Category Archives: Egypt 2006

Information about my trip to Egypt. I’m keeping a separate site but with some extra Egypt stuff/widgets. It’s at http://MyTripToEgypt.com/

Day 3 in Egypt: Karnak, Luxor and School.

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).

  • Karnak: Lots of photos from Karnak, I think it’s the world’s largest covered (enclosed?) temple. Lots of photos, sorry for the repetition.
  • School: We visited an elementary school. It was an all girls elementary school (700) of them. They had to learn English and as you see they wear uniforms. It’s also an orphanage for a small number of girls. We got to visit a few classrooms while they were waiting for parents to pick them up. I took a lot of pictures of the posters on the walls and other similar items.
  • Around Town: Flowers, buildings, the hotel, the view from the hotel, the McDonald’s with the delivery scooters, the group waiting to go out and Jack dancing.
  • Temple of Luxor: This is a large temple in the middle of town (well, they built the town around it). Some shots in the daylight and a lot of night shots). Notice the Sphinxes in the last few photos, you can see them lined up, they go the whole path back to Karnak with Sphinxes on each side every 20 feet or so for about 2.5 kilometers.

    A key thing to know about monuments (and I’m not sure how they define ‘monuments’) two-thirds of the world’s monuments are in Egypt and one-third are in Luxor.

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  • Skype gets more free! Gets free-er?

    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.

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    No Honking

    NohonkingSo 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.

    Emergency Hieroglyphics

    ExitheiroglyphicsSo 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.

    Day 2 in Cairo (revisited)

    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.

  • Everything in Cairo seemed far away so we got to see lots of the town as we drove around: the homes (with laundry drying on the ledge and satellite dishes galore) and the awful traffic.
  • We also travel to the museum in Cairo which while it had wonderful artifacts was dusty, dirty and in need a major repair (I believe they are currently building a new one). In the museum no photos were allowed but outside was okay so I took a few of the outside and of Marilyn + Thelma (who were on our trip) and Asmaa (whom I met and chatted with at the museum).
  • Some more photos from around town as we traveled around and other odd places. Some sheep under the overpass, a few shots at the mall, a view of the pyramids as the sun sets and some kids with their camel and then back to the hotel for the night.
  • Remember: In any of the photos, if it’s water, it’s probably the Nile.
  • Day 1 in Cairo (revisited)

    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.

  • The trip from the airport which shows a lot of the city (Cairo is a city of 20 million people), some billboards and roads. The murals were along the walls of a military academy which was one of the first places we passed. This also contains my first glimpses of the pyramids and the Nile (if it’s wet it’s probably the Nile).
  • This has some shots of the grounds of the Mena House Oberoi hotel, my room, the view of the pyramids during the day and night and my first can of Coca-Cola in Egypt.

    You can view these photos here.

  • More Photos at Yahoo!

    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…

    The Ship they Found at the Pyramids

    ShipsideoarShipstonepitSo 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.

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