Egypt: Where do I start?

Once again, this blog has gone silent. It's not for a lack of things to post about, it's a lack of time to process everything we've seen and done in these last few months and to find the time to put all those feelings and experiences into words. So I've got a lot of catching up to do. Let's start waaay back in the December: Christmas break.

I'm not sure where to begin with our impression of Egypt. Friends and family that have travelled there before have given it rave reviews. You see Egypt in the movies and it is exotic and bustling, but all those movies are set in the '30s or the time of Lawrence of Arabia. I honestly expected Egypt to be more of what we have grown accustomed to in Saudi Arabia or Kuwait: a little modern, just dusty.

I could not have been more wrong!

It is a lot like the rest of the Middle East in that there is Arabic, mosques, and hijabs everywhere. But it was totally different than the Middle East that we live in because of the stark lack of luxury. Egypt was a lot more Third World than I expected, but I found it kind of refreshing. I walked away intrigued, and I definitely want to go back. I want to plop myself in places around the country and just watch. The whole country was a curiosity to me. I loved it.

The Mister, not so much.

He doesn't like crowds, and Egypt specializes in crowds. Especially in Cairo. The traffic and overcrowding in Cairo was astounding. Tyler said Egypt was like a training session for a trip to India. It felt that crowded.

Here are some of the funny things we saw in Cairo that you just don't see anywhere else in the Middle East:

The Pyramids

Alright, so It's not funny so much as AMAZING, but I had to include a few photos of the Pyramids. Duh. This was our view out our hotel window on the first morning in Egypt. It was foggy. Maybe it was smog. It's unclear.

 We stayed at the Guardian Guest House in Cairo and it was AWESOME! It's not a luxury hotel by any stretch--it's really just a step above a hostel--but it was tied for first as my favorite hotel on our whole trip. The hotel has an unobstructed view of the Pyramids from every window and a rooftop that looks out onto the Pyramids and the Sphinx. I seriously could have sat on that roof every day of our two week vacation and been a happy girl. I cannot recommend the tour company we used, Real Egypt, enough. Samir, the owner, made our vacation amazing and found these little hotels for us that I never would have known about otherwise.

The Sprawl

This is not a photo from 1985 that I found on a Google image search. This is from our vacation in 2014, and most of the cars we saw were rocking the pre-90s look.

According to our tour guides, since the revolution, Cairo has exploded. The city was already the biggest in Egypt before 2011, but after the fall of the government, unregulated building boomed and farmland that used to surround Giza has now turned into unfinished high rises. Apparently you only start to pay tax on your property after the construction is complete, so landlords are just not finishing their buildings while renting out crummy apartments on what used to be a small tract of farm land.

I loved that if you got high enough up in the city, you could always see the Pyramids. I was glad to see that Egyptians were respecting that old no obstructed views ordinance of days or yore.

Side streets with awesomeness

Anthony Bourdain ate at this restaurant. Tyler was super excited.

Ok, to be fair, all major cities have cute side streets with awesomeness, but Cairo's character was especially great. 

I really wanted to go in.

Animals in front of carts...or sometimes on them.

I can only assume this poor guy was on his way to the butcher. Also: Letting your child ride your dead camel to ...uh... anywhere? Apparently that's a thing in Egypt. 

It was not unusual to see donkey-drawn carts on the major highways as well as the small side streets throughout the city of Cairo. Well, mainly on the outer edges, not so much on the deep downtown. It was still unexpected.

People. Everywhere.

Gotta get somewhere? Walk your way in the opposite direction of traffic up the highway exit ramp while texting on your way to meet your taxi bus that is parked ON THE SIDE OF THE HIGHWAY at an unofficial taxi stand/bus stop/place to get into strangers' cars. 

And while you are on your walk up the exit ramp, stop and the makeshift convenience store that is literally propped up against the concrete barrier on the side of the road. 

Pigeon Towers

Pigeoning is a popular hobby in Egypt, especially in Cairo. It was pretty cool, actually. Guys raise their pigeons on these towers on the roofs of their apartments buildings and train them to fly around the city and...do tricks? I'm not certain of that last part, but I did see lots of young men on these towers waving flags and flocks of pigeons flying toward them--ok that sounds totally lame but I promise it looked cool in person.


Moral of the story: I really enjoyed Cairo. Even though it was incredibly polluted and covered in litter, I found the whole city intriguing.

Vicariously yours,

Taif: a photo album, part 3 (there are a lot of parts to this album)

After we saw the Turkish fort, we headed toward an old dam. On the way we saw 2 mosques, this being the first of them. This one was built by a former slave of the Prophet Mohammed named Bilal Ibn Ribah. At least, that's what our tour guide told us. Apparently this was the minaret from which Ribah used to give the athan. He was the first man to give the athan, being instructed to do so by the Prophet.

We went into the minaret.

Looking at this photo now, it looks like these are bullet holes, but I don't think that's the case. I didn't ask our tour guide because I didn't really notice them at the time. I just thought it was normal wear and tear. It probably was.

Dang, I am informative today!

There it is. Just hanging out on the side of the road. All that protects this historically significant site is a chain link fence.

Next we went to a mosque that was built on the site where the angel Gabriel (Gibreel in Arabic) appeared to the Prophet Mohammed, who was basically being attacked by the locals he was trying to convert to Islam. They didn't appreciate his efforts, so they were throwing rocks at him. Gabriel appeared and told the Prophet, and I'm paraphrasing, "I can destroy these people, if they're bothering you." And the Prophet said (again, paraphrasing), "Nah, that's ok. I'll show them mercy because I want them to see the truth."

