Ich bin ein Wiener

So I do not have enough time to touch on everything but here is a quick summary of what we have been doing for the last week:

Well last time I posted I was 40 minutes from leaving Egypt. Now I have been in Vienna for almost a week and the living is easy! The taxi ride to the airport was a nice summary: black cab, nothing working, engine struggling with the weight of our bags, 100 degrees, dripping sweat and having our driver blow smoke back into our faces. In the end though, I am very happy with our trip and do not regret it at all. Many of the people we have met so far are amazed that we did the trip so it has been a good conversation topic. We spent one night at Pension Dr. Geissler which was actually very nice and rather than having culture shock we had culture reversion. We had pizza and beer in the street. You can see some pictures of where we stayed below.

Pension Dr. Geissler

Pretty nice, but no wi-fi...

In front of the Basilica

The next day at one we met up with IES at the station Hütteldorf. From there, we left to Mariazell. It is a couple hours away in the Alps and you can learn about the history of the town here. It was fun meeting everyone but was basically orientation freshmen year all over again. At least I had Jack though. And our last names are close enough that we ended up in the same room in the hostel. This was a good thing because I would not have wanted to share a queen with a stranger for 3 nights. One day we went to the Erlaufsee and went on a peddle boat and hung out on some grass for a couple hours. The next day we went into town to see the Basilica. The highlight of the weekend had to be the “Classic Austrian Celebration” that we had. It was a bunch of men in Lederhosen dancing around and chopping wood. We even learned how to dance a step or two and after they were done they served us some homemade honey schnapps.

With David and Jean. David is actually one of my suitemates

The town

Inside, very much different from Egypt. Jack and I never really said "Wow" in a mosque like we did when we stepped into this church.

The view from the Hostel. And what is that in the background?? Could it be a mountain with trees? You have no idea how nice the drive was from Vienna to Mariazell after being in a desert for two weeks.

Our place in Vienna is very nice. I have taken a couple pictures to give you a sense of the place. I have 6 suitemates and share a double with Jack. So there are two doubles, a triple, a kitchen, one bathroom and a living room. It is by far the best apartment IES offers so we really lucked out. It is also nearby the Naschmarkt, the largest open air market in Vienna (think of Pike Place Market). It is probably where I will buy all my fruits and vegetables and cheese and bread. We also just bought some knock off jerseys there today for Rapid Wien. I also saw a Muller jersey but they did not have my size! Maybe they will get it in the next four months. That would be awesome.

Right when you walk in

Kitchen, connected to the bathroom on the left and through the bathroom is our room.

The bathroom, the toilet is in a different room off the entrance

The triple

Our living room

Our room

For the next three weeks we have intensive German. I am in Intermediate II so the professor only speaks German and that is all we are allowed to speak as well. It is a little difficult but should be very helpful in learning German. It is also the smallest class for some reason. We had 15 the first day, but 4 dropped down and 2 went up and then today after our first test 2 more want to drop it.

Okay, I am heading off to be social and continue to make friends and do things the city has to offer while it is so nice out. Next Monday there is a free outside showing of Don Giovanni by the Norwegian National Orchestra and Opera. I am definitely going to that, especially since I studied it last year in Humanities.

A day to reset and many thanks

Yesterday we woke up at 9:30 and went downstairs to catch the very end of breakfast. The plan for the day was the sound and light show but we did not have to leave for that until 7:30 PM. We spent the day like Egyptians. Lounging in the cool indoors and only leaving for errands and lunch at 3. I had to go to the bank one last time and Jack needed to buy some ties for Vienna. Much of the morning and afternoon was spent getting everything in order. I have now retired my sweaty, dirty and heavily used Lonely Planet book for a brand new Vienna one. If that is not a perfect analogy for Jack and I, I do not know what is. Once we could go no further with our packing we laid down to watch some How I Met Your Mother. We now only have one episode left in Season 5 and I have no idea what we are going to watch. Our friend Paul recommended a show called Dorm Life and we watched the first episode yesterday. It was terr…wait for it…ible, terrible. Maybe I will start Mad Men but do it in a better fashion then my Dad who watched the first episode of season one, read the summaries of all the other episodes and then watched the finale. Sometimes I wonder if the $10 a month for Megavideo is worth it.

