Vol 78 Michele Day 10

Oh Crap! This post is even longer! The problem with cramming so much into our days is that I have to cram it all into a blog post too. These things take too long to make. I need to get a life....

Unbelievable though it may seem, Day 4 was our last day in Egypt. Seems crazy to fly all the way to Egypt for 4 days, right? But it's not. It's not that far, not that expensive and that's all the time I could spare. Michele came to see Oman after all, not Egypt. That was just a bonus. Better to go for 4 days than not at all!

First stop was breakfast. We had walked by a pizza a place the night before, right after we had already eaten, and stopped to read the menu. A very handsome man came out and introduced himself as the owner. We promised to return the next day. (Yes, he was that handsome)

Mr Handsome wasn't there in the morning but the fatiya was. It's like a crispy, layered, stuffed pizza. We also ordered baba ganoush. Best baba ever!

And best fatiya ever. Holy cow was it ever good.

Michele took this while we waited for our fatiya.

We hit the streets again. We decided we needed more street scenes so I employed what Michele has dubbed the sneaky sneak technique. You hold the camera casually at your shoulder as if just resting it there, snapping away. What you get is somewhat sketchy but they are usually alright once they are cropped. So these are all sneaky sneak photos.

This particular street was undergoing a lot of work. They had ripped up the asphalt and sidewalks. Apparently they are trying to widen it. If you click on these photos to open them up larger you can get a pretty good idea of what street life is like in Luxor.


I think these kids are carrying a basket made from an old tire.

The scaffolding is made from bamboo, lashed together. Very safe.

Yes, that is a dude, sleeping on a pile of dirt.


Look, Mom, it's a donkey!

I love this one.

It was gearing up to prayer time as we walked by this mosque. It was already full inside and starting to spill outside, into the street. Like Oman, Egypt is a Muslim country.

Roadwork dudes on break.

Luxor train station.

Herbs.

Hibiscus tea and herbs.

Alrighty then. This is the entrance to the main souk in Luxor. Michele and I had stopped at the souk the night before. Now, as I mentioned, Michele cannot bargain worth beans. I mean, she truly sucks. To be fair, she sucks because she has no experience with it. In North America the only real opportunity we have for bargaining is at garage sales. And she doesn't go to garage sales. I, on the other hand, love garage sales. Plus, I have traveled to so many countries where bargaining is the norm. And now I live in Oman where it is a necessity. Even in a store which appears to have fixed prices, you can often knock off 25% just by asking for a discount, "best price", or "last price".

Michele would walk into a shop and basically say things like "Wow! This is beautiful! This is my first time in Egypt and I don't know anything about these. How much is it?"

We did not have time for her to learn how to bargain and there were quite a few items she was interested in buying. I was trying to do the bargaining for her but the shop owners would figure out that she was green and try to cut me out of the conversation.

So the previous night, after about an hour in the fringe shops of the souk I told her "I forbid you to speak. You're not allowed to speak in the shops any more". It was a bit awkward in the first few shops we went into like that but after she got over her poutiness she warmed up to it and actually started milking it. It became fun. She was somewhat of a tragic figure in the shops. The sweet Canadian woman who couldn't speak who's sister did all the speaking for her. She would pantomine her answers, and when I was too dense to figure out what she was trying to say, she would write it down. We decided that if anyone asked why she couldn't speak I would say something like "She doesn't like to talk about it, but we're praying her voice will return to her".

It is part of Egyptian hospitality that shopkeepers offer refreshments to their customers. You walk in the door and 30 seconds later after Hello and Where are you from? comes Would you like tea, water, soda? This is the guy we bought some silver jewelry from, for Michele and her daughter Chloe. He, like all the other shopkeepers, loved poor mute Michele. Michele got a ring for herself and a necklace for Chloe in the classic cartouche/hieroglyphic style. And we enjoyed a couple of Cokes while we shopped, which he was only too happy to pose with for dumb Michele (sorry Michele, couldn't resist calling you dumb!) He's holding Chloe's necklace.

It was actually a pretty nice souk, but Egyptian shopkeepers are renowned for their pushiness. They are extremely verbal in their attempts to lure you into their shops and in some cases will even try pulling you in. "Hello, where you from? What you are looking for?" Some of them spoke with impeccable British accents "Excuse me, may I show you something" I would quite often ask them to calm down before we would enter their shop.

Holy cow did this guy ever like poor little mute Michele. "She is so sweet" He wanted to marry her. Can't blame him, it's the perfect wife- pretty and sweet and can't talk!

I try to buy a rug from every country I travel to and after looking in a few shops we found this place. We had spent quite a bit of time there the previous night (the picture of the handsome guy that Michele took at the bottom of the previous post is of one of the workers in this shop. He was WAY smitten with poor tragic Michele). The owner had pulled out all the good rugs for me as I don't like the touristy ones. The little round camel one and the small tree ones are touristy ones. I had found one I liked the night before and now we were back to start the real bargaining.

