PaxRyan's Blog

Monday, July 23, 2012

The month of incredible travel

English/Arabic sign at The Light and Sound Show,
"May Peace Prevail On Earth."

June 2012:

1 month, 3 trips, 7 countries, 3 continents!!

It was a big month! And, i made a profit off the 3 trips combined! i love my life:-)

i started the month by traveling to Egypt by myself, for a history and culture adventure. Since there was lots of FoxNews-ish talk about riots in Cairo, i stayed outside of town in Giza. From that home base, i spent three full days sightseeing and getting to know Egypt and a few Egyptians. My path took me through the ruins and museum of Memphis, Egypt's first capital; to the pyramids and pyramid-builder-school of Imonhotep at Saqaara; into the Sahara desert at Dashur; through the mosques, synagogues and churches of Cairo and into the museum there to find the mummy of 2 of my favorite Egyptian personalities, Ramses II and Akheneton; not to mention the wonders of Giza: The Great Pyramid (of Cheops), the Sphynx, and The Light and Sound Show there!

The Light and Sound Show, Giza

i found the Egyptian people to be down-trodden, maybe, but optimistic, incredibly friendly (though, as vendors, annoying persistent), excited to meet an American and severely sheltered from the outside world (knowing nothing about the condition or location of Egyptian art abroad, which their people made, nor of the Occupy Wall Street or similar protests around the world, which their own Revolution helped to ignite!) (You can read several more blog entries on the Egyptian trip here.)

Then it was time to get to work:

i had been hired to lead a "student group" around Italy and Greece. "Student" in quotation marks because it was actually a pair of professors who instead of students, had invited mostly friends, family and colleagues (bravi!!).

Rio-Atirio Bridge, Greece, and our bus

i helped them (a group of 28 Americans) get used to the Old World in Rome and Florence. Then one day we hiked to the top of, and looked down into the active crater of, Mount Vesuvius, the volcano that destroyed the ancient town of Pompei...then we went to see the excavations of Pompei itself. Then we drove across the boot of Italy, through the thousand-year-old olive trees of the Puglia region to the port of Brindisi, where we boarded a ferry to Greece!

From the port of Patras, our first stop was Delphi. On the way there we took an especially long break at the lunch restaurant, as it happened to be right on the Strait of Corinth and we wanted to go swimming! Floating on my back there on the coast of Greece after a delicious meal of moussaka i remembered, "Oh yea, i'm working!" ....and i remembered that my life is pretty awesome.

(Though i am a local tour guide in Rome and The Vatican, when i travel like this i am an accompanier, meaning i have to help clients with logistics, planning, communicating, navigating, historical and cultural context, etc., - it's like i'm a personal assistant for the group.)

Penny teaching ancient Greek to a student, in Delphi

Next day we visited the fantastic ruins of ancient Delphi, where the Oracle of Delphi (or Delphic Sybil) doled out advice that was never needed and rarely listened to: the inscription at the entrance gave all the worthy advice there is to give: "Know yourself" and "Everything in moderation." Our tour guide there, Penny, is not only the most fluent and interesting licensed guide i've ever seen in continental Europe, she is also the only one that both encourages and effectively stimulates critical thinking - for days after this tour the group was still discussing the civil, philosophical and historical topics that Penny told us about (watch for an upcoming blog post with more about that.)

Then it was on to Athens, where the American-fueled agency i was working for had forbidden any of the paricipants, even on their free time, from going to the main square of the city, Syntagma Square. So, we went to the city credited with inventing democracy, but we were not allowed to see even the outside of their Parliament, because we don't like how (in months past, not recently) their democracy looked when they held protests.

Syntagma Square, Athens, June 2012

(i would later find out that if they had been allowed to see this forbidden Syntagma Square, they would have found a peaceful, quiet space with grandmas and granddaughters playing, dorky foreigners toting H&M bags, stray dogs sleeping in the grass in the shade - they would have found that this supposedly scary place was actual peaceful and normal.)