Random tangents aside, we left our hotel at 7:30 for the pyramids. Our last night on the town in Cairo and it had an odd symmetry to it. We had the same driver as the first night and he was still as reckless as we remembered him. We also were going to the place where we spent our first day to listen to a history that would recap our entire trip. The show was basically like the last day of the class before a final when the professor recaps everything. It was hard to get a good picture, but I made an attempt. The sound and light show was also one of the cheesiest events I have ever been a part of. The Sphinx narrates history as he has seen it to what is supposed to be epic sounding music. One of my favorite quotes was, “Man fears time…but time fears… THE PYRAMIDS!!” (and queue loud music as all the pyramids light up). It was cool to think about the powerful men and women throughout history who had stood and looked at the same pyramids we were looking at then: All the pharaohs, Alexander the Great, Ceasar, Antony and Cleopatra, and Napoleon. Furthermore, seeing these impressive feats of man light up at night was an experience I will never forget. If you were to ask me whether I would go to the light show again, I would probably say no but would definitely encourage someone who has never been to see it for themselves.

After the show, we headed off to dinner in Zamalek the supposedly ritzy part of Cairo. It is located on a rather large island in the middle of Cairo and has wide variety of restaurants and ahwas. We chose Abou El Sid and the ambience of the place was perfect for out last night. We walked through massive doors into a dim light, sheesha filled room with people in couches and large comfy chairs sprawled out across the space. Along the walls hung pictures of Egyptian icons and the second we walked in Jack and I looked at each other with smiles on our faces; we had found a perfect spot to eat for our last night.

Once done eating we hailed a cab and went to Khan al Khalili to purchase some tiny tokens. We arrived at 11:30 and the area was packed. The whole city was a madhouse and the traffic was almost worse then when we had been outside earlier. I took a couple pictures but again you really cannot capture the degree to which Cairo is alive at midnight with just one photo. The whole city appeared as if a football game had just gotten out. Jack and I were planning to just buy something and head back to the hotel, but the scale of it all kept us out past one. The one disappointing aspect was the lack of haggling. Yes I lowered the guy I bought my pyramid from by 20 EGP( 35 EGP to 15 EGP) but that did not take long at all. They all have prices in their head and so many people around that they do not bother arguing over smaller prices. He just said 15 EGP for one. I said what about 20 EGP or even 25 EGP for two pyramids and he shook his head and said his price again. I must say the longest back and forth I had was with the taxi driver in Luxor at the airport. That was much more fun. We left at 1:10 with two pyramids, two shot glasses and an Egyptian jersey for Jack. I had wanted to buy an elephant statue but they really did not have anything I liked. Back at the hotel we talked to friends and family for a while and then conked out.

We woke up this morning, ate and finished packing. I am writing this 40 minutes before we have to leave the hotel and will not have Internet for a while. The next time you will hear from either one of us we will be in Vienna. I had an amazing time here in Egypt and I think Jack would agree. We accomplished everything we set out to accomplish and my final cost (I kept track of it in Excel as we went along) was $1,653.9. That could be off by +/- $5, but the nevertheless a price I am very happy with since our goal was somewhere between $1500 and $2000. I would like to thank everyone for following the blog over the last two weeks. I know I was longwinded at times and understand if paragraphs were given second priority over pictures. I hope the blog gave you at least some insight into our travels and what is like to go to a Muslim country with a UGE amount of historical significance. As the title indicates, the blog will continue in Vienna but not to the same degree as it has in Egypt. Thank you again and a very big thanks to my parents for paying for the plane ticket that allowed me to have this experience of a lifetime. This is all one story that I will not forget.

