Smithsonian Magazine’s site has an article on a theory on How the Egyptians built the Great Pyramid at Giza.

Tackling an ages-old puzzle, a French architect offers a new theory on how the Egyptians built the Great Pyramid at Giza

I think this is from the August 2007 issue, but it might just be only on their web site.

Found this cool 360 degree panorama of Karnak Temple. It requires Quicktime (I was there last year, BTW).

(I was actually looking for something on The Moon Landing which was 40 years ago today….)

So today’s LensDay dealt with flowers so this week so I submitted this photo that I took in Egypt. I thought most of the flowers from there seemedso bright and beautiful. The other people on the trip compared it to flowers in Hawaii but since I’ve never been there I attributed it to the Egyptian mystique…

I just thought they all seemed so bright and beautiful….

I found my ring!!!! I lost it a few months ago and I realized this I was leaving my house. So I retraced my steps and dug through the garbage and everything. Plus, I examined my car from head to toe to see if I dropped it in there. But I never found it and it just had to be here somewhere…

So, I was just digging through my laptop backpack and I found it way at the bottom. So I’m pretty excited about this.

This is the ring that I bought in Egypt with the Hieroglyphic Alphabet all the way around it. It was always a little big, so now I guess I know it’s too big. It wasn’t very expensive but I’ll get it sized a tiny bit smaller. You can click the image for a larger view.

Hopefully you’re not getting too tired of the Egypt photos, here’s just under 100 from day 6.

Oops, here’s the link to the photos…

Hopefully if you’ve just recently starting reading the blog you’ve read the older Egypt entries. Those were posted while I was in Egypt and that’s where the longer stories are…

You may have seen these, I had posted them a bit back but not written a post to go with them yet nor added descriptions (maybe 20 of them). They were at the bottom of the egypt photos page so if you were looking around.

From Question of the Day.

Some more photos from my trip to Egypt (from April). This is day 5 and has about another 90 photos broken up into a few sub albums. Many of the photos have captions explaining what they are but here’s the gist of it in case you just jump into slideshow mode.

The day five photos are located here.

I know I’ve been back for over a month but here’s another 80 photos from Egypt from day four, we’re still in Luxor: there’s a lot of local shots, some temple photos and a felucca sailboat ride..

From Day 3 in Egypt I’ve got 150 more photos up. We travel to Luxor and visit Karnak, a school and the temple of Luxor (at night).

So I’m sure you’ve heard of Skype, right? You can use it to make “phone calls” from computer to computer for free. I used it to make phone calls from Egypt to the US while I was there, it cost me about 2.1 cents per minute to make a call to any telephone in the US (I could have called another Skype computer for free).

They’ve just made it more free. Yes, I said free, to call the US and Canada for the rest of the year (2006). It shouldn’t matter where you are in the world, to call me would be free for the rest of the year. So download Skype now and give it a try.

FYI, I’ve ditched my landline phone at home and have just my cellular phone. So I programmed Skype with my local police/fire number so if I ever have a crisis I can at least use my computer for an emergency phone call (if needed). I just called up and said, I’ve just got a cell phone what’s the best non-911 number to call when I have an emergency.

Here’s how it normally works, they lease a bunch of phone lines around the world, it’s your job (using the Internet) to place the call using the Internet. Depending on the location they set the price, Egypt for example is 18.5 cents a minute, they don’t care where you are calling from (the USA, Egypt or from the same house you are calling to) it still costs 18.5 cents for them to make that call to Egypt. Except for now, calling to the USA and Canada is FREE.

So as I mentioned before all the drivers did as they went around was honk, honk, honk. I thought it was funny when I saw this sign that said they shouldn’t honk.

At least that’s what I thought it meant, I don’t recall any less honking.

So when I was in one of the hotels in Egypt I saw this “hieroglyphic” sign and it struck me as funny so I took a photo of it.

This batch of 40+ photos from my second day of the trip consists of one album that jumps around a bit. Be sure to look back at the third week of April to see the original comments about the trip, I’ll try not to repeat myself too much.

So I’m putting together collections of photos from the trip. In an attempt to not overwhelm you (and myself) I’ll do one of these every few days highlighting a day (or maybe just a portion of the day depending on how many photos I took that day).

