiful artwork on the walls but unfortunately no photos so we only have our memories.
We left the papyrus shop and headed back to the hotel. The drive back was horrendously long due to all the traffic that we had to go through. We were pretty tired after a big day - we had started at 8:30 and didn't get back until after 5:00 and it had been extremely hot - so we were pretty disappointed when we got told that we had to be up at 4:30 the next morning to head out to the airport at 5:30. Gross.
So, keeping that in mind we had an early dinner, packed our suitcases ready to go so that all we had to do was get dressed and then hit the hay.
Anyway, as I said, George was cool. We headed off to the Egyptian Musuem where George told us the history of the musuem and then took us inside. We did a bit of a whirlwind tour as we only had three and a half hours in there to look and get some lunch but it was good. The musuem was amazing but it was so higgledy piggledy with stuff kind of everywhere and not really enough room for everything and NO AIRCONDITIONING. You can imagine how awesome the building was with 2000 bodies inside and no airconditioning. Gross. Apparently the government are building a new musuem that they think may be one of the biggest musuems in the world but that's not for a few more years. We weren't allowed to take any photos inside the museum because the Egyptian government banned the use of cameras around Egyptian artifacts because they found the flash was affecting the colour but they couldn't control the tourists using the flash so they've just made a blanket ban on cameras in any sensitive areas.
After the musuem we headed off to the pyramids, for the second time but this time it was daylight! George gave us some history on the pyramids as we drove there so that we weren't waiting inside the bus once we arrived and gave us some advice on some of the scams that the locals try on tourists sometimes.
Steve, Wim and I decided to go into Khufu's pyramid (the second biggest one) so once we entered the area, the bus driver took us to the car park nearest and then we headed to the entrance. The passage way was amazing. The walls were completely smooth on all four sides. They had installed little wooden ramps to help people get in and out otherwise it would have been a bit dangerous to go in.
The passage way was only wide enough for two people to pass and one person to go through comfortably. The roof was quite low for the first 25 metres of the passage (about 1.5 m) so we had to crouch down a bit. The passage way then opened up and we could stand up straight again for about 10 metres before we started heading down a second low roof passage way before it opened up again into another open hall which I could stand up in but Steve and his dad had to tilt their heads slightly (take that tall people!) before we headed into a third low passage way, but this time heading up, into the burial room.
The room was, well, a room. What was amazing was how they made the room. It was one piece of rock, carved and smoothed with an apex in the roof. The old sarcophogus was still there but it was empty. I felt sorry for the poor buggers who had to drag the sarcophogas into the pyramid because it looked heavy and the passage way in wasn't that big!
We had been told by George that we weren't allowed to take photos inside the tomb. Ok, fair enough. This was due to stupid tourists not respecting the 'no flash' rule. While we were down there, it was only us, a guard, and one other tourist. The other tourist asked the guard if he could take a photo, to which the guard said yes after looking around to see if anyone else was there. We joined in the opportunity, but still respected the 'no flash' rule (as the reason they do it is to stop the degradation of the colours in the carvings). The other guy was flashing away (tourists....). The guard held out his hands as we started heading out of the room - nothing is for free I guess. So, we lined the palms of the guard with some dosh and made our way out. As we exited the tomb, some lady was being told to leave her camera at the top. We chuckled amongst ourselves quietly.
At that point, we made our way back to the largest pyramid for some 'free time'. The tour guide recommended walking around the great pyramid, as that's something a lot of poeple like to do. So we took him up on the recommendation. It took us about 15-20 minutes to make it all the way around in the heat. The pyramid was roped off and there were guards watching so that people couldn't climb up the sides. George told us it was because too many people had climbed up and gotten stuck and not been able to come back down, resulting in having to call in helicopters to get them off. On a more morbid note, he also said that some people tried to climb the pyramids to throw themselves off...nasty.
There was a section that you could go up near the entrance of the tomb. There were steps carved out so people could easily go up and it also meant that you could walk a little bit along one of the large pyramid steps. We saw one guy wander too far and get told off by a guard so we stayed within the allowed areas.
We returned to the van and made our way to the Panaroma - a large hill where you can get a great view of the three pyramids in the background, before heading down to the Khufu's temple where the Sphinx was located. George gave us some information on the history of the temple and the Sphinx and then we got to go up a walkway and take some photos of the Sphinx. As you can imagine there were tourists everywhere but it was still cool.
After we finished at the Sphinx, George asked us if we would like to visit a papyrus shop or perfumery. I felt a bit sorry for him as Tina and I both have no interest in perfume but Tina was interested in getting some blank papyrus paper for her artwork so we went to the papyrus shop and learnt how they made the paper. Apparently it's still the exact same process that the ancient egyptians used thousands of years ago. There was some beautiful artwork on the walls but unfortunately no photos so we only have our memories.
We left the papyrus shop and headed back to the hotel. The drive back was horrendously long due to all the traffic that we had to go through. We were pretty tired after a big day - we had started at 8:30 and didn't get back until after 5:00 and it had been extremely hot - so we were pretty disappointed when we got told that we had to be up at 4:30 the next morning to head out to the airport at 5:30. Gross.
So, keeping that in mind we had an early dinner, packed our suitcases ready to go so that all we had to do was get dressed and then hit the hay.
Day 38
Hi folks, sorry for the delay but trying to find internet and time to upload the blogs in Egypt was hard. We've made it safely albeit completely exhausted to Japan (night flights plus tummy bugs = grumpy traveller). Here's what you missed out on over the last few days:
Today we travelled to Cairo for the start of our Egyptian adventure! We had an early breakfast and then caught the Metro to the airport. Steve's parents headed out with us too even though they were actually on a later flight.
Check in went smoothly (for once) but we had other drama to entertain us. When we were waiting in the Metro, Steve received a text message from AAMI saying that our house insurance had expired on the 28th of September. We were both stunned as we have family checking our mail and if the bill had arrived, they would have taken care of it for us.
We called our families to see if they had seen any letters but they both said no. We couldn't do anything about it until we arived at the airport but luckily there was free wifi in the Athens airport so we looked up the AAMI number and Skyped them. Turns out that it was our investment property insurance that had expired but we had a seven day grace period so we were still covered. Crisis averted!