And as for the last nutrition section:

We wanted something easy for lunch so we got Chinese food again and it was decent. Probably could have gone some place better but we were feeling lazy. But dinner was the big one: I ordered the Egyptian National Dish which is Chicken Molekheya. It is chicken over rice with a lentil soup and a dipping sauce. I went for it since it was our last night and it did not really pay off. The chicken was good and the dipping sauce not bad but I could really not handle the soup. I had five spoonfuls before I decided I could not have any more. The texture of it was so gross. Haha, at least I made the attempt but kind of paid for it this morning when I woke up with a little bit of a stomach ache. This trip really did have a nice symmetry to it…

Back to the Egyptian Museum

I woke up a little earlier than normal because of the slightly earlier bedtime that stemmed from Mt. Sinai exhaustion. Jack was not awake so I just messed around on the internet and tried to catch up on current events. It is weird having looked at the market and news sites for hours everyday this summer and then coming here and after two weeks be completely out of the loop. Technology helps alleviate some of issues but it cant help with the time difference. Jack eventually woke up and after showering we went downstairs for some breakfast. It was the same as usual although we no longer eat the fruit and they make comments about it now. The two ladies that always run breakfast are very nice and they joke around with us now since we have been around for two weeks.

We blogged a little bit and then headed off to the metro. The plan was to go to the Egyptian Muesum, eat lunch and then go for a felucca ride. I kind of let my guard down at the metro station and led us onto the train going the wrong direction. Oh well, we ended up where we wanted to go with the only cost being time lost. At the Museum we walked through some of the rooms Jack had missed on the ground floor and then headed upstairs. The Museum acts as a big empty warehouse that is organized by time period. It is shocking to see some of the ancient artifacts just shoved into a corner with no description or anything on them. The main thing on the ground floor we saw was the Amarna Room which houses Nefertiti’s bust. Apparently a better version of her face exists in the Berlin Museum. After her room we wandered upstairs and into the King Tut area. Everything they found in his tomb they brought to the museum except for the outer sarcophagus and the mummy itself. Some of the stuff we saw was astounding. His mask weighed about 25 pounds and was pure gold. His smaller sarcophagus (they have four) was also pure gold and weighed almost 250 pounds. They had some jewelry along with a myriad of other items. Outside the official King Tut gallery, they have four chambers of gilded wood. These supposedly fit inside each other (they got progressively smaller) and inside the last one they put his outer sarcophagus. For more information about King Tut and the tomb you can check out this link. 

Near King Tut’s gallery there are other rooms housing items found in more completely intact rooms. They are described as the second best archaeological finds to King Tut’s tomb. They were still very interesting to look at. We proceeded to walk through rooms until we reached the animal mummy room. There we saw cats, dogs, crocodiles, birds and many other animals. We read there were four types of animal mummies: food during eternal life, offerings, pets and sacred animals. These were kind of cool but I have decided that mummies in general are just gross.

Once we left the animal mummy room we went to the human mummy room that holds some of the most famous pharaohs. They have Ramses II, Seti I, Hatshepsut and some others. One of them had died in battle and you could see some of the battle wounds. Most still had hair but Jack pointed out the only one with eyelashes. The caption for Hatshepsut’s was actually really funny. It read some along the lines of, “Here lies an obese woman with bad teeth found in a side room in the Valley of the Kings. It was later determined she was Hatshepsut.” We spent some time looking at each mummy and it was worth the extra money we paid but I do not think I ever need to see that room again.

After the mummies, we saw some models that had been built long ago in Ancient Egypt. They showed armies and also more trivial things such as fishing. Jack immediately started quoting Lord of the Rings and 300 once he saw the model armies and pretended to have a sword. I really hope his kids have an imagination as big as his and he has a backyard large enough to accommodate it.

We went back downstairs to the Graeco-Roman period and at this point Jack realized he had lost his sunglasses. He searched around for him but could not find them. It was frustrating and he just gave up looking so we could move on. The best part about the Greek period was seeing Greek looking men in pharaoh’s headdress. The imagery just does not work, I am sorry. Near this area there is also a stone very similar to the Rosetta Stone. It has three languages and has been used to help decipher hieroglyphs. It also is a perfect example of how crowded the museum is. Here they have a stone almost as famous as the Rosetta Stone and you would completely miss it unless you knew to look for it. And as with every description in the building, it looks like it was typed with a typewriter 50 years ago.