This first day consists of two albums.

So I was playing with Yahoo! Photos and put up about 100 random Egypt photos of mine.

You can view Yahoo! Photos on TiVo and I wanted to see how they worked out…

So as they were excavating around the pyramids they found a pit. The pit was covered with a row of cover stones that they say kept it hermetically sealed. Inside it they found 1024 pieces of wood and rope. After examining it they decided it was a ship and it was marked reasonably well on how to assemble it. So they did!

They built a museum around the location of the pit’s original location so that you can see how and where it was originally found. They then proceeded to build an elevated museum around it and the full ship is assembled inside. It’s absolutely ginormous, the pictures do not do it justice at all. While they did use rope from the current day and age to assemble it, the original rope was in incredible shape.

While they found two other pits, they decided to leave them as they were, the boat was deteriorating and the left the others to be “taken care of by the gods”.

Plus, they made us wear goofy slippers over our shoes when we came in to cut down on the dust and dirt in the museum. We all felt like we were wearing clown shoes.

Did you know that Egypt is actually on two different continents. If you look on a map it makes sense but I never really thought about it being in both Africa and Asia. I was in the Africa part, we pretty much traveled between Cairo and Aswan along the Nile.

So I had taken the day off to recover from the flight from Egypt, pick up my mail, go to two doctor’s appointments that would be needed after the trip (allergy shot and to get my neck/back worked on) and other stuff. Since I got trapped in NY I had to move the allergy appointment but the other was later so that was okay. So I set the alarm clock for three hours later and took a nap. I ended up sleeping 11 hours, missing the appointment and now I’ve been wide awake for the last three hours. Although I did get the laundry done and watched a little TiVo, I hadn’t turned a TV on in weeks…

So I’m finally back in Michigan! I will be posting more entries and photos over the next few weeks as I think of more things, finish thoughts I’ve started and mange to sort some photos.

I didn’t sleep well last night, so I made it to the airport on time. Although they did hit me with a $25 fee since my luggage weighed too much, I tried to sweet talk them out of that with the all the flight problems but no such luck. It was a tiny little plane and had a lot of tired familiar faces on it from last night.

I’m off to take a nap…

It took them over three hours to decide to finally cancel our flight. That’s three hours after it was scheduled to depart, that’s not even factoring in that they had to have some idea there would be problems before the flight was even supposed to leave . We had a plane but no pilots, you’d think that wouldn’t be so hard to keep track of and keep us informed. I know I’m a little crabby from traveling but I’ve definitely been treated better than I was with the way the system worked tonight. If they would have canceled it hours before that I’d have been fine with it but I should have been home two hours ago and I’m just finally in a hotel. They’ve got free WiFi in the lobbys/resturants which is a bonus, but I’d rather have the A/C working…

Please let me clarify: I understand things can be beyond their control, but at 7:30 when they are telling us at when the pilots land at LaGuadia around 7:45 they’ll taxi over and it takes until 10 PM to tell us they can’t get pilots they don’t really care about the customers. All they have to do was keep us informed. If they would have told me at 8 I would have gladly went over to the hotel, ate and gone to bed. They just dragged it out and the story they gave us doesn’t make sense.

We didn’t get anything but a hotel room and a $7.00 voucher for dinner (that’s about 1/2 a burger at the hotel, everything at the airport was closed). Anyone have a good number or address at Delta for me to complain to? Please let me know. (Delta, if I misheard and there’s a free round-trip ticket in the mail for me, I’ll gladly correct this post…)

So my 7:00 PM flight hasn’t boarded yet. The time on the display has jumped from 7 PM to 8 PM to 10 PM and none of the five employees currently standing at the counter knows why. They didn’t even notice it jumped to 10 PM until I asked. This was all within 10 minutes of them telling us we’d be boarding in five minutes…

They aren’t even sure if the pilots have left St. Louis (the plane is here). This doesn’t even factor in the fact that this gate closes at 8 PM so there shouldn’t be any way it’s actually leaving from this gate.

Wait! It just totally fell off the display now, and they can’t tell me why (“it’s okay” they said).