Our flight to Egypt was good but long as the flight was slightly delayed departing and then we had to circle for an extra half hour in Cairo airport. On the upside, we met a really nice guy named Sam who was returning to his studies in Alexandria after spending a few months in Greece with his dad. We mentioned to Sam that we weren't sure what the deal was when we landed in Cairo and if the airport transfer would be there so he kindly offered to help us if things didn't work out. We landed, changed some money and purchased our visas to enter Egypt before going through to the baggage area where we found a representative from the tour company waiting for us. Hooray for a smooth transfer!
His name was Mina, he was pretty cool. We got our luggage and headed to our hotel in Cairo, The President Hotel in Zamalek. Cairo traffic is crazy, completely crazy. There are no rules, no lanes, no nothing. There are traffic lights but they're pretty much a decoration. Along the way Mina gave us information about Cairo and its inhabitants, interesting Cairo sites and some background information on the tour. We stopped along the way to do a changeover where we met Mohammed who would be helping us check in to the hotel and who would be accompanying us later this evening for our sound and light show at the pyramids.
We arrived at the hotel where Steve and I got to sit around in the lobby while they did everything for us. It was quite weird but we weren't sure what else to do... Once we were checked in we farewelled Mohammed until later and followed the Valet up to our room.
The hotel was really weird in that the floors had funny numbering. We were on the "fourth floor" which was actually in reality the thirtheenth floor of the building. The elevator only went up to the "third" floor and then there was a staircase leading up to the "fourth" floor. The first thing we did was turn on the airconditioning in our room as it was HOT! I think it was in the high 30's when we landed. Apparently this time of year should be around the low thirties but there had been a heat wave that pushed the temperatures back up again.
We grabbed our hats and went for a walk around the area to check things out, find some snacks for Steve and to buy some water. We found an awesome little hole in the wall shop around the corner from the hotel and then walked around the waterfront looking for a little takeaway or something. Having failed dismally, we went into another hole in the wall so that Steve could pick up a packet of chips to munch on.
On our way back to the hotel there was a construction site where a kid and some of the workers were kicking around a soccer ball. We walked past and Steve kind of looked longingly in their direction. An old guy who was just sitting there watching them noticed us and invited Steve to join in so in 35+ degree heat, Steve was kicking a soccer ball around. It was pretty funny because there were cars parked everywhere so they were playing in the middle of the street which meant each time a car came around the corner they would all have to scatter and the kid was pretty unco so he kept kicking the ball up onto cars, setting of their car alarms.
Eventually the little kid went back home with the ball so it was game over. You can all imagine just how gross Steve was after kicking the ball around in the sun...
We went back to the hotel via the first hole in the wall to buy some more water and then cooled off in the room before heading downstairs to meet Mohammed to go to the sound and light show. We reunited with Steve's parents and then headed off. We worked our way through to the crazy crazy traffic where we arrived at Giza early so we sat down and had a quick bite and drink at a local restaurant before we headed in.
The sound and light show was cool. A bit corny at times but cool. It was held just outside the area with the Sphinx and the three large pyramids so it was very atmospheric. There was a big sign saying "No Flash" as we walked in but obviously nobody had paid attentio as there were flashes going off everywhere.
We drove back to the hotel and made our third trip of the day to the hole in the wall with Steve's parents and then came back and called it a night as the tour began in earnest tomorrow.
Today we travelled to Cairo for the start of our Egyptian adventure! We had an early breakfast and then caught the Metro to the airport. Steve's parents headed out with us too even though they were actually on a later flight.
Check in went smoothly (for once) but we had other drama to entertain us. When we were waiting in the Metro, Steve received a text message from AAMI saying that our house insurance had expired on the 28th of September. We were both stunned as we have family checking our mail and if the bill had arrived, they would have taken care of it for us.
We called our families to see if they had seen any letters but they both said no. We couldn't do anything about it until we arived at the airport but luckily there was free wifi in the Athens airport so we looked up the AAMI number and Skyped them. Turns out that it was our investment property insurance that had expired but we had a seven day grace period so we were still covered. Crisis averted!
Our flight to Egypt was good but long as the flight was slightly delayed departing and then we had to circle for an extra half hour in Cairo airport. On the upside, we met a really nice guy named Sam who was returning to his studies in Alexandria after spending a few months in Greece with his dad. We mentioned to Sam that we weren't sure what the deal was when we landed in Cairo and if the airport transfer would be there so he kindly offered to help us if things didn't work out. We landed, changed some money and purchased our visas to enter Egypt before going through to the baggage area where we found a representative from the tour company waiting for us. Hooray for a smooth transfer!
His name was Mina, he was pretty cool. We got our luggage and headed to our hotel in Cairo, The President Hotel in Zamalek. Cairo traffic is crazy, completely crazy. There are no rules, no lanes, no nothing. There are traffic lights but they're pretty much a decoration. Along the way Mina gave us information about Cairo and its inhabitants, interesting Cairo sites and some background information on the tour. We stopped along the way to do a changeover where we met Mohammed who would be helping us check in to the hotel and who would be accompanying us later this evening for our sound and light show at the pyramids.
We arrived at the hotel where Steve and I got to sit around in the lobby while they did everything for us. It was quite weird but we weren't sure what else to do... Once we were checked in we farewelled Mohammed until later and followed the Valet up to our room.
The hotel was really weird in that the floors had funny numbering. We were on the "fourth floor" which was actually in reality the thirtheenth floor of the building. The elevator only went up to the "third" floor and then there was a staircase leading up to the "fourth" floor. The first thing we did was turn on the airconditioning in our room as it was HOT! I think it was in the high 30's when we landed. Apparently this time of year should be around the low thirties but there had been a heat wave that pushed the temperatures back up again.
We grabbed our hats and went for a walk around the area to check things out, find some snacks for Steve and to buy some water. We found an awesome little hole in the wall shop around the corner from the hotel and then walked around the waterfront looking for a little takeaway or something. Having failed dismally, we went into another hole in the wall so that Steve could pick up a packet of chips to munch on.
On our way back to the hotel there was a construction site where a kid and some of the workers were kicking around a soccer ball. We walked past and Steve kind of looked longingly in their direction. An old guy who was just sitting there watching them noticed us and invited Steve to join in so in 35+ degree heat, Steve was kicking a soccer ball around. It was pretty funny because there were cars parked everywhere so they were playing in the middle of the street which meant each time a car came around the corner they would all have to scatter and the kid was pretty unco so he kept kicking the ball up onto cars, setting of their car alarms.