We left the museum planning to get food but Ramadan got in the way of our original plans. We went to three different places that were all closed until finally we ended up at Felfela for the fourth time. I took some pictures that showed the place since we ate there so many times. On the way to Felfela we met a man who could be summed up perfectly as a jerk. He had no motive but to insult and make fun of American Travelers. He was from Australia and told us how it was better than America and proceeded to ask us about how much money we were paying for stuff etc. Of course, after every price we told him, he would just laugh and tell us what poor judgment we had. It was quite annoying.

Felfela from out table we got every time

Once we were done eating we headed off to do a felucca ride. We were looking for Dok Dok, a place recommended by Lonely Planet. It was supposed to be a 15-20 minute walk from where we were but on our way we ran into an aged man who spoke fluent English. It turned out to be a complete scam so let me take some time to explain the entire thing.

“Hey, my friend how are you? Where are you from?” Translation: Hey sucker, look over here, spend some time talking to me and let me try and scam you. One thing we have learned here in Cairo is anyone who starts off with “Hey, my friend” is anything but your friend. We responded by telling him we were from America. He immediately jumped up, welcomed us and started telling us his life story. He had visited many places in America, including Minneapolis, his son lived in Tulsa Oklahoma, his daughter was getting married the next day and he was the art director for the museum nearby. Jack and I kind of laughed but he insisted showing us his office so he could at least give us his business card since he loved America so much. We made the main mistake of following him. I should point out it is very very hard to say no to these guys. So we sat down in his “office” that turned out to just be a papyrus store and we met his son and his daughter (the one apparently getting married). As the tea was being made he said we should take a look at some of the pictures he has been working on so he could just tell us the stories. He also asked for our names so he could write them out in Arabic. Jack and I just laughed as he went through the pictures and did not say anything. Eventually he said to just tell him which one’s we “maybe” liked and he would give them to us for free. If we wanted to we could pay for the material cost of making the paintings. So we chose a couple, he told us the stories and then asked which ones we liked. We told him and he immediately picked them up and gave them to his daughter to write our names on them in Arabic. Again we made the mistake of not stopping him since he had told us they were free. As his daughter wrote our names he asked if we wanted to make an easy 3000 euros in Vienna selling his Papyrus paintings. He said we could just bring them to someone he knew and would make an instant profit. We said we had no room but he continued to pester us with why we did not want to make any money. At this point I started getting suspicious. We had already been scammed once in Luxor and although I wanted the papyrus then I did not want anymore. Once the names had dried and we had drank the tea he gave us the paintings and pulled out his calculator. He said to put the paintings in our bag and to type out in the calculator how much we thought the material cost was and were willing to give him for his daughter’s wedding. He even brought over his daughter so we could give the money straight to her. Jack was first up and I started saying we could not give that much. Jack put in 20 USD. The guy immediately told us to look around the shop at the paintings. He pointed out the prices of over $100 and said that $20 was ridiculous. The real price was $40 for the materials. This is when I decided I was not paying a thing. I pulled out the paintings and gave them back to him. He said he had no use for them since my name was on them. Meanwhile he took the $20 that Jack had offered. I became angry and reminded him he said it was free. He said no no no, and that he had said we had to pay the material cost. I started lying to him and told him I had a close Egyptian friend who said not to pay more than 20 EGP for a papyrus painting. The man thought this was preposterous since my friend did not see the special work he was doing on each painting. I kept lying and told him I had no money and kept also bringing my fake Egyptian friend. He then gave me a lecture of how unsuccessful I was going to be because I could not trust people who were just genuinely trying to help me. He went on to say that people like me are everything that is wrong with America. Americans bunch all Egyptians in same bad group. He claimed to be a millionaire and that his son owned 2 million EGP and that he really did not care about money. He then told his son to open the door in Arabic. He said his whole purpose was to show us how Egyptians could be nice and share a bond with Americans. He ended by telling us to finish our tea and get out. During his lecture he had taken my paintings back which he had just told us he had no use for. I told him if he gave me his business card and the paintings free I would write something nice about his shop when I got back to America. He did not like this trade but still gave us his business card. I guess money really did matter to him. And his business card by the way says “Broker” on the back and has nothing about being an art director. Nothing he said was true. There is no way his daughter was getting married (why would she be serving us tea?) and there is no way he was a millionaire art director (why would he be in such a crappy shop?). And there was just absolutely no way the material cost for the paintings was $40 (more than the other papyrus shops we had been in). It was a trap and a scam and I was not going to give him any money. I ended up with a free thing of tea but wasted half an hour of my time. Jack was not as fortunate as he added to his papyrus collection and spent $20. And I left thinking that if I have a gut instinct that tells me when something or someone is a fraud then I will be more successful then the Egyptian would ever be. I had just read the Big Short a couple of days before and the main message was that if something appears too good to be true it almost always is. It was freed and the belief that you can get something for nothing that got the entire world into trouble. I was not going to let that happen to me in this man’s shop. The next book I plan on reading is by Benjamin Graham entitled the Intelligent Investor. The main principle of the book is value investing (now commonly associated with Warren Buffet). Value investing tells you to control the downside and let the upside take care of itself. In that shop, I was listening to this advice and controlling the downside by not spending any excessive money on this man’s scam. I should point out that he was fluent in at least Japanese and German and I assume many more languages. I wondered how many people had fallen for his tricks. The whole thing put me in a pretty bitter mood. No only had he insulted me and attempted to lecture me but he also insulted America. You just should not insult me and my country to my face and expect me to pay you any money at all. I have pride in my country and as many Egyptians have told us this trip and as I strongly believe, Obama is good. Luckily for me, the only thing that would make me feel better was exactly what we had planned to do: taking a felucca our and sailing on the Nile.

