Dazzling Abu Simbel

[NOTE: Lee has finally been able to upload his series of blog posts written over the past few days which have gone unpublished due to poor 'net connections which kept him from putting them on line before this. He has also added lots of photographs to previous posts, so look back over the past week or so of posts to gain a better sense of what we've been experiencing.]

The buses left in the pre-dawn darkness for the three-plus hour drive through the desert to Abu Simbel on the shore of Lake Nasser south of Aswan. We drove with armed escorts in a convey of large vehicles allowing each of us a full seat to ourselves. Equipped with snacks and with an on-board bathroom available, we sailed on through the early hours of the morning, witnessing the rising of the sun and lots and lots and lots of sand leavened with rocky outcroppings and distant mountain ridges. We passed checkpoints (with their sleepy guards) and military compounds and an occasional mining operation as the day brightened and grew warmer.

We arrived in the parking lot with several other buses dropping off those who had flown in for their assorted tours, and suddenly the serene emptiness of the desert was filled with a seathing crowd of visitors all being funneled through an undermanned admission turnstile complete with security check. Once inside, however, the crowd cleared a bit as multiple groups assembled and took their various paths down to the temple entrance. The longer we lingered, the smaller the crowds. By the end of our two-and-one-half hour stay, we pretty much had the place to outselves -- and that's when the majesty of the site could really sink in.

What interested us most were the quality and condition of the temple's interior carvings and coloration. One sees photographs of the extrerior statuary but seldom of the interior rooms, their walls and pillars rich with beautiful paintings and incised pictures telling the now familiar stories associated with Ramses IV who commissioned this marvelous place and the adjacent temple honoring his favorite Nefetari. Unfortunately, only exterior photography is allowed, so Lee can share only photos of the statues of Ramses IV and Nefetari flanking the entrances to the two rock-carved exteriors.

As you look at them, think about how difficult it must have been for UNESCO to move all this fifty years ago from the original site some hundreds of feet below the surface of Lake Nasser ...
Believe us, the trip was well worth the drive and the early morning wake-up all (even though it really spaced out Heidi for the remainder of the afternoon. After all, by the time we sat down to lunch at 2:00 p.m. or so back at out hotel in Aswan (the beautifully situated Basma Hotel), we had already been up and about for over ten hours!

Before a late buffet dinner this evening at our hotel, we went off to the local market. Aswan is known particularly for its spices (which many of us sought out to buy), but we enjoyed the entire overall shopping experience just as much, walking along the nicely kept stone roadway past well stocked stores and neatly arranged merchandise, joined by lots of others out for an evening stroll. Even the heavy-handed touts couldn't dampen the mood!

Beautiful Aswan

What a surprise it was to arrive in Aswan and find ourselves in the midst of a very modern urban setting enhanced by the lovely surrounding Nile River environment. All pastel, blue and green, Aswan spreads along a curving sweep of the Nile and up into the surrounding desert hills. At dusk tall fulucca sails fill the river, ferrying folks to the botanical garden on Kichner Island or merely sailing along admiring the setting sun. Because the city came into its own only with the construction of the High Dam fourty or fifty years ago, much of the architecture is strikingly contemporary and beautifully executed.

We all were dutifully impressed, especially after we, too, "abandoned ship" and sailed to the botanical garden aboard our own fulucca right at sunset! One can easily understand how the city became the favorite Winter residence for any number of European visitors over the years: a beautiful place in an beautiful setting with consistently beautiful weather -- what's not to like?

Tonight's our last night aboard the Royal Orchid -- and it will be a short one, at that. We have a 3:45 a.m. wake up call tomorrow morning and leave for Abu Simbel by bus at 5:00 a.m. so as to begin our visit there before the heat of the sun becomes unbearable.

Upriver Through Time

As one journeys upstream along the Nile River towards Aswan, one also moves along a timeline from early Egyptian history towards later Greek and Roman periods of occupation. This morning in Kom Ombo, for instance, we toured another temple dedicated in part to Horus the Elder (as well as to the crocidile-headed Sobek) constructed and expanded between the fourth century B.C. and the fourth century A.D. when Egypt was ruled by first the Greeks and later the Roman Empire.