7:35 PM Update: So they just bumped us to another gate. They’ve got pilots going to LaGuardia (I’m at JFK) who will then shuttle over to here to fly us away. Guesstimate is about 9 PM but maybe as late as 10 PM. I’m usually pretty patient with this stuff, but I’ve been up since 9:45 PM Michigan time yesterday and we headed out to the airport at 11 PM Michigan time (maybe I slept 1.5-2 hours) and I’m beat.

So they call the big Sphinx “The Sphinx” since it is so much bigger than all of the other thousands of Sphinxes in the country. I think they said it was carved out of one huge piece of rock. It was big but it just didn’t do it for me, maybe because it was towards the end of a very long day. There was also a bit of scaffolding in the way that they were using for repairs that didn’t do anything to increase my level of awe.

So the pyramids were absolutely mind staggering in the size and then I realized it wasn’t even the largest one of the three. Of course there were people all over the place trying to sell you water, soda and trinkets.

One of the best parts was when I walked around one of the big ones and the crowd was dying out. As I rounded the corner one of the smaller ones came into view and there was no one around. It’s was just amazing as the sound dropped and I was able to walk around that side in awe. It was so peaceful as I walked along alone, it really gave me the opportunity to appreciate it more. I think it was the largest of the three at Giza so if you have an opportunity to walk around it give it a try before the sales people and other tourists start to wear you down.

We didn’t go inside. The tour person didn’t recommend it, said the walls were pretty empty and it was a big empty room in the center. It was only $4 or $5 extra for one of them. I asked some people who were coming out and they said it was very hot and and they had to walk about 300 meters bent over pretty far and their wasn’t much too see.

On the other hand I didn’t not go to the laser light show at the Giza sight and I heard it was great. Some people in our group said it was great and so did some others who stayed in the hotel so you might want to see that if you ever get there. It had just been a long day with lots of pyramids and I was too tired…

So I’m at the Cairo Airport ready to head to JFK and they’ve got FREE WiFi! In case you haven’t noticed while things are cheap here, nothing is free. So we’re very early for our flight but I’m ready, two weeks was long enough to be away from home. Egypt was wonderful, but I’m ready for my own bed and to have the ability to drink tap water and not be afraid to accidentally rinse after I brush my teeth.

The pyramids at Giza were Great! I uploaded some photos today (15 more) and some are the pyramids. I gotta catch a bus in 5 hours to get to my flight so I gotta hit the hay. G’nite!

We finally got up close to the pyramids today. Amazing!!!!

More later…

They do the change due to Daylight Savings tonight so while it feels like 10 PM it’s really 11 PM (so I’m off to bed)!

meonacamel

Originally uploaded by garylapointe.

So we went on a camel ride yesterday!

We rode them up a dune (15 minutes) and then back down across the Sahara desert to a village where we had a tour.
It wasn’t as hard as I thought it’d be!

I heard there was another bombing. I’m in Cairo and plan to be in the immediate vicinity for the rest of the trip (just so you know).

So now we’re off to Cairo, with a stop over in Luxor on the way. Security did a big inspection on my laptop bag. With a few spare batteries, four or five chargers, cables, adaptors, a variety of gizmos it’s probably a total of 20-30 feet of wiring and cables. Fortunately, I don’t get stopped more often. The upside was that I did find something that I thought I lost earlier in the trip.

We had a second security checkpoint and they ignored the bag but I had to remove my belt and check my pockets. I accidentally threw my chapstick in the bin and he opened it up to check it. In Abu Simble (the part I didn’t go on), they said there were eight checkpoints (although that was the day after the bombing).

Later: So after a what seemed like a long flight we spent forever in traffic. But I’ve had lunch now and we’re back in the neighborhood of the pyramids!

So I haven’t had a chance to talk about security here, it’s been on my mind since day one. We’ve had an armed guard with us whenever we travel as a group. This didn’t surprise me, I actually expected a police escort so it was tamer than I thought.

Plus every hotel or museum has one or metal detectors and may check bags (but not likely). I know it sounds crazy but you really get used to it.

I got so used to the guns that one night a few of us were walking in an area that got kind of dark and heard footsteps behind us when I looked and saw it was men with guns my thoughts of fear went out of my mind.