I just love getting out on the water and feeling the breeze. I find it incredibly peaceful and relaxing, especially when I am not the one who has to do the sailing (Captain Aswan did that for us). Out on the Nile no one could honk at us and no one could hassle us. It was the perfect feeling, as you can see from the pictures. We were out for about an hour and then came back in. We made our way back to the hotel (fortunately without any incidents) and relaxed until dinner. For dinner, we decided to go back to a place we had been before called El Geish. We both ordered chicken and afterwards headed to the hotel. We thought about getting tea since Jack is now a UGE fan but decided not to. At the hotel, we went on the Internet, blogged and watched some How I Met Your Mother before going to bed.

Our ship and Captain Aswan

Dok Dok in the background

I would like to make a quick shout out to my parents. I think I finally hit the point where I was feeling homesick and I managed to sneak in a quick conversation with them yesterday that really helped. After being in Cairo for almost two weeks, I would do anything for some of my Mom’s French Toast or a steak my Dad grilled in the back yard or even some of Katie’s Mac and Cheese. I still have a while before I can experience those things again, but I think Vienna will be a little closer to what I am used to in that sense. Yes, Europe will be another culture shock but I do believe it will help alleviate some of the general weariness I am starting to feel in Cairo. Do not get me wrong, I have loved my trip and all the experiences I have had, but at this point, I am ready to move on to my next adventure.

Nutrition:

At Felfela we ordered some hummus and finished all of our bread. I just got some pasta because it was cheap and easy. Then at El Geish we had more bread and some chicken. The chicken was very hard to eat because you had to pick through it to find all the meat. When you did find a piece it was good though, as was the rice underneath.

Half Chicken from El Geish

The Mt. Sinai Expedition

     This blog will cover days 10 and 11 in which Jack and went on an adventure to summit Mt. Sinai (Mount Moses in Egypt) and succeeded. And it all started at 5:15 AM… much to early for either one of us to be waking up. I should also preface this by saying I was a lot more sore than I thought I would be when I woke up the morning following the climb and started my day with two ibuprofen.

Our van just to ourselves. We each got a row to sit in to lay down.