Eventually the little kid went back home with the ball so it was game over. You can all imagine just how gross Steve was after kicking the ball around in the sun...
We went back to the hotel via the first hole in the wall to buy some more water and then cooled off in the room before heading downstairs to meet Mohammed to go to the sound and light show. We reunited with Steve's parents and then headed off. We worked our way through to the crazy crazy traffic where we arrived at Giza early so we sat down and had a quick bite and drink at a local restaurant before we headed in.
The sound and light show was cool. A bit corny at times but cool. It was held just outside the area with the Sphinx and the three large pyramids so it was very atmospheric. There was a big sign saying "No Flash" as we walked in but obviously nobody had paid attentio as there were flashes going off everywhere.
We drove back to the hotel and made our third trip of the day to the hole in the wall with Steve's parents and then came back and called it a night as the tour began in earnest tomorrow.
Friday, October 1, 2010
Day 37
Today was beach day! Ok, so it was overcast with the chance of rain, but considering how warm it is, who cares! Sandra found this beach called Asteria, which has a floating trampoline in the water. Awesome!
We took the trains and trams out to the beach and got off at the stop we thought it was at. No Asteria. We asked one of the locals for some help and he kindly told us that it was at the end of the road, about 5 minutes away. About 15 minutes later and passing two more tram stops, we came across it.
The website said that we need to pay to get in, but it seemed worth it (trampoline!). When we got there, it took a bit to find the entrance. When we did, the guy at the ticket area said 'go in'. Ah, ok! Considering it was the morning of a working day, there was no one there. So we got to use this beach pretty much privately.
Now, having inflatable things in the water sounds more fun than it is. Especially when there are only two of you. The tramploline was cool, but after a few bounces, it got pretty old quickly. This is mainly because the whole idea of a trampoline in the water is so that you can bounce high and dive into the water, right? Well that wasn't going to happen as the water around it wasn't deep enough. So it just became a regular trampoline... In the water. It was pretty funny trying to get onto the damn thing though. They also had an inflatable see-saw thingy that was also amusing for about 5 minutes.
After a bit of splashin' around, we chilled on the beach for a while. An old couple and a woman with a kid came to the beach as well. So with these unmanageable crowds, we decided to leave.
On the way back, we found another place that sold pita gyros for only 1.30 Euros! Win! Love this stuff. We followed it up with a 1.70 Euro icecream and that was lunch done for another day.
We came back to the hotel and bummed out. We caught up on some blogs (yes, more blogging) and waited for the folks to come back from their day out. They had gone on a coach tour of the coast to the Temple of Poseidon.
We went out to a little restaurant just opposite the hotel. Dinner was good - I had a nice Italian dish for my last night in Greece. The restaurant guy was awesome. We gave him a good tip. As always, the wandering sales men were out. Our count tonight was 6.
While we ate there were a whole bunch of people going into this building next door. It looked like a Russian communist themed night club called the KKE with a hammer and cycle. We thought nightclub because most of the poeple going in were young. We asked the restaurant guy and he said it was the communist party of Greece. Ok, maybe not the most popular night club then...
We then went to the hotel room to finish packing and blogging. Normally I don't write the blog for a day until at least the next day (as you don't know what's going to happen until it's over). But today we've had to finish this blog as it stands because we aren't sure what the internet will be like in Egypt. Hopefully there will be some, otherwise we won't get to upload blogs until Japan (about 12 days away).
It's weird writing about the day you've had on the day itself. It's like whenever you do something, it appears on the screen. Right now I'm typing. Holy crap, it now says that on the screen. ARGHHH.....
We took the trains and trams out to the beach and got off at the stop we thought it was at. No Asteria. We asked one of the locals for some help and he kindly told us that it was at the end of the road, about 5 minutes away. About 15 minutes later and passing two more tram stops, we came across it.
The website said that we need to pay to get in, but it seemed worth it (trampoline!). When we got there, it took a bit to find the entrance. When we did, the guy at the ticket area said 'go in'. Ah, ok! Considering it was the morning of a working day, there was no one there. So we got to use this beach pretty much privately.
Now, having inflatable things in the water sounds more fun than it is. Especially when there are only two of you. The tramploline was cool, but after a few bounces, it got pretty old quickly. This is mainly because the whole idea of a trampoline in the water is so that you can bounce high and dive into the water, right? Well that wasn't going to happen as the water around it wasn't deep enough. So it just became a regular trampoline... In the water. It was pretty funny trying to get onto the damn thing though. They also had an inflatable see-saw thingy that was also amusing for about 5 minutes.
After a bit of splashin' around, we chilled on the beach for a while. An old couple and a woman with a kid came to the beach as well. So with these unmanageable crowds, we decided to leave.
On the way back, we found another place that sold pita gyros for only 1.30 Euros! Win! Love this stuff. We followed it up with a 1.70 Euro icecream and that was lunch done for another day.
We came back to the hotel and bummed out. We caught up on some blogs (yes, more blogging) and waited for the folks to come back from their day out. They had gone on a coach tour of the coast to the Temple of Poseidon.
We went out to a little restaurant just opposite the hotel. Dinner was good - I had a nice Italian dish for my last night in Greece. The restaurant guy was awesome. We gave him a good tip. As always, the wandering sales men were out. Our count tonight was 6.
While we ate there were a whole bunch of people going into this building next door. It looked like a Russian communist themed night club called the KKE with a hammer and cycle. We thought nightclub because most of the poeple going in were young. We asked the restaurant guy and he said it was the communist party of Greece. Ok, maybe not the most popular night club then...
We then went to the hotel room to finish packing and blogging. Normally I don't write the blog for a day until at least the next day (as you don't know what's going to happen until it's over). But today we've had to finish this blog as it stands because we aren't sure what the internet will be like in Egypt. Hopefully there will be some, otherwise we won't get to upload blogs until Japan (about 12 days away).
It's weird writing about the day you've had on the day itself. It's like whenever you do something, it appears on the screen. Right now I'm typing. Holy crap, it now says that on the screen. ARGHHH.....
