Egypt/LuxorThis morning I returned from Luxor on a grueling 10 hour train ride. The train ride to Upper Egypt wasn’t that bad, but the return trip was like being packed into a sardine can filled with concentrated B.O. Other than that, I had a fabulous time in Luxor. Tom kicks ass, and had a room at the Hilton that we all stayed in. So, when we weren’t hiking through the Valley of the Kings in the desert heat, we were relaxing at a nice 4 star hotel. The day we arrived we went straight over to Deir el-Medina, an ancient village for the workers of the Valley of the Kings. There we saw a beautiful temple to Amhes-Nefertari, the wife of Amenhotep I. After that, we went to see the magnificent temple of Amun (and mortuary temple of Ramses III) at Medinet Habu. We then made a quick stop at the Memnon Colossi for a couple of photos, and returned to the hotel to escape the heat. The following day, we unfortunately didn’t really get up early enough to start before it got to hot, but went to Karnak anyways. I will say one thing about Karnak, we were there for like 2 hours and still barely saw maybe half of it. We then went to Luxor temple a couple of kilometers down the road. Unfortunately we got to Luxor temple too late to take any pictures. Then, on the third day, we went to the Valley of the Kings, and went into the tombs of Thutmoses III, Seti II, and Ramses III. Sorry, but pictures are forbidden in the tombs, so all I have to show for it is the signs from outside the tombs. Next we went to Deir el-Bahri where the famous temple of Hatshepsut can be found. Then on day four we returned to Luxor temple and spent the good part of the day there being geeks and reading hieroglyphs and taking pictures. Overall, it was a fantastic spring break, the only downside is that I hurt my knee, so it was a bit difficult with all the walking and stairs…

I took over 300 pictures, so I hope you enjoy them. I will slowly be putting captions on them, just not right away…

Egypt/DahabWell, the bus ride to Dahab was about 9 hours of pure hell. I had the worst possible seat, which required me to sit in the most unnatural position while being audibly harassed by crappy Egyptian movies. When I was finally freed from this prison, we were in Dahab at about 9am. When we arrived at the hotel, our room wasn’t going to be ready until noon, so we had a bite to eat. Without realizing what time it was, I had ordered a beer, subjecting these poor people to my blatant american lushness…
Anyways, we got our room and then felt that snorkeling would be a good plan… As it turned out, it was actually a magnificent plan! Unfortunately I do not possess any form of underwater protection for my camera, so I cannot share the awesome things I saw in the Red Sea with you.
That night, at 11pm, the bus to Mt. Sinai came to pick us up. And I thought the bus to Dahab was bad… This tiny “bus” was so packed full of people, the only way anyone could have been comfortable in there would be if they were an amputee. So, to continue the tale, we began hiking up Mt. Sinai at about 1 am or so. I, being massively out of shape, was the first to have to take a break, at which case, I was never able to catch up with the rest of the group. I got to the top of the mountain at about 4:30ish… Just in time to see the sun rise.
Going down the mountain however, was easy and quick… Since I was running, and taking shortcuts… This turned out to be a bad idea near the bottom… When I was almost to the end, I tripped and fell, scraping up my arm pretty bad, and messing up my knee… I am SMRT….

Well, that pretty much concludes part 1 of my spring break, I hope you enjoy the pictures. Part 2 is next up, where I will be traveling to Luxor to see the temples. Hopefully, I will be able to refrain from hurting myself further…

Well, today is the last day of classes before spring break. We will be going to Dahab on the Sinai, and then climb Mt. Sinai for phase one of the spring break adventure. I will be gone until about the 16th or 17th, not entirely sure… I will then return for enough time to maybe post some pictures, then I will continue on part 2.

To be continued…

Well, as some of you may or may not know, I used to have an iPod, but it got stolen last year. Being a chevro-legs born student here in Cairo has made me miss my iPod to the point that I went out and bought a new one last month. Unfortunately, however, it started misbehaving last week. So, I went to the “Apple” store that I bought it from here in Cairo, to have them fix it. The good news is that they fixed it, but in the most ghetto way. Apparently the main-board in the iPod was faulty, but rather than just giving me a new iPod like they should have, they just replaced the innards. Don’t get me wrong, I love my iPod, and I am glad that it works now, but my black iPod video now has the serial number of a white iPod video…

You will most likely notice sooner or later, that the gallery has been changed. Last night I did a major update to the gallery, because I started receiving comment spam. I was hoping to be able to prevent it in the newer version, but alas, I was not. Since I could not find a way to put a stop to the comment spam on pictures, I have turned off that feature. However, you can still post comments on blog articles. Also, enjoy the new rating system I added, now you can rate my photos on a scale of 1-5 stars.

Egypt/Photography1
Well, as you probably are already aware of, one of my hobbies is photography. Unfortunately, I haven’t really taken the time to take pictures for a while. With all the stress from school, with the studying and tests, I decided I needed to relax and take some “me” time.
On Sunday, I went out and walked around Zamalek with my SLR, and took pictures of some random things that I felt were interesting. The pictures turned out quite well, and I had a lot of fun. I hope that you enjoy looking at these pictures as much as I did taking them.