     The night before we had watched an episode of How I Met Your Mother (one of our new favorite shows) before heading to bed. I fell asleep before Jack and apparently he stayed up a little longer to talk to his parents. I only got about 6 1/2 hours of sleep and he got about an hour less than that. We packed our backpacks and went downstairs to meet the tour company that was picking us up. We did not really have a breakfast but the tour did provide some snacks in the form of dried fruit and nuts. We finally met Yehia as well and he explained our itinerary to us. Yehia was recommended to us by Hoda who we made contact with through Jack’s uncle. After doing some paper work we headed out. Jack and I were both exhausted for this drive and there is not a whole lot to see on the way from Cairo to Mt. Sinai but there were a couple highlights. The first, an hour and a half in, is the Suez Canal tunnel. For those of you from Seattle, the tunnel is about the length of the I-90 tunnel. You do not actually see the Suez Canal but you do get to go underneath it. Once on the other side we were technically in Asia which I did not know. We followed the coast and so could look out and see part of the Red Sea. I know understand why some people say the Red Sea has the best snorkeling/diving in the world. The water looked really clear and very inviting. After about four hours of closing my eyes and resting but not necessarily sleeping, I started my new book: The Big Short. It is by the same author as Liar’s Poker, Michael Lewis, and it actually helped to read them in that order. Anyways, after 5 ½ hours we made it to Fox Camp. Our drivers dropped us off and then left shortly after. We were not sure what to do so just hung around the camp.

The view for much of the drive.

At times you could see the Red Sea though.

     Fox Camp is located in a very small little town at the foot of the mountain. They do not have air-conditioning but at least have some rooms with mattresses. As you would expect, it was hot and so was our room. The heat made it very difficult to rest so Jack and I sat at tables outside as we read to catch at least a tiny little bit of breeze. They served lunch and afterwards I continued to read. We were able to nap for a short period of time and then went into the cooler breeze again. We had so much free time that I ended up finishing my book, which I thoroughly enjoyed. We also decided to walk around the camp and climb some smaller rocks in preparation for the following morning. Eventually, dinner was served and following that we figured we should try to go to bed. We were in bed for an hour or so when there was a knock on our door. It was our driver and our Bedouin guide. They told us to wake up at 1:30 am and be ready to go at 2 am. We set our alarms and went to bed.

Our very hot room with hard pillows...

We brought a wide variety of chips to try and they were all disgusting. Nothing compared to the spice.

FOX CAMP!! That is the mountain we climbed in the background by the way.

Preparing ourselves for the big climb the next day by conquering smaller mounds of rocks.

Practicing on the sunset with some of the settings.

More practice

     At 1:30 am we woke up and I was actually fairly awake for 1:30 am. We got dressed, went to bathroom and were on our way. Our guide, Musa (the name of the mountain in Arabic actually), led us off into the darkness. The amazing thing about our guide which I will tell you now is that he wore flip flops and smoked 4 cigarettes and a joint on the way up the mountain. I just found this hilarious, except when he would blow smoke and it would come right into my face. The first part of the trip was on asphalt and then we made it onto a relatively flat, rocky trail. There was no one else on the trail with us and the night sky was the clearest I had ever seen it. I saw at least five shooting stars. Before we started on the steeper part of the mountain, we took a break and ate some bread with yogurt. We started up some switchbacks one what I guess was the backside of the mountain. We eventually made it to a ridge and took another break. This is when our guide smoked a joint and became a lot more talkative. Before that point we had pretty much walked in silence and it was a time of reflection with the occasional glance up to the night sky only to remark, “damn…”. We continued on and walked by a camel and started seeing other people. Our path met up with the official camel trail that leads up from St. Katherine’s monastery and there we encountered a whole bunch of people. Our guide told us it was not as much as normal though, due to the fact that the monastery is officially closed on Sunday’s to visitors. I had not even realized that we were climbing Mt. Sinai (probably the most religious mountain in the world) on a Sunday. We did not plan it that way. And actually, if we had been planning it perfectly we would have done it during the huge meteor shower a couple of nights before.

     A quick side note that I thought about as we climbed. Katie and myself have this running joke that time does not exist between the hours of 4 and 6:30 AM. I mostly think this because I am never awake at this period and Katie sometimes wakes up at 6 just so she can work out. I think this is insane which is why I tell her time does not exist at that point so it is forbidden to get up that early. Well I hiked through that period in the day and I found out that it does truly exist. I also found out it shouldn't though.