Maybe by coincidence, but the agency did not even put us in a hotel in Athens but in a nearby suburb called Glynfada which has...shops. We did get one day to actually enter Athens, an hour-long bus tour of the city followed by a trip up onto the Acropolis to see the Parthenon, all with a local Greek tour guide (entering at about 9.30am was a baaaad idea, it was so crowded that i personally did not even look around. i went back a few days later at 8am and had the place to myself;-)

Syntagma Square, Athens, June 2012

Then off on a ferry to Greek Islands and Turkey: First Mykonos, the island famous for windmills, shopping and nude beaches. It was pretty cool, but our stop there was in the evening and didn't leave very much time to enjoy the island.

That night we sailed to Kusadasi, Turkey, where we went on a guided tour of the of the Roman ruins of Ephesus. The ruins there are amazing, the entire city is intact, unlike anything we have in Italy. After the tour the local guide took the group to a carpet shop. Acting on instinct, my friends and i skipped out on the carpet presentation and went to get a good Turkish meal near the bazaar of Kusadasi Our other friends told us we had done well by not going. A bit of advice: always, for your entire life, in every moment, avoid eastern carpet demonstrations....unless of course you thoroughly enjoy a never-ending hard sell!

The ampitheater of Ephesus, in Turkey.

Already then that afternoon we had sailed to Patmos, the island where the guides would like to tell you that the Book of Revelations was written. ....there are also shops there that rent scooters for 15euros per day, so i found some beautiful, wonderful female company and cruised out to a nice quiet, unpopulated beach off the beaten path;-)

Roman mosaic, Ephesus, Turkey - i found it!

Our final stop, the archipelago of Santorini, was perhaps the most spectacular. The main island there, Thira, sits above huge cliffs that lead to the water's edge. Several of my friends and i had bought the Volcano and Swimming Tour (its real name was much less interesting than that!) that took us to Nea Kameni, the island at the center of the archipelago where a very nice, British guide told us all about the formation of the islands, the volcanic activity in the area past and present, and all about the islands themselves. Then we got back on our caique (sailboat with a motor) and were taken to a volcanic spring that spews hot, volcanic water up into a cove where people go swimming. Looking back on it, i don't really understand why it was so nice: sulphur water STINKS, so many people visit the cove that it's dirty and full of garbage, plus there were many boatloads of people all there at the same moment so it was packed......but somehow i still came away thinking it had been an awesome, fun time!

Then that afternoon i rented another scooter and zipped over to the excavations of Akrotiri (amazing to think about and to have witnessed maybe, but definitely not much to look at..) and then to the famous Red Beach (beautiful, and seriously red!) and then to Kamari beach to meet friends. Kamari is a cool, commercialized beach with the excellent innovation of apparently pouring smooth concrete into the water's edge, making a nice (urchin-free) surface to walk on in the swimming area.

On our cruise ship, crossing between Greece and Turkey. (The photo was taken through the sun-shading glass of the tower bar;-)

Then the cruise ship took us back to Athens where we went just from the port to the airport, and i had to sadly send those 28 Americans back home, and i went into Athens by myself.

i had a couple of days before i was scheduled for any tours in Rome, so i got an hotel near the Archaeological museum with the intention of both relaxing and getting out to see some of Athens. That evening i watched sunset from the hotel roof pool bar while enjoying 13year old brandy while in a pool on top of a building with the Parthenon on the Acropolis visible on the horizon (and savored the fact that both the hotel and the brandy together had cost me less than $40!) ....and again i remembered that my life is good:-)

Construction equipment and soldiers at the Parthenon

On my one full free day in Athens i got up early as if i was still working and got to the Acropolis just before it opened at 8am. Since it wasn't open yet, i went across the walk way to the Hill of Mars, where Saint Paul and others preached and debated, and was there completely by myself, not another person within view. Then at 8 i went back to the Acropolis entrance and found it wonderfully quiet. As i arrived to the top near the Parthenon, there was one other tour group. Then were just a few families of travelers - the opposite of the experience i'd had when i entered later in the morning.

i must say though, it is a relatively lousy time to visit the Parthenon, these years. It is heavily covered with modern construction equipment as they work on restorations.