Day 36
It's cruise day! You may recall that we booked a cruise yesterday. That meant getting up at 6:45, getting down to the breakfast area of the hotel at 7 (as that's when they open for breakfast), scoffing down some food, and getting to the pickup site at 7:15.
There were a bunch of others for the same cruise there and we all got on the same bus together. However, turns out that they overbooked the bus, so they asked us if our group of 4 would wait for the next bus. Off we went and waited again. This was worth it though as the next bus was so much better!
We got the cruise boat (in the port of Piraeus) and went aboard. They took your photo with some people in traditional Greek dress on the way in (ah, marketing). We took our seats upstairs and were on our way.
The cruise went to 3 islands: Hydra, Poros and Aegina. The first leg was the longest as that went straight to the furthest one, Hydra. Despite being disappointed that there were no 3 headed monsters, the island was pretty cool. We had an hour and a half to explore the island. The highlight was totally the swimming area. I love swimming in the sea when the sea isn't freezing. We also saw some donkey rides but sadly realised that we couldn't fit one in before the boat left.
On the way to the next island (Poros), we had lunch provided for us on the boat. Not bad for a bulk meal. There were no options, so I wonder what people with dietary requirements ate. Either way, it was tasty enough for us.
Poros was a quick stop, only 45 minutes. I suspect that they were running out of time. We spent most of our time there seeing if there were any other cool rides (like a donkey) but couldn't find any. This island was a bit more populated than poor old Hydra, so it ended up being much like a normal small town port.
We then went to the final island where we went on a bus tour. The first stop was a local pistachio farm, where we learned about how they harvest and prepare their pistachios for export and then got to eat pistachios! Win!
We then went to the Temple of Aphaia. This is one of the 3 main temples that make up the triangle of sacred temples in Greece: the first being the Parthenon, this is the second, and the third is Poseidons Temple. Sadly, we didn't go to that one, so our collection is incomplete.
On our way back to the boat, we stopped off at the Monastery of Saint Nektarious. Apparently, all Greek people around the world do pilgrimages to this place. We only had enough time to get out of the bus, take a picture, then get back in again. It was then back on the boat to cruise back into Athens.
They had some Greek dancing and stuff on downstairs that the ladies went and had a look at for a bit but most of the time was spent on the deck enjoying the rest of the cruise. The sunset looked awesome.
When we got back, we bused into the city. At this point, we were pretty hungry, so we got some food at a nearby takeaway shop. We went to this place that had outside seating, but was in an alley. Not once did we get hassled by sales men. Win.
There were a bunch of others for the same cruise there and we all got on the same bus together. However, turns out that they overbooked the bus, so they asked us if our group of 4 would wait for the next bus. Off we went and waited again. This was worth it though as the next bus was so much better!
We got the cruise boat (in the port of Piraeus) and went aboard. They took your photo with some people in traditional Greek dress on the way in (ah, marketing). We took our seats upstairs and were on our way.
The cruise went to 3 islands: Hydra, Poros and Aegina. The first leg was the longest as that went straight to the furthest one, Hydra. Despite being disappointed that there were no 3 headed monsters, the island was pretty cool. We had an hour and a half to explore the island. The highlight was totally the swimming area. I love swimming in the sea when the sea isn't freezing. We also saw some donkey rides but sadly realised that we couldn't fit one in before the boat left.
On the way to the next island (Poros), we had lunch provided for us on the boat. Not bad for a bulk meal. There were no options, so I wonder what people with dietary requirements ate. Either way, it was tasty enough for us.
Poros was a quick stop, only 45 minutes. I suspect that they were running out of time. We spent most of our time there seeing if there were any other cool rides (like a donkey) but couldn't find any. This island was a bit more populated than poor old Hydra, so it ended up being much like a normal small town port.
We then went to the final island where we went on a bus tour. The first stop was a local pistachio farm, where we learned about how they harvest and prepare their pistachios for export and then got to eat pistachios! Win!
We then went to the Temple of Aphaia. This is one of the 3 main temples that make up the triangle of sacred temples in Greece: the first being the Parthenon, this is the second, and the third is Poseidons Temple. Sadly, we didn't go to that one, so our collection is incomplete.
On our way back to the boat, we stopped off at the Monastery of Saint Nektarious. Apparently, all Greek people around the world do pilgrimages to this place. We only had enough time to get out of the bus, take a picture, then get back in again. It was then back on the boat to cruise back into Athens.
They had some Greek dancing and stuff on downstairs that the ladies went and had a look at for a bit but most of the time was spent on the deck enjoying the rest of the cruise. The sunset looked awesome.
When we got back, we bused into the city. At this point, we were pretty hungry, so we got some food at a nearby takeaway shop. We went to this place that had outside seating, but was in an alley. Not once did we get hassled by sales men. Win.
Day 35
The Athens Central Market was nearby so that's where we started the day. I was expecting a bunch of random stuff but really the main purpose of the market was to sell food. This included a massive section of meat. Lots and lots of meat. I've never seen so many guys dressed in white with smears of blood on them.
From there we headed down to the Monastiraki area where we booked a cruise for tomorrow then went sight seeing. The tickets we bought for the Acropolis also gave us entry into the Ancient Agora. This was the old economic centre of ancient Athens. It was alright. More ruins really. I tried another handstand photo with the Parthenon here, as it had a better view than the other spot the other day. Fearing that there were more handstand police around, we decided to leave with the photo.
The hotel wasn't that far away, so we took a pleasant walk through the streets of Athens. Passed through the shopping district, a few famous landmarks and a political demonstration that blocked off the streets (and apparently the Metro as well according to the folks). Lunch involed some more pita gyros, as they're awesome.
The rest of the day involved bumming around in the hotel, catching up on bits and pieces - like blogging... It's good to do that from time to time to chill out. We went to dinner and got hassled by the walking sales men. Including some from earlier in the day, we counted 11 that we had to wave off.
From there we headed down to the Monastiraki area where we booked a cruise for tomorrow then went sight seeing. The tickets we bought for the Acropolis also gave us entry into the Ancient Agora. This was the old economic centre of ancient Athens. It was alright. More ruins really. I tried another handstand photo with the Parthenon here, as it had a better view than the other spot the other day. Fearing that there were more handstand police around, we decided to leave with the photo.