Interestingly, although the influences of both foreign Mediterranean cultures are apparent, both the Greek and the Roman eras appear primarily identifiable as continuations of earlier Egyptian tradition. The temple at Kom Ombo honors Egyptian gods in a typical way using familiar motifs in an architectural setting also drawn from the past, even though much of the work was undertaken under Greek and Roman authorities. So far this is one of Lee's favorite sites -- very compact, quite photogenic and wonderfully lit in the morning sun.

We've spent the rest of the morning catching up on blog entries and photo edits, rummaging through the on-board shop's merchandise, and watching Egyptian rural life on the riverbank drift by in its seemingly endless and ever-changing variety.

A Port Stop at Edfu

We arrived at Edfu around 10:30 a.m. and almost immediately boarded shuttle buses to be ferried off to the local Temple of Horus, the city's major attraction. As we've journeyed "upriver" into the heart of Africa, the temperature has risen accordingly; and Monday was no exception. We REALLY sweltered throughout our lengthy visit with "Horus the Elder, or Horus of Behdet, conqueror of Set and avenger of his father, Osiris," but what a marvelous experience (despite the 104 degree temperature)!

Many of us are beginning to be able to keep straight at least some of the names and attributes and relationships involving the myriad dieties honored in Ancient Egypt. We are also increasingly in a position to recognize differences and similarities encountered as we explore one religious complex after another. The Temple of Horus in Edfu, it turns out, is the best preserved of all the sites we will visit (or have visited) on our tour and so provided a fantastic opportunity to put all our new found knowledge to work.

The similarities are immediately apparent: the large entrance pylons; an open forecourt -- here a Grand Court surrounded by thirty-two columns forming a sheltering colonnade; the vestibule and the hypostyle hall beyond (in which the roof is supported by columns rather than rafters or arches) and the inner sanctuary housing the temple's main image. But there are differences as well: the columns now (in the Ptolemaic era, under Greek influence) are topped with floral capitals; a series of halls surround the various rooms and sections of the complex of structures decorated with relief and incised sculptures; some of the imagery, as well, reflects a more fluid (and realistic) Greek style of figural modeling.

We all were relieved, however, to return to the air-conditioned interior of the Royal Orchid. Those who opted for the Light Lunch (scheduled to be served outside on the upper deck) were also relieved to have the meal service shifted to the inside Lounge instead. And the majority of us chose to watch the passing scenery from the cool comfort of various interior spaces as we continued our journey southward to Kom Ombo, our anchorage for the night. There are, it would appear, definite limits to our collective willingness to live the life of an Egyptian while in Egypt!

Later in the evening, however, we all dressed for dinner - in Egyptian costume (or, at least, in our interpretation thereof), no less. And most of us participated in an evening of games and dancing and silliness before drifting off to a quiet retreat on deck or to our respective cabins for another good night's sleep. Before then, the ship's photographer surely accumulated enough evidence to blackmail us all for years to come ...

Life on the Nile

Tonight the scheduled video is Agatha Christi's DEATH ON THE NILE, a real "golden oldie", but, in our case, observing LIFE on the Nile has been really great since we boarded the Royal Orchid around noon today. Sitting on the sundeck or in the air-conditioned lounge or standing by the window in our Junior Suite (an upgrade arranged on board when our original room reeked of a very unpleasant smell no one seemed able to identify), we have watched everyday activities, lush scenery and interesting homes and rural villages slide by like an unrolling scroll painting as our three night river cruise has gotten underway.

Much of our time indoors, however, has been spent attempting to contact the outside world via the Internet, so far with little success (beyond being able to send and receive basic email notes). Lee is still hoping to be able to upload SOMETHING more substantial before we reach Aswan in three days' time (and, obviously, if you're reading this, he eventually managed, somehow or other).

Our final hours in Luxor were spent, first, observing how papyrus paper is produced; then, shopping in the local market and at a small grocery store for supplies needed to make lunch aboard ship. The latter, of course, was meant to give us a focus around which to experience an important aspect of "real life" and worked really well in that respect -- as did our carriage ride around town last night and our light supper taken at a local cafe.

The Tombs Across the Nile

[A VERY slow connection prevents Lee from uploading the full complement of photographs tied to this and the previous posts; he will add them later once we locate a faster means of doing so. Until then, words alone will have to do for the most part!]

We were up for an early breakfast and on the road by 6:15 a.m. in a worthwhile effort to beat both the heat and the crowds visiting the various sites on the West Bank of the Nile across from Luxor.