Fiber optic wires monitoring the Parthenon

Then i went to the (waste of time) Acropolis Museum. It was RIDICULOUS. There is precisely one thing museum-worthy in the whole museum, and that is 5 of the original 6 caryatids (beautiful woman columns) of the Erechtheion temple. It is a farce. The only reason they built this whole (modern, air conditioned, huge) museum is that the British Museum supposedly told Greece that the reason they couldn't have the frieze of the Parthenon back is that they did not have a museum to hold it. ....Greece!! What are you thinking about?? That's not why they are never going to give you back the frieze of the Parthenon! It's because THEY HAVE IT. And if you had been capable of not losing it, you'd have it instead. But you weren't, probably aren't, and are simply never getting that lost art back, unfortunately for you.

i went back to The Athens Archaeological Museum and it was, again, fantastic. i love the ancient gold death-masks and the bronze and marble statues that have been discovered in shipwrecks.

Then i flew back to Rome and thought i was done with traveling tours for the season. But the very day i get back the Rome office of this huge agency calls me to ask if i would please go do one more tour. i said no and hung up. A few minutes later though i called back and asked what the tour would be like. Turned out they needed someone to immediately fly to Paris to pick up a group 6days into their tour because they had chosen to fire their Tour Director. Oh, and it was a group of 50 Girl Scouts, who are not supposed to get male Tour Directors anyway. This cemented the case for me: again i said no and hung up.

Then, for some reason, i called back once more and let myself be talked into buying a ticket to fly to Paris right then and there during the phone conversation and fly the very next morning! Once i arrived in Paris i went to the agency office there to get what info there was to get from the fired TD (she didn't speak English. She is a licensed, local guide in Spain, but i could not manage a conversation with her in English. AND that apparently wasn't even the worst of her problems! EF later asked me what i thought of the situation she had created - i told them to keep assigning her tours, and to keep my phone number handy!...but i was kidding. We should really push, instead, for a higher standard of English among European tourism professionals.)

Our Chalet WAGGGS World Center, Switzerland

i met the group at their dinner, and then boarded them in the morning onto a bus to Switzerland where they had an appointment at Our Chalet, a small international conference center of WAGGGS, the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts. It was a wonderful place to work, as the Girl Scouts running the place pretty much made everything happen and i was at my leisure to participate or not (when there was a hike to a waterfall, i definitely participated, and it was pretty cool...but i skipped Arts and Crafts!)

After their time there with the Scouts, we drove to Lucern where we had a scheduled "Swiss Culture" lunch where the entertainers yodeled and sang, spun flags and blew horns, all while we happily ate cheese fondue. i don't have the enthusiasm to describe it much here, but it was actually really cool and many of the Scouts told me they'd enjoyed it. Then, most of us had chosen to go up onto Mount Olympus. To get to the top, we took the steepest rail road in the world....and promptly found out that visibility at the summit was approximately one arm's length. ...luckily the trip down was on a series of gondolas and that was pretty cool.

A Swiss guying showing the Girls Scouts how to blow an Alpine Horn

And from there, we drove on into Italy!! Pisa, Florence and Rome, i thought this was a pretty good introduction to Italy for this group. Four days: One on travel arrival time, and half day in Pisa. Then a full day in Florence and two full days in Rome. Obviously the more the merrier, but i thought this group was lucker than some others i've seen that get just one day and a quarter, or even less, for Rome.

A while back someone asked me if i travel much. And i immediately said no. Because i've never thought of myself as someone that travels a lot.....but i have in fact realized that by any reasonable standards, yes, i do in fact travel a lot. And i'm not someone who loves traveling - instead, i live in the wonderful places other people wish to visit;-) But i am a very and increasingly able and efficient traveller, so i am so glad to have found a niche of lifestyle that combines employment and travel. And what a way to live! Not that it's not hard work. It's ridiculously long days (usually 12hours minimum) with no days off or even designated breaks. Most of my friends and colleagues that have seen me do these tours, or even just heard about them, think i'm crazy and they want no part of it. But i love it most of the time, even if some times more than others.