The hotel wasn't that far away, so we took a pleasant walk through the streets of Athens. Passed through the shopping district, a few famous landmarks and a political demonstration that blocked off the streets (and apparently the Metro as well according to the folks). Lunch involed some more pita gyros, as they're awesome.
The rest of the day involved bumming around in the hotel, catching up on bits and pieces - like blogging... It's good to do that from time to time to chill out. We went to dinner and got hassled by the walking sales men. Including some from earlier in the day, we counted 11 that we had to wave off.
Day 34
Today was all about the site seeing in Athens. The first one was the Acropolis, with the Parthenon on top (like a cherry). So off we went on the Metro. It was really close to the city. Awesome!
When we got there, we all walked to the entrance of the park that surrounds it. As with all famous tourist stuff, you had to pay to get in. However, mum took one look at the height of the Acropolis and decided that it was too hot for her to climb. After calling her a wimp, my folks decided to go looking around the area instead while Sandra and I manned up.
It was pretty cool. Toursists all around but the views were great. The Parthenon was pretty cool as well despite being surrounded by cranes and scaffolding (they're restoring/rebuilding it again). I can see why, but they more they rebuild it, the less authentic it seems. Either way, this was the place to do a handstand photo.
I don't think we've mentioned it in the blog yet but I've been making a point to do a handstand in each country next to a one of its most famous symbol. On the great wall in China, next to a field of Windmills in the Netherlands, Edinburgh Castle in Scottland, Big Ben in England, the Eiffel Tower in France and the Colosseum in Italy. So it would only be fitting that the Parthenon represent the glory of Greece.
However, after taking the most epic photo, the handstand police blew their whistles (literally, they had whistles), came over and made us delete the photo. WTF dude, can't I take a photo of the Pathenon? Yes, but not if you're posing. Oh man...
So the handstand police were really people hired to make sure ignorant tourists like myself follow the rules. I came to realise the peace keepers were all around the top of the Acropolis so finding somewhere else to do it was just not going to work up here. In the end, I had to take one elsewhere in the city with the Parthenon in the background. Meh, it'll do. We know the truth!
We decided to walk back to where we would meet the folks. This time, we would go the other way to be different. We didn't realise, but we accidently walked out of the park. That didn't matter, we'd walk around the park. Good in theory, but the foot path that we took (the road split into two) got blocked half way around. This must happen to tourists a lot, because in that time span, we met up with 2 other groups of tourists following the same deadend trail. When we got back to the place where we left the park they wouldn't let us back in. Bitches. We caught up with the folks the long way around.
The next stop was the port of Piraeus. Not that there was much there to see, it's just a port. Either way, we decided to go there. Sandra and I decided to go back to the hotel for some R & R and to see if I could recover the deleted photo from my phone while the folks went on ahead.
As I said, there really wasn't much there. It was a port. A relatively busy one, but just a port. So Sandra and I sat down and has some food. We had some 2 Euro pita gyros (little souvlakis). They were awesome! If I lived here, I would totally go back to that place! After some icecream, we tried to call the folks to let them know where we were. In typical parent style, they didn't answer. However, they ended up finding us anyway which was convenient.
Back to the city and the ladies of the group went shopping. I decided to bum out in the hotel. We then went to dinner where we got hassled by the walking salesmen again. We counted 7 that we had to wave off.
When we got there, we all walked to the entrance of the park that surrounds it. As with all famous tourist stuff, you had to pay to get in. However, mum took one look at the height of the Acropolis and decided that it was too hot for her to climb. After calling her a wimp, my folks decided to go looking around the area instead while Sandra and I manned up.
It was pretty cool. Toursists all around but the views were great. The Parthenon was pretty cool as well despite being surrounded by cranes and scaffolding (they're restoring/rebuilding it again). I can see why, but they more they rebuild it, the less authentic it seems. Either way, this was the place to do a handstand photo.
I don't think we've mentioned it in the blog yet but I've been making a point to do a handstand in each country next to a one of its most famous symbol. On the great wall in China, next to a field of Windmills in the Netherlands, Edinburgh Castle in Scottland, Big Ben in England, the Eiffel Tower in France and the Colosseum in Italy. So it would only be fitting that the Parthenon represent the glory of Greece.
However, after taking the most epic photo, the handstand police blew their whistles (literally, they had whistles), came over and made us delete the photo. WTF dude, can't I take a photo of the Pathenon? Yes, but not if you're posing. Oh man...
So the handstand police were really people hired to make sure ignorant tourists like myself follow the rules. I came to realise the peace keepers were all around the top of the Acropolis so finding somewhere else to do it was just not going to work up here. In the end, I had to take one elsewhere in the city with the Parthenon in the background. Meh, it'll do. We know the truth!
We decided to walk back to where we would meet the folks. This time, we would go the other way to be different. We didn't realise, but we accidently walked out of the park. That didn't matter, we'd walk around the park. Good in theory, but the foot path that we took (the road split into two) got blocked half way around. This must happen to tourists a lot, because in that time span, we met up with 2 other groups of tourists following the same deadend trail. When we got back to the place where we left the park they wouldn't let us back in. Bitches. We caught up with the folks the long way around.
The next stop was the port of Piraeus. Not that there was much there to see, it's just a port. Either way, we decided to go there. Sandra and I decided to go back to the hotel for some R & R and to see if I could recover the deleted photo from my phone while the folks went on ahead.
As I said, there really wasn't much there. It was a port. A relatively busy one, but just a port. So Sandra and I sat down and has some food. We had some 2 Euro pita gyros (little souvlakis). They were awesome! If I lived here, I would totally go back to that place! After some icecream, we tried to call the folks to let them know where we were. In typical parent style, they didn't answer. However, they ended up finding us anyway which was convenient.
Back to the city and the ladies of the group went shopping. I decided to bum out in the hotel. We then went to dinner where we got hassled by the walking salesmen again. We counted 7 that we had to wave off.
Day 33
It was time again to leave a country behind and move to the next one. So as always, the alarm went off earlier than we all would have liked, and we made our way to the airport.
The cab ride was 40 Euros this time. Which means that the cab driver who took us from the airport to our apartment DID rip us off. But whatever, time to leave - see you later Italy!