The sixty-two royal burials so far unearthed in the Valley of the Kings (the last in 1922) reflect a decision made thousands of years ago when it finally became apparent to a Pharaoh named Tuthmosis I that all those huge pyramids perhaps didn't really protect their dead inhabitants all that well, serving largely instead as advertisements for tomb robbers: "Here I am. Rob me! Rob me!"

Not that even these hidden tombs served any better to maintain their secrets -- in the end, only Tutankhamun's tomb of all those unearthed so far appears to have managed to escape the thieves.

Instead today thousands upon thousands of visitors dutifully troop through the tombs (three visits per ticket among those sites currently open to the public), admiring (if they're paying attention at all) the brilliantly painted bas reliefs adorning the walls and the huge stone sarcophagi found therein.

The wonder of just being in this amazing place somewhat mitigates all the standing in line required and the early morning heat and the bright glare of the sun. And, indeed, the tomb decorations are incredibly fascinating (Ibrahim gave us his usual insightful view of what to look for and what meaning to ferret out of all the symbolism involved). But, in the end, one is left a bit frustrated, if only because one doesn't leave the experience with anything but more and more questions in need of explication and explanation!

Heidi and Lee chose to stick with three Ramesses tombs (I, IV and IX), each of which proved well worth detailed exploration. Now all we have to do is wade through the dozens of pages in West's The Traveler's Key to Ancient Egypt to figure out what it was we saw! Thank goodness we have three days of river cruising ahead of us to provide the chance to do just that...

By 9:00 a.m., just as crowds of others were arriving, we were on our way to the nearby mortuary temple of Hatshepsut, the most famous female pharaoh, a beautiful architectural structure perched on the hillside overlooking the lush Nile Valley countryside beyond. Although thoroughly desecrated by her husband (Tuthmoise III) and other successor pharaohs, the structure is still quite stunning with lots to explore for curious visitors (which we were).


Our last stop of the morning brought us to a rural family farming along the Nile just across the river from Luxor. The older of the two brothers who spoke with us and showed us around seemed especially proud of his extended family's ability to be self-sustaining in almost every possible way: raising theor own food; building their entire mud brick home from scratch; even fashioning their furnature from palm fronds growing in their front yard!

Following an early lunch (at the Thebes Urban Garden Restaurant), we were back in the hotel by 1:00 p.m., exhausted from a "full day" of fascinating touring. This evening we're off to see the new Luxor Museum and for a horse carriage ride through town followed by a light meal in a local cafe.

Tomorrow we visit a local papyrus factory, then board ship to begin our Nile cruise to Aswan...

Incredible Luxor

Our introductory exploration of an Ancient Egyptian temple took us this morning to Karnak, the largest temple complex in all of Egypt! Not a bad place to start, don't you think?

Once again our guide, Ibrahim Taha, walked us from shady spot to shady spot throughout the complex, extrapolating from the architectural and sculptural splendor everywhere surrounding us real meaning and understanding as we came to appreciate more and more all the, literally, thousands of years devoted by pharaoh after pharaoh to the perfecting of this enormous religious edifice.

As we wandered through the temple, we marveled at the hypostyle hall with its hundreds of pillars incised with hieroglyphs, some of which still retained their rich coloration. We wondered at the tall obelisks that seemed to touch the sky. We trudged dutifully from chapel to chapel as we listened to tales of how each succeeding pharaoh sought to put his (or her) own unique stamp on this religious marvel dedicated to Amun-Ra, the most important of all the Egyptian deities.

Throughout the day, here at Karnak and elsewhere, Lee managed to implement his vow to include actual human beings in his photographs (in sharp contrast to his usual practice of taking largely "people-free" pictures). Few photos of Egyptian antiquities incorporate people, if only to provide an historical neutral aspect, freed from the influence of fashion, hairstyle or any other link to a specific time period or cultural frame. Such an approach means, however, that one seldom has a sense of scale. So Lee decided that, this time around at least, people WOULD appear as often as needed to provide that missing sense of just how big these historical artifacts actually are.

For the major part of the afternoon we hid from the sun, napping in our air conditioned room and enjoying the relatively cool water in the hotel pool (located right on the bank of the Nile itself). In the early evening, right at dusk, we drove to visit the Temple of Luxor, one of only two ancient temples illuminated and open to the public into the (much cooler) evening hours. The illumination brought out details we might otherwise have missed and added a real sense of drama to our visit.