That work-travel combined with the flexibility of being a free-lance tourism professional in Rome means....yea, i guess i do travel a lot, especially this month with these 7 countries (Egypt, Italy, The Vatican, Greece, Turkey, France, Switzerland) on three continents, it was a pretty memorable month!:-)

Sunday, June 10, 2012

Photos: Egyptian traffic

i saw a wide range of traffic conditions in my time in Egypt. i stayed in Giza, and traveled through Cairo, Saqaara, Memphis and Dashur. These are some of the pics i snapped to try to show what it was like. i had several drivers, but Sharif was by far the best. You should definitely look him up (info in that link) if you are going to be traveling there.

On the road to Saqqara.

That kid had just jumped out of one truck back at the intersection and then hitched a ride with this other one, climbing up onto the bumper when it slowed down, and then climbing all the way in at another light.

Tahir Square

Tahir Square was the site of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution that ousted Hosni Mubarak from power. It is right near the Egyptian Museum, so we drove right by it. It was closed off to traffic and there were some people and lots of vendors around. i met some people who were staying in a hotel on the square and they said it was loud and crowded at night but they hadn't had any problems.

Cairo traffic

This is what it was like most of the time in Cairo, stopped or crawling traffic. i asked the driver if he got tired of the traffic being so bad and he said this was a good day!

Highway ends in a ditch, outside Giza.

If that looks like 4 lanes of traffic coming towards us, that's because it is. We were crusing along at about 50miles per hour when Sharif had to slam on the brakes because the road construction crew had dug a 3foot-deep, 1foot wide ditch all the way across the street!! There was no sign or anything! So he had to turn around and drive back like 500yards and do a u-turn on to the other side of the divider!

Saqaara Road.

Pyramid Road, Giza.

That's The Great Pyramid of Giza on the left and The Pyramid of Khufu on the right. Big intersections being controlled by armed traffic cops were nice, but rare.

Giza village street.

This is the street where Sharif lived. The smallish car seemed huge in these crowded streets. Luckily, there were very few other cars. The bigger traffic problems here were store merchandise in the streets, children playing, and camels!!

"Fucking camel!"

That's what Sharif said at this moment, with a smile. After he got to know me, he loved to say "Fucking," it really amused him.

Saqaara traffic (or at least i think that's where it was)

So much heavy traffic! It reminded me of India, though it was not actually THAT chaotic, just almost. The way it worked was, everybody just drove wherever they wanted, and everyone else would shift to help them make it happen. BUT, as soon as anyone else made their move, everyone would shift to letting THEM go, including the other person who had just gone. It seemed to work out remarkably well actually.

Dashur village road

This narrow thing is a two way street. We were coming up behind the lady not too slowly, and the on coming car has just skidded to slow down. i happened to catch it in a moment when he was flashing his lights, indicating that we should all get out of his way!

Egyptian gas price.

i struggled pretty hard figuring out how to do all the math to convert this from liters to gallons and from Egyptian pounds into American dollars. i'd be glad if someone would check it for me, because if i did it right, they're paying $.56 per gallon of Unleaded gas!! Just 56cents!

Egyptian traffic.

We came up behind this truck going a lot faster than it was, so we crossed out into the other lane to pass, which is when we found this three-wheeled tut coming towards as at like 25mph. The craziest thing is, we went left and the tut passed BETWEEN us and and that trucking thundering next to us!!

Pyarmid Road, Giza

The road outside my hotel in Giza was full of fast-moving traffic probably 18hours per day. It was hard to get a night shot to come out, but on the right you can see people jumping out of that van. They would just slow down and let people on or off whenever and where ever they felt like. Caused chaos, drove my drivers batty.

Downtown Cairo at dawn.

My flight out left at 9.30am, so to get there two hours early we had to leave the hotel at 6.30am. In a completely un-Cairo-like way, the streets were empty and we drove straight through downtown to get there.

Saturday, June 9, 2012

Meditating & chanting OM in The Great Pyramid of Cheops, in Giza, Egypt :-)

The Great Pyramid of Cheops, Giza, Egypt.
The modern entrance is where you see people about 6steps up on the lower left.