     The camel trail was basically extended switchbacks that led to a staircase. That is where our guide told us to continue on by ourselves while he waited there until we came down. As we walked up the uneven staircase made of rocks, I was particularly glad my mom had given me such a bright flashlight. Again it proved brighter than some of the other much bigger ones we saw. Our guide told us the staircase would take 10 minutes. It definitely did not. After about 7, we took a break and then continued on. I think in the end it took someplace between 15-20 minutes to get to the top but we got there at the perfect time. We could just begin to see the light from the sun coming over the horizon. We stayed at the summit at a place pretty much by ourselves for half an hour, maybe more. In total, I took 150 pictures during the trip, much of them of the sunrise. When I asked my brother the film major what tips he had for taking pictures of sunrises his response was, “Just put it on manual and play around with the settings”. So that is exactly what I did. I think I used almost every setting I had and toyed with the exposure a bunch. One nice thing about a digital camera is you can always just delete the bad ones later. I think I ended up with some good ones though. I took so many my camera ran out of battery, but dont worry I knew this was going to happen and brought my extra battery with me. One thing I thought was funny at the summit, was right when the sun came over the horizon everyone cheered, as if the sun was not going to rise. We then descended back down to our guide and no longer needed a flash light. It was amazing how different the land looked in a new light.

Before sunrise, I chose this one because you can see the different colors of light

Similar but more landscape.

The sun is going to rise... that way

Nice lighting of Jack as stares off into the distance.

Silhouette

Contemplating at the summit

We did it and the sun is rising! Time for the Sun God pose.

Needed to record the time.

Needed one of myself in the classic pose.

Here comes the sun...

Classic

Needed one more silhouette before we went down

Part of the trails

Another angle

The last little bit to the top looking back down. My response, "We came up that??"

     On the way back, we went a different way down: the Steps of Repentance. I wanted to go down this way because I read it had a much better view of the monastery. Musa told us that it was about 3000 steps and these steps go straight down (as you can see from the pictures). I think Jack did a lot more repenting though because his knees are all screwed up from Tennis. One benefit of not doing a high school varsity sport: you do not mess up your body to the point of needing surgery on your shoulder and knees. Poor Jack though.

Arch in the middle of the Steps of Repentance with our guide in the background

3000 steps is a lot of steps

The monastery

Again so you can get a sense of what is around it: nothing

What we climbed down, as I said it was pretty direct

     We reached the monastery at about 7 am and as our guide said, it was closed to visitors. We could poke our head in quickly though and took a couple pictures of the outside. Our guide wanted us to stay an entire extra day so that we could see the monastery when it was open but we declined. A quick note about the monastery. It traces its founding to 330 AD and became a fully functioning monastery in the 6th century. People around the world visit it because inside they claim to have a descendant of the Burning Bush and because it is considered the oldest continually functioning monastery in the world.

Outside the monastery

     We walked back to Fox Camp (thus completing a full circle around the mountain) and started packing. We missed breakfast but our driver said he would figure something out. Jack and I slept for the first 2 hours until we reached a place that our driver said was food. I think it was the worst meal we have had so far but more on that in the nutrition section.

The place we ate questionable food

     After forcing ourselves to eat we continued on and reached Cairo at about 1:50 PM. We reached our hotel at about 3 PM. Needless to say, Cairo traffic is the worst traffic I have experienced. It was stop and go but has TEN lanes on the busy side of the road. I do not think I have ever seen 10 lanes completely stuck before. At the hotel, we finally got a chance to lay down and relax. I also showered the first time in a while and it felt so very nice. I then talked to Katie for a while and then Jack and I went back to Felfela for a third time. Once again, the streets were empty, as was the Metro station. We could see everyone eating tables lay strewn out on sidewalks across the city. It is amazing what religion can do to a city. Once done with dinner I went back to the hotel and conked out.

Nutrition:

     For lunch at Fox camp we got some bread with this beef concoction. For dinner we received some more bread and beef, but they added some rice.

     We did not order our lunch the second day, they just brought out some bread, eggs, salad, hummus, cheese, carrots and tammiya. Tammiya is a traditional Egyptian food, and it is pretty much beans in a bowl. The food from this outpost in the middle of the desert was not very good. “Traditional” Egyptian food is not actually that good in general. The bread and hummus was not as good as we have had it at other places and the carrots were so salty they did not taste like carrots but rather straight salt. It was all so questionable I took a pepto bismol the second I got back in the car. Felfela was good again, I got lamb cutlets and for desert this time I got some rice pudding. It did not disappoint and made up for the “lunch” we had earlier.