Here we learned how the efforts of two different pharaohs, ruling a hundred yeras apart, impacted the layout and aesthetic appeal of this stunning complex.

A delicious dinner followed at El Hussain, a local seafood restaurant. Then it was back to the hotel and to bed -- we have a five o'clock wake-up call tomorrow morning so we can get underway early, early, early for our trip across the Nile to the Valley of the Kings and other important sites on the West Bank.

Off to a Great Start

What a revelation the city of Cairo turned out to be!

This morning we drove from our airport hotel to spend much of the day at the Egyptian Museum in downtown Cairo. En route we passed through the very upscale suburban city of Heliopolis, then motored serenely along an elevated skyway sailing through the city right to our ultimate destination.

Our comparative template throughout much of this trip undoubtedly will be India since that was our most recent international adventure. And, believe us, traffic in Cairo is nowhere near as noisy and chaotic as we found in Delhi last December!

Though drivers always seemed to be able to turn three lanes and a parking strip into six lanes seemingly without effort, there was none of the constant horn honking encountered in Delhi and Mumbai. Nor were there stray animals of every description roaming the streets.

To be sure, pedestrians crossed roads very much at their own risk, parking was totally unorganized, bus passengers often alighted and boarded randomly in the center lane, and taxi drivers negotated with potential fares without even bothering to halt their forward movement. But we never saw an accident, and traffic flowed with seeming ease everywhere we traveled.

Truly remarkable (not that the same wasn't true in India -- we never happened upon an accident there either).

The city was cleaner than expected and more lively, too, even during the heat of the day. We saw little evidence of extreme poverty (aside from the squatters residing in the City of the Dead, a huge cemetary complex spread out over acres and acres at the edge of the centtral city). Most buildings blended into the generally sand colored desert environment but often proved architecturally interesting, both historicaly and in terms of the ultra modern. Lee especially enjoyed the wide variety of styles present in the slender minarets we encountered towering over the city's ubiquitious mosques.

The several hours we spent roaming the cluttered, dusty, ill-labeled halls of the Egyptian Museum proved an extremely apt introduction to the days of visits to historical sites ahead of us, largely because Ibrahim steered us from object to object so skillfully. We would pause in front of a statue here, a sarcophagus there, a case of alabastar carvings in the increasingly crowded hallways; and he would deftly illuminate what it was that was important and valuable about what we were gazing at.

Everyone left the musuem with much better educated eyes than when we entered, that's for certain!

Museum highlights: for Heidi, seeing Ramses II's, (tubby) Queen Hatshepsut's and Seti's mummified remains and the gilded wooden set of boxes enclosing Tutatkhamun's coffin and his solid gold inner sarcophagus; for Lee, it was a room full of minature dioramas of everyday life -- carved figurines engaged in everything from brewing beer and herding cattle to sailing fully-rigged Nile River ships -- and the elaborate burial paraphenalia associated with Tutatkamon's mummified remains. There was also that fascinating room filled with mummified animals -- pets and food supplies and votive offerings preserved, like the pharaohs whose tombs they shared, for eternity!

Following a late lunch at a very refined Lebanese restaurant on the GIza side of the Nile, we headed out to the airport for our flight south to Luxor. Enroute we stopped for pictures at the incredibly elaborate residence (modeled on an Indian Hindu tmeple) built by the Belgium Baron Edouard Empain, credited with initiating the construction of Heliopolis on the outskirts of the city in the early twentieth century.

We'll be back in Cairo for three days at the end of our tour to visit even more of the city's sites, very much looking forward to experiencing more of its delights as well.

This evening we are ensconced in the Nile Palace Hotel on the banks of the Nile in Luxor, very much anticipating our visits to Luxor Temple and Karnak tomorrow morning, our first "on site" encounters with the artifacts and remains of the real Ancient Egypt.

An Afternoon at Leisure

Our New York City - Cairo EgyptAir flight went well and delivered us an hour or so early. After clearing immigration and customs, the twelve or thirteen of us on the plane met Ibraham Tara, our Egytologist guide, for the short ride to the Iberotel Le Passage Heliopolis hotel where we will spend out first night in Egypt before flying on to Luxor tomorrow afternoon.