"i am writing this from inside The Great Pyramid of Cheops. When i arrived to the King's tomb chamber, there were two cute Asian girls here. We smiled and waved hello and said hi in our non-corresponding languages and they giggled and covered their mouths. Then i sat to meditate and they sat too. Eventually i heard them get up to leave. Soon i realized i'd finally stopped sweating. i was by myself IN The Great Pyramid!! Now a pair of Spanish-speaking guys have arrived. The effect of the echo here is unbelievable. When i was by myself i got a little scared of the noise coming. Sounded like war was breaking out or the pyramid was crumbling or something! It was just these two guys climbing up the crazy, narrow, steep passage to get here. The echo is so intense and loud and long!!"

That is one entry from my journal from this trip. Later, another one:

"After i wrote that, those two guys left and i was alone again. i began to chant om. First, just once, shyly. But then three times, more confidently.. and it was amazing. It was as if an entire chorus joined in with me! Truly amazing. i chanted then for a long time, repeating OM (AUM) over and over, long and deep and meditatively. Finally i stopped, waited for my voice to finally stop reverberating and opened my eyes. i felt fantastic, my vision felt unusually sharp. i was energized and happy."

Which is good, because then i had to climb back down and out into the desert, where my government-licensed non-fluent tour guide was waiting.

Thank you for that, Cheops - i hope your pyramid and your funeral chamber have and is giving you what you hope. It certainly gave me something wonderful that day:-)

Exiting The Great Pyramid of Cheops, in Giza, Egypt, feeling good and happy:-)

Excellent car and driver services for Giza/Cairo/Dashur/Saqaara/Memphis, Egypt

Sharif, sharing lunch with me. Contact him on his Egyptian cell phone: 011.4501.4803, country code (0020)

i found Horizon Pyramids Hotel by searching for cheap hotels in Giza on TripAdvisor. i knew i wanted to stay near the pyramids and that i didn't want to spend a lot of money.

The hotel turned out to be okay and modern to European standards. And the neighborhood it was in is a bustling, commercial area where i found good food, both local and foreign, and great deals on American, Italian and Egyptian clothes and shoes.

But the real treat were the tour services subcontracted by the hotel to an agency called Golden Pyramid. Being a tour guide in Rome, and having some Egyptian friends, i was given a recommendation of a tour guide for Giza and Cairo to contact when i arrived. That tour guide wanted $90 for a full day of touring, and he wasn't even going to do it himself, he would pass the tour to a colleague.

The guys at Golden Pyramid offered the same tour (Great Pyramid, Sphinx and other Giza pyramids, Saqaara pyramids and Memphis Museum with car, driver and guide) for $40!.

So i tried it out and got what i expected: a government-licensed guide who could recite facts and figures, tell me how beautiful everything is and made every attempt to get me to the correct shops and camel drivers, but could not answer any questions because her English was not good enough to understand them (about the same as it works in Rome with the official guides.)

But then i met Sharif. He was one of the drivers for Golden Pyramid. He drove me to the (excellent and wonderful) Giza Light and Sound Show at the site of the Sphinx. i found that his English was conversational and i quickly felt like i was chatting with a friend.

On the drive home we arranged to get the agency's car again the next day to tour with him, without a guide - his English was better and he was far more interesting.

We met at lunch time and went directly to have a hardy Egyptian lunch of camel liver and camel heart cooked in a sauce of oil, tomatoes, peppers and spices at a very local lunch spot. It was delicious. We ate family style from the same dish, using surprisingly tasty, fresh chunks of unleavened bread to scoop up the meat and veggies. "No tourists has ever eaten camel meat with me before," he told me.

"i will write about it on the internet, and others will ask for it, inshallah," i said.

"Inshallah," he said with a boyish grin. ("Inshallah" is a common Arabic expression meaning, "God willing.")

Then we drove back past the pyramids of Giza to Saqaara road where Saqaara and Memphis, having not gotten my fill of these places with the shoddy tour guide a couple days earlier. Then to Dashur, where Sharif has a flat. He introduced me to some of his family there in their home. And he had a friend who took me walking out past where the town ends, right into the Sahara desert, to get an amazing view of four big pyramids, countless smaller ones, and the 7,000 year old tombs of the soldiers of an ancient Egyptian king right there beneath our feet.