Nothing special happened at the Rome airport. Sandra got bitten by a mosquito (what are the odds). That's about it.
We arrived in the Athens airport and one of the first things I noticed was that a lot of the landscape looked very similar to Tasmania (in summer). There were obvious differences (the Greek style buildings for a start), but a lot was the same.
We set out to make our way to the hotel. Yes, that's right. This time we're staying in a hotel rather than a self serviced apartment! We tried to get an apartment, but this hotel was just so damn cheap. It ended up being 45 Euros per night for a room and included breakfast. Win! We thought it might have been dodge, but so far it's been great! Instantly, I had a good feeling about Greece.
The train to the city centre from the airport was down so we caught the bus. When we arrived in the city centre a rush of happiness came over me when I realised that they had free (working) public wifi! I can't tell you much it sucked in Rome that I wasn't allowed to use the public wifi. It was as if Rome went to every effort it could to ban me from wifi (including McDonalds!). But whatever, we're in Greece now, where the wifi is as free as the sun!
A short subway ride took us to our hotel.The Athens subways were fantastic - cheap, clean, neat and wheelchair and luggage friendly! Now, we figured that there must be a reason why our hotel was so cheap. Apparently it's because it's in the dodge area of town. But we're next to a police station and nothing bad has happened to us so far, so win! Plus it's so damn central! Still liking Greece.
After we got our crap into our rooms on the 8th floor of the hotel, we decided to have a look around. We saw a department store that had toys in the front window so decided to continue the hunt for Megatron. The toy section was in the basement so we took the spiral staircase down. They went on forever. It was so long it felt like they went all the way to Australia (oh yeah, 'other-side-of-the-world' gag).
But the stairs were worth it. As soon as we found the Transformer section, we saw that not only did they have Megatron, but a whole bunch of them. This might explain why the rest of the world doesn't have any. To add a cherry on top, the store was having a 10% off day. Yes, win! Really liking Greece!
Next, dinner time. The temperature was pretty hot, so we found a small restaurant opposite the hotel and ate outside. While eating, we found that we would get harassed from time to time by people trying to sell crap to us. We even had these kids come up and play the accordian (really really badly) in the vain hope we would give them money. We've had a strict no beggars policy on this trip and we're not backing down now!
We came back to the air conditioned comfort of our hotel before venturing out again after dark to find a laundromat. Turns out that self-service laundromats are as rare as hens teeth in Athens but we did come across a dude that charged 10 Euro to wash and dry a load so we left it with him and then went adventuring in the dodgy streets of Athens. We found a nice little cafe to sit down and have a drink at and then realised we were way off from where we thought we were so had to back track further to the hotel. Go iPhone GPS!
The cab ride was 40 Euros this time. Which means that the cab driver who took us from the airport to our apartment DID rip us off. But whatever, time to leave - see you later Italy!
Nothing special happened at the Rome airport. Sandra got bitten by a mosquito (what are the odds). That's about it.
We arrived in the Athens airport and one of the first things I noticed was that a lot of the landscape looked very similar to Tasmania (in summer). There were obvious differences (the Greek style buildings for a start), but a lot was the same.
We set out to make our way to the hotel. Yes, that's right. This time we're staying in a hotel rather than a self serviced apartment! We tried to get an apartment, but this hotel was just so damn cheap. It ended up being 45 Euros per night for a room and included breakfast. Win! We thought it might have been dodge, but so far it's been great! Instantly, I had a good feeling about Greece.
The train to the city centre from the airport was down so we caught the bus. When we arrived in the city centre a rush of happiness came over me when I realised that they had free (working) public wifi! I can't tell you much it sucked in Rome that I wasn't allowed to use the public wifi. It was as if Rome went to every effort it could to ban me from wifi (including McDonalds!). But whatever, we're in Greece now, where the wifi is as free as the sun!
A short subway ride took us to our hotel.The Athens subways were fantastic - cheap, clean, neat and wheelchair and luggage friendly! Now, we figured that there must be a reason why our hotel was so cheap. Apparently it's because it's in the dodge area of town. But we're next to a police station and nothing bad has happened to us so far, so win! Plus it's so damn central! Still liking Greece.
After we got our crap into our rooms on the 8th floor of the hotel, we decided to have a look around. We saw a department store that had toys in the front window so decided to continue the hunt for Megatron. The toy section was in the basement so we took the spiral staircase down. They went on forever. It was so long it felt like they went all the way to Australia (oh yeah, 'other-side-of-the-world' gag).
But the stairs were worth it. As soon as we found the Transformer section, we saw that not only did they have Megatron, but a whole bunch of them. This might explain why the rest of the world doesn't have any. To add a cherry on top, the store was having a 10% off day. Yes, win! Really liking Greece!
Next, dinner time. The temperature was pretty hot, so we found a small restaurant opposite the hotel and ate outside. While eating, we found that we would get harassed from time to time by people trying to sell crap to us. We even had these kids come up and play the accordian (really really badly) in the vain hope we would give them money. We've had a strict no beggars policy on this trip and we're not backing down now!
We came back to the air conditioned comfort of our hotel before venturing out again after dark to find a laundromat. Turns out that self-service laundromats are as rare as hens teeth in Athens but we did come across a dude that charged 10 Euro to wash and dry a load so we left it with him and then went adventuring in the dodgy streets of Athens. We found a nice little cafe to sit down and have a drink at and then realised we were way off from where we thought we were so had to back track further to the hotel. Go iPhone GPS!
Day 32
We got up early and caught the bus to the Vatican. The museum is closed every Sunday except the last Sunday of each month, which just happened to be today. When we arrived, there was a huge line outside St Peters Basilica. We toyed with the idea of waiting in line briefly before deciding to move on to the museum.
Here there was an even bigger line! We joined the end of it while I went and investigated how long it was. Once I lost track of it (it went around the block so I could no longer see it), we decided that perhaps that wasn’t the best idea either. So, instead of going into Vatican we walked the outside instead. We ended back in St Peters Square where we took some photos of the area from outside. The line was still pretty long so we headed back towards the bus stop.
As we were leaving, there was some sort of Bolivian celebration going on which meant that there were dancers dressed in traditional costumes parading down the street with Bolivian music playing. It was pretty unusual considering that we were right out the front of St Peters Basilica but pretty cool at the same time. It started drizzling half way through and the brave souls just soldiered on in the rain. It cleared up after about 15 minutes luckily.