This is the one I had my eye on. Large and highly detailed. One of a kind. But the price the owner named was way out of my reach and I told him so. I told him I had been around the block a few times and there was no way I was paying that. I named an equally ridiculously low price and he scoffed at that. We batted it back and forth for a while, then he asked me to convince him of why I was worthy of getting the rug at such a low price. I told him a bit about my life, with Michele scribbling points to highlight. Wasn't enough apparently because after an hour of haggling his price and my price were still way far apart. You have to be willing to walk away and so we did.

We caught a taxi-van to Karnak, the last monument on our list of must-see's. Hmmmm, maybe if I don't give any details or history for Karnak Michele will do it when she leaves a comment like she did for the last post. If you have not read the comments for the last post I recommend that you do because Michele filled in a lot of details that I had left out.

A few statistics about Karnak-

1. It's huge! It covers over 2 square kilometers.
2. It's old! Building started 4700 years ago.
   
3. It contains the largest religious structure ever built- the Temple of Amen-Ra, Karnak's principle building.
4. The Temple of Amen-Ra was the god's home on earth. Around it lay the homes of his wife, Mut and their son, Khonsu.
   
5. Archaeological evidence shows that the site was inhabited in prehistoric times.
   
6. Each pharaoh added to the site, either by adding a building or improving existing buildings. They often remodeled a predecessor's building.
   
7. Over 200 large structures have been found at Karnak
8. Tourists can only visit a small portion of the site.
   

The entrance avenue leading to the 1st pylon is lined with criosphinxes (lions with heads of rams).


Details of the Criosphinxes.


The Bubastite Portal leading from the first court to the second pylon.


The portal is flanked on either side with colossal statues of Ramses II.

Inside the shrine of Ramses III.



Mummiform figures of Ramses III as Osiris.


Spare parts.

Reconstruction in progress.

Spare statues.

Up close.

Ditto.

Nice legs.


These people were all walking in circles around....

....this scarab statue.


There was a herd of goats wandering around the ruins.

They stopped at the sacred lake for a drink.

Yup, that's an obelisk.

So's that. And a marble doorway.

Yup, 'nother obelisk.

And a detail of an obelisk.

And another obelisk. Yup.

Next we went to the main attraction of Karnak. The Hypostyle Hall. No part of the temple of Amen-Ra is more famous or more impressive. 134 gigantic columns spaced closely together, intending to symbolize a papyrus swamp, like the thousands that lined the banks of the Nile. 103 meters wide, 53 meters deep. The columns are 15 meters (49 feet) tall and 8.4 meters (7 feet) in circumference.

Artists rendition of how the Hypostyle Hall must have looked. I'm just gonna show you a bunch of photos of it. They don't at all convey the hugeness of it. It's a bit strange, really. There are so many columns and they obscure your sight. You can never get a real feel for it.








Detail of one of the pillars.

We decided not to take a cab back into town, but to walk instead. We had walked everywhere in the last 4 days. You see more that way. We followed the walls surrounding Karnak through a picturesque residential area.

Eventually we came across the south entrance to Karnak.

Detail of the gate.

Michele and one of her "justicpose/justsuppose/juxtapose shots. The avenue of sphinxes runs along the side of this residential road.

And kids play on them and around them. They're thousands of years old and kids are just crawling all over these things!

In Egypt, as in so many countries, in the early evening you will find football (soccer) games all over.


Apparently sphinxes make a nice addition to a football game.

Another sneaky sneak. We walked all the way back to Luxor. Such a nice walk. Culturally rich. I was so happy to share this country with my sweet sister.


My turn at a cheesey sunset photo.



The main video for the day.


We had dinner at a restaurant recommended in the guide book. It was just ok.

We went back to the souk and bought some more souvenirs for Michele. I tried once again to talk the rug guy down in price but he had decided not to like me I think. Was not budging at all. We bought the small round one and the small tree of life one in that upper photo for Lane and Michele. I did not get mine.

We hit a few more rug shops and one of the guys there really tried to find me one like I had been looking at but no luck.

So I ended up not buying any souvenirs from Egypt. I just didn't like anything enough. Aside from that rug. I think about that rug every now and then. I almost regret not buying it, but I couldn't quite afford it so, oh well.

Wait a minute! I did buy a souvenir! Well, not so much a souvenir as a kitchen item but, none the less, I did buy something. It's a small clay tajine. I talked the street vendor down to about 20% of his first price so I was feeling pretty good about it. I asked him for some paper to wrap it in and this is what happened....



We went back to the apartment, packed up, thanked our CSing host, Alaa, immensely and headed out. But we didn't catch a taxi right away. We wheeled our bags down the streets, stopped at Quick Pizza again and bought 2 fatiyas to-go. It's that good. We'd had it for breakfast, we weren't hungry and we bought 2 anyway, to eat at the airport.

The gorgeous, charming owner was there this time and Michele had him explain to her how the fatiya is made. I hung back and admired him and took sneaky sneak pictures of him.

Michele got these great shots of the cook making our fatiya.








Sigh. Either one of us would have been happy to become Mrs Quick Pizza.

Then it was time to catch a cab to the airport. Mr Gorgeous Quick Pizza hailed one for us and negotiated the fee for us. We pigged out on fatiya while waiting for our first flight, to Sharjah, to be called.

Once on the plane we got the sillies again.



Here's Michele's final "Michele Witch Project" video.



Here's my video, with the character we had dubbed Thorton.