Sharif and i bonded over our common work background and became good friends. Several times we sat together to drink tea or smoke flavored tobacco through houka water pipes. In Giza, he brought me to his home to met his wife and 3 year old son.

i know he does not make such a close and personal connection to all clients, but i do highly recommend his professional services to anyone visiting this region. Having met many guides, drivers and tourism professionals there, he was the most respectful, fluent, happy and interesting among them. He does not read English (Arabic has a whole other alphabet) and i don't think the agency has a web site, but you can reach Sharif directly by phone at 011.4501.4803 on his Egyptian cell phone.

The car he drives belongs to the agency, so you will still end up working through them. Prices varied based on...i don't know which variable, but i found having the car for a full day ran between $40 and $50. Then the drivers work just for tips. For our first full day together i gave Sharif $20 and he seemed pretty happy with that.

Friday, June 8, 2012

Photos: Food in Egypt: camel meat, koshari, Om Ali, fast food, etc.

Breakfast in my hotel the first morning. This cost me 50 Egyptian Pounds (at this point there is about $8 or 6Euro to the Egyptian Pound.) It was an okay breakfast, but terrible price, and i did not make this mistake again.

Koshari (Koshary, i've seen several spellings.)

Before going to Egypt several of my friends recommended i eat this. They were so right! It is an awesome, healthy meal of pasta, rice, lentils, some sort of crunchy fried leaves and tomato sauce. Delicious, and super cheap: this plate cost me 5Egyptian pound, less than $1, and it made me very full for many hours!:-)

A new friend there in Giza recommended me this particular Koshari shop. As you can see, it was quite a local place!

i ate here several times and had a good experience each time!:-)

Egyptian beer.

i found the Egyptian beers to be available nearly everywhere. It's fairly low quality stuff (think PBR or Schlitz), but sometimes that's exactly what one needs after a day in the Sahara desert!:-)

Egyptian fast food rip off at Hardees.

My Egyptian tour guide, in an attempt to be helpful, informed me that the meals in my hotel were too expensive. She suggested i walk down the road to where there was a McDonalds and a KFC. These places did seem always busy, and they actually provided home delivery, as you can see here below. On my final day in Giza i got curious about how expensive this fast food was compared to local stuff. i couldn't bring myself to go to those monstrosities, so i told myself Hardees was a step up. This meal cost 30Egyptian Pounds, or 6 times as much as the delicious, healthy koshari i got at the local place. Curiosity satisfied, i won't be back there again!

McDelivery in Giza, Egypt. Blah.

Om Ali.

i ordered this Om Ali from the dessert menu of the hotel room service menu not knowing what it was. Turned out to be delicious! It was a warm, creamy soup with raisins, almonds, coconut, and i don't know what else in it! Fantastic!:-)

Cold oatmeal with walnuts and apple in the Cairo airport.

My flight back to Rome left at 9.30am, so i was out of the hotel by 6.30am - no time for breakfast. So i was thrilled in the airport to find such fresh, whole, delicious breakfast food for something like $2!

Vegetarian lunch on EgyptAir.

i long ago learned that ordering the vegetarian meal on flights a) usually gets your meal to you sooner than the others and b) eliminates the decision between mystery meat and dried out chicken. i was pretty thrilled with this meal, it was all fresh and delicious:-)

Roadside stand in Giza for camel meat.

While giving me a ride to The Light and Sound Show in Giza, my driver Sharif mentioned that many Egyptians eat camel meat. i immediately responded, "We have to do that. Some place not-touristy. Tomorrow." This is the place he took me to.

Camel liver being prepared in Giza, Egypt.

Turns out that by "camel meat" he meant the liver and heart of the camel. Here is the man of the shop preparing camel liver for me to eat!

Preparing Egyptian camel liver and camel heart.

So we get to this shop not too far from the tour entrance to the Great Pyramid, on a road leading out of town. The guy in white runs the place, and he's got a barrel of hearts and livers there next to him. He and the young boy prepare a sauce of oil, tomato, peppers and spices and saute the meat in that.