So anyway, this picture shows the spot where one of the rocks that was being thrown at Mohammed is placed. According to our tour guide, this rock has the imprint of the Prophet's hands (although another local claimed it was his elbow) from where he caught it..or something like that. The story got a big muddled.

Anyway, the Saudis have since covered that rock with concrete because they didn't want it to become a pilgrimage site.

This is what that mosque looked like. I'm a horrible blogger because I did not write down the name of this mosque and have now forgotten it.

Sorry.

I didn't go in, but this is what it looked like inside.

After that we continued on to the dam. At one point, the government built a roadway over this dam so people could cross over it, but then the shabab began using the bridge as a hangout spot and vandalizing it. So the government built a gated fence around the dam and only someone like Dawi, who knows the guard, can get inside the fence.

Unfortunately, the guard wasn't there or something, so we just had to snap photos as best we could from the outside of the fence. 

Basically when I asked what the deal was with this dam, Dawi said, "It's an old dam."

I apologize, readers. I didn't get the details on this old dam. I don't know who built it, I don't know how old it is, I don't know the name of the "river" it is damming. I fail.

Next we went back toward the Taif town center and saw a couple really beautiful houses. This house is called the Katib house because the man who used to live here wrote the first agreement that brought unification between the tribes of Saudi Arabia (thus creating the country we know today). He was basically the contract guy. Dawi said that, essentially,  if you needed any legal documents written up, he was the guy to see. (Katib mean "author" or "writer" in Arabic)

The house was soo colorful and pretty! It was locked up, so we couldn't poke around inside. What an unfortunate waste!! This would be such a cool historical site if it were preserved and open to the public!

Then we went down the street to the Gazzaz house. The Gazzaz family owns perfume and jewelry stores all around the country, but they originated in Taif (land of the roses that are used in many perfumes today). This was their palatial family home. It currently lies abandoned, gutted by a fire several years ago. This house was astoundingly beautiful! Again, what a colossal cultural loss! This house could be a beautiful venue for wedding receptions or business meetings if it were restored. Or it could be a very posh hotel. Such a waste.

We got to poke around a bit because so many of the windows and doors were non existent after the fire. This was the back veranda.

Wouldn't this make a beautiful lobby or dining hall?

The back facade reminded us of something out of Gone With the Wind. It looked like an old plantation house after the Civil War. Echos of its luxurious past were whispering through the scorch marks and creeping vines.

Vicariously yours,

Taif: a photo album, part 2

Our next stop in Taif was a rebuilt Turkish fort. Like so many other things we saw on this trip, the fort was just hanging out on the side of the highway. This one had been completely rebuilt ("restored") by the government a few years ago using the same stones or stones from the surrounding area.

Upon entering the fort, we were surrounded by graffiti. So anticlimactic.

No ramps, no plaques, nothing to explain the history. It was like the government just rebuilt the fort, clapped the dust off their hands, and said, "Meh, good enough." The historians in both of us collectively facepalmed.

In the hill on which the fort is built, there are ancient Nabataean carvings. Some rocks with carvings were cut out of the hillside and used in the rebuilding of the fort. The rebuilding of the fort was overseen by the Ministry of Interior and Ministry of Culture and Information. ...facepalm.

Right next to the fort are the ruins of some outbuildings that were also build by the Turks. Our tour guide didn't know what these buildings were used for. He kept calling them houses, so perhaps there was once a village on this spot?

Like all the other ruins on this trip, we were able to poke around. It was pretty cool to be so hands on with history. 

I have a lot of pictures of my Mister surrounded by ruins.

Vicariously yours,

Taif: A photo album, part 1

After we had our day tour of Jeddah, the Mister and I met back up with Dawi and drove 200 miles outside the city to a mountain town called Taif (tah-eef). Taif is noted for its cooler weather and rose farms. Yes, I said rose farms. One of Taif's main exports is rose water that is used in many Middle Eastern recipes. Unfortunately, we didn't get to see any roses being grown because they are only cultivated in the summer during the rainy season. But we did get to see all kinds of really cool things. I've decided to share the gems of Taif in sections, photo album style. In the case of Taif, pictures really are worth a thousand words.

ew, I just gagged on my own cheesy cliche-ness.

Anyway.

The mountains were so pretty. I thought it was so funny to see naked mountains, I'm so used to seeing the Blue Ridge mountains covered in a blanket of green.

The Mister napped as the desert scenery passed us by. He was so grateful to have two days without the stress of driving in Saudi Arabia.

MONKEYS! Specifically, baboons. They were scary! The people just throw food at them, something we were strongly cautioned against when visiting Gibraltar. They even let their kids throw rocks at the monkeys, even the mothers with babies! So I was afraid to get out of the car to take pictures of them. 

The "Donkey Trail" is a restored path that shows how traders and invaders got to Taif before modern roads.

Mountains so grand.

Once in Taif, Dawi showed us an old watchtower, all that remained of a Turkish fort. Appropriately, the watchtower has been built into the wall surrounding a modern military compound.

Me in front of the door of the Shobra Palace. The Shobra Palace served as the office building for King Faisal before he became King. It was built by an Ottoman who spent lots of time in Egypt. He brought the materials for the house from Egypt, and gave the house his newly adopted Egyptian family name.

The inside of the Shobra Palace.

The beautifully restored facade of the Shobra Palace.

Inside the Shobra Palace is a small museum. It had tombstones from early Islamic graveyards. Saudis don't use tombstones anymore (all bodies are buried in unmarked graves), so these are rare examples of tombstones from the area. I wonder what they did with the bodies that were (are?) in the graves where the tombs were taken....

More photos from Taif tomorrow.

Vicariously yours,