Security seemed to pick up when we went south (especially in Aswan). In the south we did have an escort pickup with one to four security folks and the security guy on the bus.

So I’ve done really good in the haggling so far. Sometimes insulting the guys by offering too little, but then I factor that into my exchange with the next booth for a same or similar item. It’s amazing on how you’ll be walking away and they’ll keep offering lower offers. If they just had it priced in the first place I probably would have paid a higher price that it might have been marked.

The best I did so far was some guy wanted 120 LE for an item and I got him down to 50 LE for that item plus a larger similar item. Who knows, maybe I could have actually done better.

I’ve walked into a few shops and I can see them debate the price before they figure out what to charge me. Sometimes I just give them this look like “are you kidding?” and it seems like they don’t nail me too much. Most things as still less than you’d pay anywhere else. Even in a fancy resturant I don’t think I’ve every paid more than $2.50 for a Coca-Cola, most times it’s less that $1.

So the time and dates that come with these messages may not be perfect. Most are when I write them (actually when I start to write them) and I’ve posted them later. I’ve just recently finished a few that I started days ago so you may have to scroll down to see them.

We do their DST time change tonight (I think) so that will throw me off a little bit (and maybe the computer). I’m probably going to lose an hours sleep too

So today I found a small bottle of Coke for about 14 cents (yes, 14 American centes), but I had to drink it there. I wanted to take it with but I couldn’t figure out how much to pay to do that, it was a very non-tourist spot. I actually paid her about 19 cents since I didn’t have change. There were two kids there talking to us (and hassling us for money and pens) so I bought them each a soda too. I’m thinking they were kids of the shopkeeper, I made sure they actually opened them before they. I was tempted to give a few of the kids money but I didn’t think we could get out of the community without the word getting around.

Also had a carriage buggy ride that I was already paying to much for (I was almost running late and I had already haggled him down 50%) but when I got there he tried to jack the price up. I just say no, repeat the price and walk away. Oh, he tried to get me to tip the horse too and then he switched currencies to try and confuse me (about 23%). Keep in mind we’re really talking peanuts with any of these amounts.

It’s Tuesday and most of the group are at the other site I mentioned yesterday. But I got to sleep!!!! I think I slept for about 8 1/2 hours and then on and off for about an hour (so I got up). Had breakfast, did a nice walk to the Internet Cafe and I’ll head back in a few…

It’s a nice day out but my legs are really sore from yesterday, I might take a carriage ride back to the hotel…

Don’t forget I’ve got more photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/garylapointe/ which I’ve been titling slightly better and with more descriptions.

I got an e-mail from Kelly about some kind of bombings somewhere out this way but I don’t know anything about it.
FYI, I’m in Aswan just off the nile (about 50 feet at this moment) and about as far south as you can go.

UPDATE: It’s WAY north and to the east and it turns out the travel agency called my Mom to say I’m okay (which is funny since I hadn’t heard about it and no one asked me if I was okay)…

In case more happens, Aswan and Cairo are the major areas I’ll be in for the rest of the trip.

I am SO tired. I’m in bed right now. And I can’t wait to sleep in. The rest of the group is going to Abu Simbel (sp?) and I really want to see it but I knew I’d be ready to crash around this point of the trip and it’s another plan ride (yuk!), $200 more and have to leave the hotel at 5 am so it seemed like it’d make sense to skip it and save on so many levels.

We saw temples, rode boats and ate lots (as usual) then went for a walk (had to be close to 3 hours) which included visiting a mosque shopping (haggling lots with very little success) and lots of walking.

Tomorrow will be nice to sleep in, access the Internet at the hotel’s over priced rates (but at least I don’t need to carry the laptop anywhere) and eat more! (You won’t actually see this until I get on-line then…)

I’ve had two people mention that they had problems reading this page http://mytriptoegypt.com/.

Can you please send me an e-mail if it looks bad in your web browser? Please tell me your browser, computer and if it’s old or new (the more geeky details the better).

I just made a few changes, so if you had problems and it’s now better, please let me know

So Oliver Twist comes to mind often during these my Egypt trip. I see all these kids running around trying to sell you something. They just swarm you like a group of mosquitoes. It’s hysterical on some level it’s like on some TV show when you see the little kid with little puppies jumping all over them.