Not that we are really integrated into Egyptian society out here on the edge of the airport. There are Egyptian families staying here, we suspect celebrating the conclusion of Ramadan; however, the atmosphere is otherwise "just like home." In fact we spent much of the afternoon poolside, soaking up the sun, snacking and swimming beneath a sunny sky spotted with (unexpected) white, fluffy clouds.

On our descent into the Cairo airport, we did pass over the Nile Delta, a green patchwork quilt surrounding clumps of sand-colored villages, the same color of the desert on the horizon.

And at the pool, one family group included two young women dressed to swim in tight-fitting unitards covering them from neck to foot, over which each wore a cotton pinafore-like tunic. Their heads and long hair were stuffed into swim caps as well. But once in the water they appeared to enjoy themselves every bit as much as the young European women across from them wearing hardly anything at all! Talk about cultural dissonance!

Orientation followed by a Welcome Dinner constitutes the extent of this evening's activities. We'll head off the bed thereafter and should emerge in the morning all bright eyed and bushy tailed and ready to go!

Along the High Line in New York City

[This blog post is out of order, since Lee didn't complete the video editing portion of the entry until we had already arrived in Egypt. The post deals with events of Monday, September 21, 2009 but wasn't posted until Thursday evening, September 24, 2009.]

We're ready to leave for Cairo aboard our early evening EgyptAir flight, but before we go here's a look at one of the highlights of our morning in Manhattan: a YouTube video created from Lee's digital pictures from our walk along the fairly new, recently opened High Line elevated walkway -- A video first (created using PICASA)!

A Little Bit of Italy

Our flight out of Hopkins was delayed a bit this afternoon, held up, in part, by Air Force One ferrying President Obama in to or out of JFK around the time we were set to leave Cleveland. We nonetheless managed to make up the twenty minutes we sat on the tarmac and the earlier twenty minute departure delay, arriving in New York City ten minutes early!

Our accomodations at the Hilton Garden Inn at the airport's edge are quite satisfactory but VERY isolated from anything and everything available in the surrounding area.

Not wanting to just sit in our room all evening, we ventured out (at $15.00 each way by hired livery service -- not even taxis available 'round here!) to a local Italian restaurant in nearby Howard Beach.

La Nora turned out to epitomize Sicilian Mafia Italian ambiance -- and the food was really quite good. Since we arrived rather early for dinner, we walked around the neighborhood, Heidi feeling quite outside her element.

But as we settled in for a leisurely dinner under the watchful eye of the head waiter (whose recitation of the evening's specials emerged directly from THE GODFATHER), we relaxed a bit and got into the mood of the place. We decided to treat the whole experience as if it were a replay of a dinner date before Junior Prom in high school!

It worked! We even lingered over a scrumptious desert, amaretto-drenched, small macaroon-like cookies decorating a custard-filled and layered white cake served on a plate drizzled with raspberry puree and real whipped cream, served with cups of decaf coffee.

Tomorrow morning we hope to add some more adventures to our brief layover in the Big Apple with a quick run into the city after an early breakfast ...

Ready to Go!

We're all packed; our boarding passes have been printed out; we've checked the schedule for the Rapid to the airport -- we're all set: Egypt, here we come!

To tide our faithful readers over until our next report (and to test out Lee's means of adding a large set of pictures to the blog using the Rock You web site), here's a short slide show of the seasonal changes taking place in our backyard garden during the Spring and Summer of 2009.

Enjoy!

Our Itinerary

So, what lies ahead?

Heidi and Lee fly out of Cleveland to JFK in New York City shortly after 1:00 p.m. on Monday, September 21, 2009. We'll stay overnight near the airport and hope to be able to get into the city the next morning for brunch and to walk along the new High Line elevated park along the west side of Manhattan.

We leave for Cairo on EgyptAir at 6:00 p.m. on Tuesday, arriving around noon the following day. Thursday morning, following a visit to the Egyptian Museum, we fly on to Luxor for three nights.

Then comes a three night Nile cruise during which we'll stop off at several sites along the river before landing in Aswan. During our three days here we hope to be able to get to Abu Simbel further south, but that may be impossible (reservations for that day trip had to have been made forty-five days in advance, long before we signed on to the tour).

Our last three nights we'll be back in Cairo. On our return to the USA we'll stop overnight again in NYC, arriving back in Cleveland on Wednesday, October 7, 2009 in the early evening.