Camel liver and camel heart sauteed in oil based tomatoe sauce with Egyptian spices, in Giza.

i was amazed by how tender the liver especially was. It was really heavy and gamey, the taste was strong and good. And the sauce was fantastic. The heart meat was a bit more chewey and had some difficult pieces of fat stuck to it, but i ate that too and it was pretty good. i paid 50 Egyptian pounds, or about $15 for more than the two of us could eat - and i'll do it again every time i get back to Egypt!:-)

Eating camel heart and camel liver family style!

Here is my driver and new friend Sharif digging into our lunch of sauteed camel organs! It was actually really good! As you see, we ate it by scooping up the meat and veggies in chunks of that surprisingly fresh and tasty unleavened bread.

Sharif has been a tour driver his entire adult life, but told me that no tourist had ever eaten camel meat with him before. i told him i wasn't surprised. But then, after i thought about it, i wondered if i put this on the internet if more people might call him interested in doing exactly that on their Egyptian vacation to Giza or Cairo. Interested? Give him a call, his Egyptian cell phone number is: 011.4501.4803.

Egyptian tea.

And then there is the omnipresent tea. In Egypt, it seemed anytime you go anywhere, do anything, or meet anyone, most likely someone is going to offer you tea. i made habit of always accepting. What they called "Egyptian tea" was quite strong and bitter in taste, but sugar helped in the fresh mint in this case was ideal. Sometimes there were lighter, flavored teas, but i preferred the local strong stuff most of the time:-)

All photos by the author.

Ghastly Nile River cruise entertainment

Nile River cruise boat

i paid $40 to a hotel-based travel agency to go on a Nile River dinner cruise. This is exorbitantly expensive in a place where local meals cost about $1 and full-day guided tours with car and driver cost just $40 as well. The selling points, they described, was a big meal and 4 types of entertainment: Arabic music, English music, Whirling Dervishes and a belly dancer.

Well, the meal turned out to be pretty good - reminded me of a high quality wedding banquet. But the entertainment was horrendous:

The Arabic music was sung by a college-aged kid in street clothes. i don't know anything about this music, maybe he was a savant, i have no idea.

The English music turned out to be a middle-aged chubby guy with a comb-over literally doing skaraoke to Santana songs.

Then the Whirling Dervishes. These performances are constantly promoted wherever the Arabian world gets tourists. The Dervishes are men that wear fancy costumes and long flowing skirts that twirl around and around in the pursuit of spiritual ecstasy, as taught by the Sufi mystic Rumi. From what i'd seen in photos, they perform this in large groups for audiences. On the cruise, however, there were just two of them. One Dervish was the Egyptian version of Cam from Modern Family.
The other one was a mongoloid midget (no joke.) (He danced/whirled precisely as well as you'd imagine he would.)

Somehow, in hindsight, i'm glad that photos were not allowed.

The captain (sorta) at the wheel, seen from the front of the boat.

At this point i realized that i did not have to sit there and subject myself to this. The boat had a roof deck so i went up stairs to the open-air deck, went to the front of the boat and had a really great, silent time, just being aware that i was floating on the Nile. But after a good amount of time, a couple of couples each wandered into my space. And i got curious about the belly dancer.

i went back downstairs into that crowd of mostly Arabian and, for some reason, Indian people and found a fat old lady belly dancing on the dance floor, and i thought, "THAT is their idea of a belly dancer?!?" But then i realized that was just a random old Arabian lady gettin' down. The busty, not-quite-Egyptian-looking belly dancer was shoving bald guys' heads between her nearly bare boobs while a staff photographer snapped pictures.

Realizing she was working the room, and anticipating the pushy sales pitch to buy the photos that would surely follow, i bounced and went back up stairs. At that point i realized the silence of the Nile was better than anything that could possibly be happening in the cruise entertainment!

The view of Cairo from the Nile greatly surprised me for how modern it appeared. There was a lot of boat traffic, but it was basically peaceful and beautiful and worth the trip for that.

Nile River Cruise view of Cairo.

All photos by the author.