We caught the bus back to the apartment, had a bite to eat and a bit of a sit down before heading back out again. We caught the bus to near Piazza Navona where we checked out the ruins of Sacred Argentina before heading into the Piazza. There were a number of artists in the square so Steve’s mum was pretty happy wandering around.
After the Piazza we followed the tourist directions towards the Pantheon. We didn’t get too lost on the way there. The square was fairly busy but there was a steady stream of people going in and out of the Pantheon so there wasn’t any waiting. The building was amazing. I felt that the marriage between the old Roman architecture and the conversion of the temple into a Roman Catholic church was a bit funny but that’s just me.
From the Pantheon we headed to the Trevi Fountain, which was also very busy. Steve made a wish and then we sat down in a nice little cafe for a cool drink before heading to the Piazza della Repubblica. We passed the main road on our way and noticed that there was a bus heading that way so we thought we’d make use of our transport passes. After 15 minutes of waiting we started getting suspicious that perhaps the bus wasn’t running today so Steve and I gave up and walked. Steve’s parent’s waited for a bit longer but they too gave up in the end and we met up again in the Piazza.
We wandered around and then headed back to the apartment. We stopped off at a restaurant for our last true Italian meal before calling it a night and getting ready to leave the next day.
Here there was an even bigger line! We joined the end of it while I went and investigated how long it was. Once I lost track of it (it went around the block so I could no longer see it), we decided that perhaps that wasn’t the best idea either. So, instead of going into Vatican we walked the outside instead. We ended back in St Peters Square where we took some photos of the area from outside. The line was still pretty long so we headed back towards the bus stop.
As we were leaving, there was some sort of Bolivian celebration going on which meant that there were dancers dressed in traditional costumes parading down the street with Bolivian music playing. It was pretty unusual considering that we were right out the front of St Peters Basilica but pretty cool at the same time. It started drizzling half way through and the brave souls just soldiered on in the rain. It cleared up after about 15 minutes luckily.
We caught the bus back to the apartment, had a bite to eat and a bit of a sit down before heading back out again. We caught the bus to near Piazza Navona where we checked out the ruins of Sacred Argentina before heading into the Piazza. There were a number of artists in the square so Steve’s mum was pretty happy wandering around.
After the Piazza we followed the tourist directions towards the Pantheon. We didn’t get too lost on the way there. The square was fairly busy but there was a steady stream of people going in and out of the Pantheon so there wasn’t any waiting. The building was amazing. I felt that the marriage between the old Roman architecture and the conversion of the temple into a Roman Catholic church was a bit funny but that’s just me.
From the Pantheon we headed to the Trevi Fountain, which was also very busy. Steve made a wish and then we sat down in a nice little cafe for a cool drink before heading to the Piazza della Repubblica. We passed the main road on our way and noticed that there was a bus heading that way so we thought we’d make use of our transport passes. After 15 minutes of waiting we started getting suspicious that perhaps the bus wasn’t running today so Steve and I gave up and walked. Steve’s parent’s waited for a bit longer but they too gave up in the end and we met up again in the Piazza.
We wandered around and then headed back to the apartment. We stopped off at a restaurant for our last true Italian meal before calling it a night and getting ready to leave the next day.
Day 31
My apologies for the lack of photos but Blogger has decided that it hates the photos and refuses to upload them so you'll just have to wait until we get back.
We got up and headed to Termini to catch the Metro to Colosseo....can anybody guess what was there? When we arrived there, there was a massive queue. It turned out that it was some Arts Festival weekend and all government sites, museums, etc. were free entry to the public. That’s fantastic! Except that there were hundreds of people everywhere....
As we walked to join the queue a guy stopped us and asked us if we wanted to have a 2 hour guided tour of the Colosseum, Palatine Hill and the Roman Forum. We ummed and ahhed and then decided, why not. This would be the first guided tour that we had done and we had been expecting to pay to get into the Colosseum anyway.
Our tour guide for the Colosseum, originally the Flavian Amphitheatre, was very friendly and seemed quite knowledgeable. The tour group wasn’t too big so we could hear well and we got to bypass the public line and go in the group line. All in all it was a 45 minute tour/information session on the Colosseum and then we were given 45 minutes to wander around by ourselves before we reconvened again at 12 outside the exit of the Colosseum for our tour of the Palatine and Roman Forum.
This group was a lot bigger! There were over 100 people there I reckon. Luckily there were two guides so we headed over to the Palatine and then they split the group up into two. Because the Palatine is on a hill we had to walk up to the top. Steve and I felt a little bit like cattle, moving slowly in a large body of people...
This tour guide was Canadian which was kind of random. He was highly entertaining though and we enjoyed what we saw. After the tour we wandered down to the Roman Forum and had a walk through the area. We found a semi shaded place to sit and have a snack before continuing up towards Piazza Venezia – didn’t we just come from there?
There were two beautiful looking museums in this area but we decided not to go in as half the day was already over and we still had other things we wanted to do. We figured that if we had time once we had seen the major sites we would come back.
We caught a bus back to Termini and went back to the apartment for some lunch and a bit of a refresher before heading out again on the Metro to the Spanish Steps. There are only two Metro lines in Rome, Line A and B. We had caught Line B in the morning to go to the Colleseum and had to catch Line A to the Piazza de Spagna. Line A was deep, deep down in the subway. We walked for miles before we finally arrived at the platform. Thankfully the Metro station near the Spanish Steps wasn’t as far down.
We walked out of the station and were confronted with a sea of people. There were thousands of people in the piazza. They were blocking the roads so that cars were having trouble getting through, they were all over the steps, they were in all the adjoining side streets. We thought there might have been something going on but no, they must have all been tourists just coming to enjoy the Spanish Steps.
We took a few snaps and then we stopped by Maccas again for an ice cream and because Steve had read online that this one may have open WIFI. Unfortunately no so we decided that Rome hates foreign numbers and gave up.
I’m not sure if we mentioned this in an earlier blog but Steve was about to finish off the book series he started reading in Australia so he found another series that sounded interesting and then proceeded to drag us around London and Paris looking for bookstores so that he could buy the first book before he finished his current series. We managed to find it in Paris so he was happy about that, finished his old book and started on the new book.