Here's a brief OAT video describing what we will be seeing along the way and a more detailed itinerary for those interested in findng out more ...

There you have it. Keep abreast of what we are up to during our tour by checking back here periodically for comments and photographs of our experiences. [And, by the way, Lee's replacement HP Mini 110 arrived this morning and works just fine.]

A Frustrating Day

It all began, actually, on Thursday. In early summer, while getting ready to leave for a visit to Toronto and Niagara-on-the-Lake, we realized Rocco, our big black alpha male cat, was not doing well. We ended up at the vets, and Rocco ended up being boarded there until our return. Lots of phone calls back and forth during our travels made it a bit difficult to completely lose ourselves in the vacation experience. Well, wouldn't you know, Thursday morning we noticed Gracie, Rocco's small and ditsy sister, had a swollen cheek and needed to be taken in to have what turned out to be an abscess lanced. Now we're giving her a series of antibiotic squirts of medicine to keep infection at bay; hopefully, she'll be A-OK by Monday ... That was Frustration Number One.

Then, around midnight on Thursday, Lee decided his new HP Mini netbook computer was, indeed, "broken." This following innumerable crashes and freezes, some of which occurred even before the XP operating system booted up, all of which appeared totally random, none of which didn't seem to take place in the midst of some "important" operation.

So he got on the phone right then to call HP Tech Support (which is supposedly available 24/7). After spending thirty-six minutes on hold, however, he gave up and went to bed.

Returning to the task early this morning, he got through quickly to Mohamed who quickly agreed to send a replacement. He needed to obtain his supervisor's agreement, though, and he (the supervisor) wouldn't be in the office for another two hours!

Mohamed promised to call back around 8:30 a.m. -- which he did. When connected through to a representative to conclude the process, however, the VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) connection (with India?) was so bad it broke off in mid-conversation. Mohamed got back to me fairly fast, thankfully, but the connection problems persisted as I was passed from representative to representative.

At long last, after a second dropped call, someone who really knew what she was doing called directly using an 800 number and eventually straightened everything out efficiently and competently. Lee's replacement should arrive by noon tomorrow -- and the recalcitrant machine is on its way back to HP as well.

The basic problem wasn't proceedure nor personnel but rather poor communication dependent on a really bad VOIP interface. We just hope lightning doesn't strike twice in the same place and that the laptop arriving on Saturday works as advertised.

Meanwhile Heidi was fighting her own communication battles, trying to ascertain how to deal with a significant reduction in her Social Security pension due to her now drawing one from PERS (Ohio's Public Employee Retirement System) as well. She'd been at this for nine months, working to get things straightened out, and yesterday found out that she had been "overpaid" throughout that entire period and so needed to refund the overpayment to the government now that the corrected amount had been determined. To say the least, she wasn't a happy camper after THAT conversation!.

And her cold, while less debilitating than previously, still hasn't gone away.

Later in the day, Lee tried locating a download version of Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet ballet music as recorded by Micheal Tilson-Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra (which he had listened to while motoring out to the vets with Gracie). That version, turns out, is among the very few not available on iTunes ...

Fortunately the day ended on a better note. We were able to take a nice, long, leisurely stroll around Horseshoe Lake this afternoon, taking full advantage of today's gorgeous, clear, sunny and cool early Fall weather.

Otherwise all is on track for our Monday departure ...

In Anticipation

[This entry is being composed on my brand new HP Mini netbook computer. The keyboard will take a bit of getting used to, and I'm hoping the constant seizures the machine has been experiencing are all due to the Norton Antivirus software (which, this time around, I have turned off for the duration as an experiment).]

One of the best things about traveling is how the experience alters one's perceptions or, rather, turns "imaginings" into "realities." And, of course, much of what we imagine to be true about a place, what we anticipate finding, turns out to be totally wrong, even wrongheaded.

Unfortunately much of the time we forget what we once thought to be true, what we anticipated we would find, as those misperceptions are replaced by more accurate understandings. So Lee thought he would set down some of what he expects to find while visiting Egypt before he actually does, so that he can amass a template against which to measure actual changes as a consequence of his on-the-spot experiences.

