Sorry I didn’t get a chance to blog yesterday, but it was a
busy day (and this will be an extra-long post to make up for it)! We woke up at
6am (hurray for sleeping in an hour) to get to site by 7. The first order of
business was stringing up the remaining pottery boxes, then schlepping them
into the pylon. After a few years, we have this down to a science: Tasha was
the expediter, organizing the loading of the boxes onto the wheelbarrows from
our work area; I stayed at the base of the pylon, unloading the wheelbarrows
and organizing them into numerical order so that the guys could carry them into
the pylon and up the stairs to Lindsey, who found their positions among the
numbers we left in the pylon from previous seasons. We’re pretty good and had
all hundred or so boxes back in the pylon in a little over an hour, and that
was because the wheelbarrow guys seemed to be in no hurry. Even with our strong
guys doing most of the lifting, though, I couldn’t get around bending over and
carrying heavy boxes of pottery, so my back is rebelling quite fiercely today.
I cannot wait to get back to the US and see my massage therapist to get back
into position, because I hurt! See, archaeology isn’t all fun and games and
drawing pots under the shade; we do heavy lifting.
Anyway, after loading the pylon, we had a few last-minute
tasks, like cleaning off and folding up the tents. The site looked pretty bare
when we were done with it (I didn’t bring my camera, sorry!). We were done by
10am, so it was back to apartment to pack, shower, and clean the house.
Unfortunately, the car wasn’t scheduled to arrive until 2pm, so we had a bit of
down-time, which we spent reading on the couch and checking our watches every 5
minutes. I wanted to get on and blog all of this then, but my internet key
crapped out. When the car finally showed up, we loaded up our stuff and waved
goodbye to Edfu with a certain finger. Then it was off to Luxor!
Kat will be staying in Luxor for a week, twiddling her
thumbs before the beginning of her 10-day season to Abydos with Greg and one of
our old professors who now works in Copenhagen, Hratch Papazian. This is a long
way of saying that there was a hotel room where Tasha, Lindsey, and I could
crash and watch awesome Arabic music videos and the beginning of The Matrix
while waiting for our flight. Around 6pm we headed out to dinner at our
newly-found favorite restaurant: Pizza Roma. It’s owned by an actual Italian
lady, and they make amazing pizza with REAL cheese (you have no idea how
amazing this is after the gross feta-like processed crap that you normally get
in Egypt. They even had real gorgonzola cheese, which made Kat VERY happy).
After dinner, we said goodbye to Kat and headed to the airport for our 10:30pm
flight to Cairo. At this point, we were really starting to hurt, since our
normal bed time is no later than 9pm. But we managed to make it to the hotel in
Cairo by just past midnight. Thankfully, we used one of Nadine’s travel
contacts and he had a car waiting for us to throw our exhausted selves into. He
even got us all checked into the hotel. We’re staying at the President in
Zamalek. It’s $20 per night, so it’s nothing fancy, but it’s a place to crash,
it has Arabic music videos on TV, and actually pretty fantastic water pressure.
We can live with the fact that the place hasn’t been properly cleaned since the
1970s and the toilet doesn’t really flush. It’s also located in the heart of
Zamalek, right in the middle of where the ambassadors live, which provides us a
great view of gardens and provides and extremely safe place to be (if you
haven’t been paying attention to what’s happening in Cairo, now is not the time
to google it, ok, Mom?).
Cairo is much as I remember it: way too crowded, filthy, and
huge. But driving along at night, looking at the billboards advertising 7Up,
Doritos, cell phone plans, McDonald’s, and TV shows like The Voice (Egypt), it
almost feels like a normal big city in the US (if you disregard the fact that
most of the billboards are in Arabic and the buildings are incredibly run
down). But you can’t really beat the view out of our balcony:
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| View looking to the left off of our balcony. I love the look of that church. |
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| View looking straight off the balcony. The red complex is the Chinese ambassador's residence (and maybe also the embassy). We passed several complexes from various countries on our walk, but China won for most spectacular. |
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| View to the right off the balcony and around the corner. Just in front of the tall building in the background you can see the Nile. |
Today’s adventure included sleeping in! Well, Tasha did most
of the sleeping in, since Lindsey and I could only sleep until about 6:30. But
hey, we were able to lie in bed and read until 8:15 (when we got up for
breakfast), so it felt great. After a leisurely breakfast, showering, and some
unpacking/reorganizing of bags (we’ll be here over a week, after all), we hit
the streets of Zamalek around 11:30! We stopped by the cell phone/internet shop
to get more credit for our phones (it’s about 1 LE Egyptian to send a text to
the US, which ends up being something like $.17, so we send a lot of texts to
spouses) and to fix my internet. You’ll never believe where we ate lunch. Chili’s!
On a boat! Don’t believe me?
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| I told you. Chili's. On a boat. |
I had a salad and it was AWESOME to have something that wasn’t
fried in oil and involved fresh veggies. So good. Plus, we got to look out over
the Nile as we ate, and they had free refills on Diet Pepsi with grenadine.
Life seemed complete. Then we went shopping at the various fair trade centers
and on the way home, got some amazing cupcakes. We are now fed, sugared, and
happy. Life really is complete. At least until we go to dinner. :P
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| One of the stores we passed while out walking. Lots of Christmas supplies! |
I think tomorrow’s plan is to head to Saqqara and get my 3rd
Dynasty on. I’m really excited about seeing the newly-opened serapeum (I’ll
tell you more about what it actually is tomorrow). Fingers crossed that we’re
allowed to take pictures inside (though I doubt we’ll be able to). For now,
I’ll stop with the novel I appear to be writing. Cairo is a new and exciting
place compared to Edfu and I’m ready to explore as much of it as we safely can
in the 9ish days we have here. :)