Most of the time it seems like the children are very poor but I think many of them are not poor (at least not by their standards). We were at this one place and these little kids were so dirty it just tears at my heart. When we got back in the van I asked if they dirtied them up on purpose, the tour guide laughed and said they were just dirty, “they’re kids, they don’t mind”.

Generally when swarmed it seems like they are in a few groups, they all seem to go back to the same few adults for change. But it just makes me think of the groups of orphans in oliver twist. I’ve spent many dollars/pounds on many of these trinkets if I can haggle down to a dollar or less, it’s a safe bet I’ll get one (unless I already have 15!).

So I was on a carriage ride and saw this in the park. It was hysterical if you’ve ever seen the movie Stargate (Kurt Russel / James Spader) or the TV Series Stargate SG-1 (Richard Dean Anderson) or Atlantis. They use a Egyptian artifact like this to travel to other worlds. Worlds still under the rule of aliens posing as guides gods. Gods using names like Ra and Anubis on planets with names like Abadoes and Karnak (these are egyptian names and places).

The shows uses quite a bit of Egyptology (mythology) and there are always ruins that they have to explore in the show. And occasionally they use some of the old Egyptology stories to figure the interaction between the god/aliens.

See a view of the actual gate from the show.

So today we went inside the Valley of the Kings and then over to the Valley of the Queens. It was completely amazing. I just couldn’t believe it. No photos allowed inside but I’ll post some of the photos of the actually valley in the Valley of the Kings (VotK). So there are 63 discovered tombs in the VotK, anything you read will say 62 but they just recently discovered a new one.

The construction they did as they dug into these mountains and was incredible. Tunnels and the chambers were very interesting. Lots of colors still vibrant after all these years (3,000+). In side the huge chambers it felt very moving to see all this work that these people put into constructing these rooms. I bet one of them were 50 feet x 25 feet and 20 feet high and it had to be a few hundred feet into the mountain.

Just incredible. This is what I came here to see.

We are on the ship M/S Royal Orchid and it’s incredible. It’ll hold 60 guests and it’s just the 15 of us! I’m on the top deck right this, I’m in a lounge chair right next to the hot tub and pool. The stars are out and there isn’t a cloud in the sky, I wish we weren’t next to this “city”. It’s just beautiful on the ship and there are so many staff here. I really wish I had taken the 4 nights on the boat instead of just 3, it’s so nice to set up the room and know I’m going to be here for a few days. We’re docked in this tiny little town that I’ll have to look up the name for called Esna.

We’re just going south down the Nile (it flows north) and making stops at different places. We had to go through some locks today to get onto the higher level of water and that was fun to watch from the inside. And I’m watching a goat cross a side-street right now. It’s 9:29pm and it’s still pretty warm out, it’s been very hot lately and it’s going to get worse as we head south towards the Sahara.

We did wander around town for a few minutes, it took us way longer for us to walk the roundabout way past the guards and back to go up the stairs than to walk down the street and back. And we spent a bit of time negotiating for a candy bar too. Here’s how it went:

Me: How much for a Galaxy Ripple

He: 10 LE (pounds egyptian)

Me: I laughed it was so high (about $1.86)

He: 7 LE

Me: Shrugged

He: 2 for 10 LE

Me: 3 for 10

He: Sold! (or something like that).

Me: Happy with my purchase of 3 dusty candy bars that I probably still paid too much for.

So earlier our Guide told us we’d see pirates down by the dam. Sure enough, as we slow down dozens of rowboats surround the ship. And it’s “street” vendors trying to sell us stuff.

What they do is toss it up 4 floors for us to look at and it hits the railing and falls back down into the water. He throws another and it goes over us and lands in the pool. It’s really hard to negotiate when they are down so far. A few of the ladies bought some nice table cloths, I didn’t see anything I liked enough to have him send up (and then have to send back down arguing all the way). But it was just hysterical to see, we were all laughing the whole time. It’s just so bizarre.

Then we watched them leave to lay siege on another ship…

In Luxor we’re staying at the Sofitel Pavilion Winter Palace it’s pretty grand (but our rooms need a refurbish) and I’ve got a great view (see photos).