Already he has experienced some image transformations. He read Alaa Al Aswany's novel The Yacoubian Building (a great read, by the way!), picturing in his mind's eye the entire time a kind of nineteen-thirties style Europeanized setting, a bit run down and old fashioned, as the background for this multifaceted view of life in contemporary Cairo. Then he and Heidi watched a DVD of the film adaptation, and he was surprised by how up-to-date the city and its inhabitants appeared to be. The apartments shown in the film were quite chic and nicely furnished; the clothing people wore appeared quite modern, well made and comfortably worn by the city's residents. Cairo didn't even seem all that dusty!

In India Lee was surprised to find the population much more content than he would have thought they would be; he wonders if Egypt will be the same despite all the corruption, poverty and lack of economic development. Will he find contemporary Egyptian culture at all interesting? ... at all connected to its ancient past? He expects Islamic fundamentalism to be somewhat in evidence and relations between Islam and other religious orientations, somewhat tense.

He anticipates the begging and solicitation by touts to be on par with that encountered in India -- will we be able to wander around on our own without being inundated by either or both? The poverty should be less dismal; the expression of wealth, more muted.

We'll survive the heat, he's certain. We won't be "templed" to distraction as we visit one religious site after another, but inspired by the grandeur encountered. The food will present some nice surprises. We'll be able to put together the influences of the past with present day echoes and will catches glimpses, at least, of images and ideas that illustrate the ongoing history of the country under Greek, Roman, Persian, Turkish and Ottoman rule. We'll learn something about Coptic Christian traditions and a bit about the impact of Islam on modern Egyptian life.

We're really anticipating an eye-opening educational experience, one from which we'll learn to appreciate more than ever a different way of organizing the human experience (as Wade Davis -- our "best of the summer" discovery -- might have put it).

Getting Up to Speed

"When you think of ... , what comes to mind?" is the kind of question Lee asks students new to the study of any particular history and/or culture. It's the kind of question meant to make concrete all those vague images and influences that have embedded themselves in one's memory bank over the years, comprising the impact of the past on one's present state of understanding. Even when one doesn't think there are any such images or influences lingering in the mind, there inevitably are, and acknowledging them goes a long way towards providing the opportunity to deepen them, alter them or abandon them altogether.

So when Lee thinks of "Egypt," what comes to his mind? Well, the pyramids and the Sphinx, for sure, the iconic images everyone associates with this part of the world -- and all those huge statues of various pharaohs in front of grand pillared temple ruins.

Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor's CLEOPATRA; the Suez Canal, Cairo, the library in Alexandra, the Nile River; King Tut and crowded museum exhibits of objects from his tomb; the beauty of Nefertiti; Shakespeare's ANTHONY AND CLEOPATRA and the Roman history associated with her other conquests, Julius Caesar and Pompey.

Perhaps the strongest association, however, is with Erich von Daniken's The Chariot of the Gods from the late 1960s, a book which posited extraterrestrial influence at work in the construction of the pyramids (and similar structures in Latin America and elsewhere).

All in all, Egypt, its history and culture, seems both pretty exotic and VERY remote, historically and otherwise.

So what has our pre-trip preparation done to help us move beyond these common shared stereotypes and to get us ready for the experiences ahead? Has it added any meat to the bone of our pre-existing images and sketchy ingrained memories from times past?

But wait. Maybe this is not something we should be worrying about at all. Surely it would be tempting simply to let everything "just happen," allowing visits to all those temples and tombs and everything else just to wash over us, in the end resulting only in the ability to say, "Oh, yeah. I was in Egypt once. Interesting place!"

But the effort,we're sure, WILL prove worthwhile. Our tour to India last December showed us the real power of travel to alter one's perceptions of a culture and a people dramatically. Our visit to Egypt will likely have the same effect. And being prepared to take it all in should make a huge difference in our abilities to absorb what we encounter.

In this respect, having a basic handle on chronology, the names of the sites to be visited and of historically important figures helps, no doubt. So does an understanding of the sequence involved in the rediscovery of Ancient Egypt initiated by Napoleon in the eighteenth century and continued thereafter into the present by a whole host of historically important persons. We hope we have developed a basic appreciation of what to expect culturally while "in country" as well.

One of our most useful resources in gaining this appreciation of the possibilities which lie ahead has been John Anthony West's The Traveler's Key to Ancient Egypt. West examines each site we will visit, describing everything we're likely to encounter in great detail. More importantly, he provides context -- religious, cultural, historical, theoretical. Introductory chapters provide a chronological overview, an introduction to Egyptology, and a discussion of religious symbolism filled with insightful observations, useful comparative analogies and fruitful links between past and present realities.