Unfortunately, once we arrived in Rome he started panicking that he was going to finish the new book before the end of the trip so he looked up English bookstores around Rome to begin his hunt again. Luckily one of them was near the Spanish Steps so we made a way to the Anglo Americano bookstore where amazingly they had the second and third book in the series. I made him buy both because I told him I refused to be dragged around Athens and Cairo hunting for yet another English bookstore.
We joined the mass of people crowding the streets leading away from the Spanish Steps and headed towards the river. Rome is the first city that I have come across that hadn’t made a tourist use out of its waterway and the surrounding area. It was just simply a river with high banks, small footpaths and busy roads running on either side. There were little souvenir stalls along the footpath but that was about it.
We crossed to the other side and walked down to Castel Sant'Angelo. There was free entry into the Castle due to the Arts Festival so we went in. There was a terrace at the very top that was up a small spiralling staircase (it was just wide enough for one person to go up comfortably) which gave a great view of the city. The castle was also incredibly close to the Vatican so there was a really good view of St Peters Basilica from the terrace.
We left the Castle and caught a bus back to the apartment. The bus was packed – it was so full that peole weren’t able to get on when the bus stopped. Once again, we had gotten on at the first stop so we managed to score some seats and I’m glad we did because it was a long drive back and we were pretty tired from a day of sightseeing, especially in the heat!
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Day 30
Today we were off to Rome. We got up early, packed up the rest of our stuff and then headed out to reception to check out and get a cab to the airport. Unfortunately, reception didn’t open until 8 so we were waiting for ten minutes. Once we had checked out, it was another 15 minute wait for the cab to arrive. The mozzies were out nice and early – I managed to get bitten while we were waiting.
We headed out to the airport at dangerous speeds but once again arrived in one piece. We headed into the airport for one of the worst airport experiences ever. I had thought that the Paris Orly airport was bad – Venice was worse. The check in itself was fine, much better than at Orly, but the security line went for miles. Miles and miles.
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| Airport chaos |
There were about 5 flights all leaving within the space of 2 hours so there were 500+ people all trying to get through security at the same time with only 4 security queues open. Chaos. And the queue was marked out terribly so people were pushing in, lines weren’t moving at all and people were getting upset and frustrated, especially people who had flights to get to and those with young children. I think it took us about an hour and a half to get through security so that by the time we got through all we had time to do was get to our gate.
As you could imagine, such a hold up at security caused delays on a number of the flights so our flight was late leaving the airport. We arrived in Rome half an hour after our scheduled arrival time. By the time we got our luggage and headed out through customs, I was pretty over it.
I had arranged a shuttle bus to take us to our hotel. We waited for half an hour, I called the company and after 3 separate calls he informed me that the reason why there was no shuttle waiting for us was because we were supposed to have been on one half an hour ago. I was like, um, yeah, I know that. Our flight was delayed and aren’t you supposed to be monitoring that? Apparently not. Anyway, second transfer fail, again in Italy.
We ended up taking a taxi to our apartment. We had a bit of a dispute with our driver when we arrived. The Rome Council has a fixed price on official taxis to and from the city area to the airports so that people don’t get ripped off by dodgy drivers. We were informed by the taxi information office that this should be 40 Euro regardless of number of passengers, luggage, etc.
When we arrived at the apartment, the taxi driver told us 50 Euro. We showed him the pamphlet saying is should be 40 Euro where he then justified the extra cost as luggage. We showed him the pamphlet saying that the transfer was inclusive of luggage. Anyway, in the end, we paid him the 50 Euro, got a receipt and his taxi number and were set to complain to somebody. Don’t get me wrong, we weren’t trying to rip him off for his fare but somebody was in the wrong. Either he was overcharging us or the Rome Council were knobs and needed to fix their brochure. We did find a tourist information person later who said that 50 Euro wasn’t unreasonable for four passengers and luggage. Still not sure how I feel about it though...
I had been told by the apartment owner to ring the bell for apartment number 4 when we arrived. So we did. And there was no answer. Um... ok. Where was the bit of paper with his number and the apartment address? Turns out we left it in the taxi. Ok, crap. How do we get in touch with the dude? Steve and I went off in search of an internet cafe so I could look up his number in my emails.
We found a little Laundromat/internet spot just around the corner with the most awesome guy (he was lovely). By the time we got back, he had arrived and Steve’s parents were already in with him. Turns out that he hadn’t expected us to get into Rome so quickly so had arrived 10 minutes or so after us. In the mean time, Steve’s mum had buzzed nearly everybody in the apartment block to let us in and find what his number was, which she got.
We finally got into the apartment and breathed a sigh of relief. Italy wasn’t going so well but we figured it would have to get better from this....right?
One of the things that Steve has done in each city is loaded up maps of the city we’re in and the public transport system onto his phone, which has proven to be fairly useful a number of times. Unfortunately we forgot to do this in Venice and the apartment had free internet but no WIFI but we figured out that Rome was a fairly big city so finding WIFI should be easy.
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| Wandering the streets of Rome |
We headed out and had a sticky beak in the neighbourhood. The apartment was incredibly close to the Termini station which was awesome for public transport. Unfortunately finding somebody to explain it to us was a bit harder as rather than having tourist booths, they just have tourist information people that just kind of float around in random places. We luckily bumped into one who advised us to get a three day public transport pass for 11 Euro each.
We continued our walk around the neighbourhood before stopping by a nearby supermarket to stock up on food and drinks before heading back to the apartment. The weather was pretty good considering the weather forecast had been predicting rain and storms all weekend. It drizzled slightly for a bit but stopped fairly quickly.
Steve’s mum made a delicious dinner for us and then we made some plans about what we wanted to see the next day. I was doing shuttle runs back and forth between the Laundromat/internet spot as the washing machine in the apartment was broken.
Steve and I headed out later that evening to find some WIFI. We asked the guy at the internet spot and he said that there isn’t much public WIFI around in Rome and advised to try the Maccas close by. We went in and had a chat to the manager about it. Turns out that Maccas WIFI is locked only to Italian numbers so that was useless. We figured there must be somewhere in Rome with free WIFI so we figured we’d keep an eye out for it over the next day.
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