We’ve been to Karnak (I just posted a few more pictures some with people in it go give a sense of scale) and the Luxor Temple (shots also posted, the night shots are from here) and the temple and more. I’ve got so many more photos (and stories) but not enough time…

We did a sunset boat ride. And tomorrow we’re crossing the nile to see the sun rise. I’ve got to be up and ready to leave at 4:30 am, plus I’ve got to be packed because we go the ship right after and we’ll be on the Nile for 4 days!

I’m so excited to not have to pack again for 3 nights! And it’s the boat, so it doesn’t have to be “airplane neat” just so I can carry it all!

I’m assuming that the Internet will be sparse for a while since I was told that ATM machines probably won’t be at most of our stops (I’m assuming WiFi is more sparse than ATMs are).

As a reminder here are my flickr Egypt photos .

After we flew to Luxor we went to the Temple of Karnak. It was very hot (I finally found a hat to buy) and everyone (and there were lots of people there) were all always trying to get into the shade. They started building this complex 3,000+ years ago and it took over 1,500 years! This place supplied me with a lot of great photos (I just don’t know if I can get them uploaded).

FYI: Luxor contains 1/3 of the world’s monuments (the rest of egypt contains another 1/3), I’m not sure what exactly defines a monument.

So I’ve got cheap dial-up in my room in Luxor but I’m only connecting at 7200 bps!!!! It’s pretty painful but it’s only $2 an hour and I don’t have to leave the room (I think that’s a plus as long as I time things right). I probably won’t be updating a lot of photos though…

So we’re on the plane on our ride to Luxor in the south. It’s either a new plane or recently refurbished, it’s very nice. It’s a huge plane for such a short ride (1 hour), it does go to Beirut after it leaves Luxor (I’m not sure how far that is). We’re off to Karnak to visit today.

I’ve got to say the thing that I like least about this is that packing and unpacking from all the moving that we have to do. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t like that but I was hoping I was wrong…

I think we check into a hotel for two nights and then I think the cruise is on the nile for the next three nights. That will be nice traveling to other places but having the hotel do the traveling for me.

So here’s a picture of me in front of The Museum in Cairo Cairo Museum for Egyptian Antiquities..

It took few attempts but I managed to get the camera set right to take this picture at night of the pyramids in Cairo, but I got a few and they look pretty good for being dark out.

INTERNET: The hotel I’m at only offers wired Internet in the business center (it is 24/7) they want 20 LE (egyptian pounds) which is probably about $4-5 for 15 minutes, I think it’s a little better deal if you get 30 minutes. But when it’s closed (most of the time) you have to get someone to open it. The bonus for me is I have the laptop pretty prepped for what I want to do: I’ve already written e-mails and hit send, I’ve written posts (such as this one) and saved them, I only have to hit send and I’ve organized the photos I want to upload. So 15 minutes is actually quite a bit of time since I have the laptop. Anything more and I’d probably just be screwing around. They are working on wireless in certain areas but it’s not complete enough to work (but it is complete enough to stop you from using it).

MONEY CONVERSION: I did what I usually do, I went to the ATM. I took out 1000 LE (think of it as a cursive L like the Brits show it) and when I checked my bank’s web site I see they took out $174.56 with a $1 surcharge (that’s about what I thought it should be). I should have checked the sign at the bank for their conversion…

PHONES: No one can tell me what it’ll actually cost to use the phone in the room (actually they’ll tell me but if you ask two other people you get three different answers) and they have no pay phones here. They said I can use my AT&T calling card (but I’d still pay some undefined rate), but last week when I called AT&T they told me Egypt didn’t allow foreign phone cards to be used. So I went back up to the business center and Skyped out (using Skype computer phone software). I had to pay for the computer time and a few cents through Skype but it was still pretty cheap and now my Mom knows I’m alive (she can’t check the net to see if I’m posting, which infers I’m alive).

PENS: I couldn’t find the pen they supplied with the room so I went to the desk and asked for another one, you’d think I had gone and asked for a second television set. A call to housekeeping and hassling a maid I did finally get a new pen.