Even given all the DVDs we've watched, the books we've read and the photographs we've studied, there's still much too much to absorb, especially if one were to attempt to expand one's interests to include a consideration of, for example, Coptic Christianity or Islamic Art or the impact on Egyptian culture of Greece and Rome (and vice versa). But we think we have enough to go on at this point to make our experiences fruitful, entertaining and educational.

After all, isn't travel supposed to broaden the mind, warm the soul and enhance one's appreciation of the human condition?

Harvest Time

A week or so ago, while talking with our German daughter about recent events in our busy lives over the course of the preceding summer, Annika commented that we really appeared to be enjoying "Harvest Time" -- by which she clearly meant much more than a glorious season of Autumn weather.

We feel fortunate, indeed, that we now have the time and resources and good health needed to enjoy all the travel opportunities we have had (and plan to have) during the course of our "golden years." We're blessed as well to have reached this stage of life surrounded by friends and family willing to follow our adventures as we gallivant about this wonderful world of ours.

And so, off we go! Ancient Egypt, here we come!

This time our destination turned up quite unexpectedly. We very much enjoyed our tour last December to India under the auspices of Overseas Adventure Travel (OAT) and eagerly perused their catalogs as they piled up day after day in our "snail mail" letterbox seeking out some trip to take in 2009. Eventually we settled on a Grand Circle Cruse Adventure from Athens to Istanbul through the Greek Isles, only to find the entire season sold out by the time we tried to make reservations in early Spring of 2009. Our alternative was to plan to drive up to Nova Scotia in September to revisit some of Heidi's ancestral stomping grounds (her mother's family left New England to settle there sometime around the time of the Revolutionary War, not returning to the Boston area until generations later).

Along the way, however, we discovered that OAT offered "last minute deals" on tours with open spaces a month or so before their schedule departure dates. So, in late August, Lee began to visit the OAT web site in hopes of picking up a couple of spots on the Greek Isles trip we had missed out on earlier.

One did come up; but, although we called within hours, it had disappeared by the time we tried booking it. Heidi then sat down with the OAT catalog and flagged all those trips coming up in September and/or October that we might like to avail ourselves of should one become available.

Lee began checking the web site every day around 10:00 a.m. when, it seemed, new possibilities turned up on the "last minute deal" list.

And so it was that, when the CAIRO AND THE ETERNAL NILE RIVER tour appeared, we were able to jump at the opportunity and secure two spots on this upcoming fifteen day adventure beginning September 21, 2009.

Of course, whereas we spend almost a year preparing for our trip to India, now we REALLY have had to scramble to get ourselves up to speed on the history of Ancient Egypt as quickly as we could. Fortunately, we have found a wealth of resources readily accessible, everything from guide books and historical overviews, translated novels and associated film adaptations, detailed web sites and archeological surveys to a host of great National Geographic / Discovery Channel / BBC documentaries on DVD available from Netflix and our local library.

Since Egypt's climate is not unlike India's, we haven't had to do much clothes shopping this time around (aside from Lee's need to find a good-looking and comfortable summer straw hat); but we decided we needed to take along a guide book or two (keeping track of three thousand years of Egyptian history is totally impossible otherwise, believe me!) and, since the small net-book laptop computer I borrowed from the History Department at Cleveland State University last time isn't available, we broke down and purchased one of our own. Otherwise everything else seems to be falling nicely into place. We even got a good deal on our air tickets to New York City the day before our EgyptAir flight leaves for Cairo.

We have had to scramble a bit to finish up some local projects (or to postpone them 'til later in the year). In her role as Plymouth Church liason with a local Cleveland elementary school, Heidi will be delivering some sixty backpacks filled with school supplies to Buckeye-Woodland School this Thursday. Lee is finishing up an encyclopedia entry on the Immigration Act of 1924 for inclusion in a multi-volume encyclopedia on the Asian American Historical Experience. Our 2004 Honda needs new brakes, and the front yard garden design project has been put on hold. Otherwise we're close to being ready to go.

Heidi does have a really bad cold, unusual for her; but we have six days to go before departure. Maybe we need to get flu shots before we leave? Nah, that can wait as well ...

Instead we may well spend much of the upcoming week enjoying "Harvest Time" in our backyard garden retreat.