Our trip to the Pyramids

After seeing them through the smog, and of course being only about 10 km away, we naturally couldn't resist a trip to the pyramids. Karam and Khalid said that they were going that way anyhow to visit some family, and offered to negotiate a cab for us, and bring us to some guides that they knew and could recommend. I realize this sounds a bit shifty, but we figured we'd give it a go anyhow, since pretty well everyone was going to try to get us to pay as much as possible anyhow. (This was something really interesting to me, as people were completely okay with trying to get us, as tourists, to pay an order of magnitude more for a product or service than what they'd eventually settle for, but they were completely honest about it. It's not like they would take our money and then give us nothing in return, any time we were being ripped off it was with our full knowledge and agreement that we were willing to pay "x" for product or service "y". It was only our ignorance of the price of things, compounded with our poor haggling skills, that led to us paying too much.)

And so we set out in one of the little black and white taxis that are found throughout the city. These are mostly older cars, heavily dented and repaired, with a big luggage rack on the roof. (We also shared one of these taxis from the airport to our hotel when we arrived in the middle of the night - see the previous post about that.) The traffic is crazy in Cairo, but I really think it's largely because of the insanity of these cabbies. They also honk continuously at each other and other cars, but the honks seem to symbolize a variety of things, even just a friendly greeting.

It was quite a fascinating experience, but mildly terrifying. There were quite a few points when I had to close my eyes, mostly when changing lanes or trying to fit between two vehicles that were in adjacent lanes. Jeremi took a short video of the taxi ride, which doesn't quite do it justice, but it gives you some idea of the madness of the roads, with cars weaving, pedestrians walking, and the occasional donkey cart to be overtaken.


Once on the outskirt of Giza we set out with our guide, on horseback, and our two camels, which we were riding. I wasn't thrilled with the idea of riding a camel, but Jeremi really wanted to do it, arguing that it wasn't something that we got to do all the time, and who knows when we'd have the chance to do it again. Plus, we were going to see the pyramids!

My argument was that the camels were smelly and the ride was dangerously high, and safety standards ranged from flexible to non-existent. Besides, we could easily walk to the pyramids from where the taxi left us - the city of Giza has really spread right up to the edge of the desert where the pyramids and tombs are located. Still, I relented, and we set off on Mickey Mouse (Jeremi's camel, who had a huge goiter on his neck) and Moses (my thankfully more sedate mount). They also gave us ridiculous polyester headscarves to wear, which I quickly got rid of. While a hat might have been nice in the sun, it was actually breezier out on the sand, and not too uncomfortable. I did try to buy a hat while we were there, but there were hardly any in the shops, and we saw almost no Egyptians wearing hats. Women have headscarves of course, but the men were mostly bare-headed if not in a uniform of some sort. And of course I have trouble buying hats anywhere, as they rarely fit on my giant skull. In any case, here are Jeremi and I on our camels:


We rode up to a ridge where we could see all nine pyramids at the site lined up (the three "great" pyramids, and six smaller ones that are located at the same place. It was really spectacular.
Then I decided to tear off the top of the biggest one.



Here, as everywhere around Cairo, there were plenty of heavily armed tourist police, most of them on beautiful white camels. It's an entirely separate branch of the police which deals with problems specific to the tourist trade, which is an important part of the economy. Here's one of the officers speaking with Sam, our guide.


After this we left the beasts with the guide, and explored on foot for a while. Here Jeremi is standing next to the biggest pyramid of the three, to give some idea of the size of the blocks.



And then I backed up and took the picture again, just to give an idea of scale. It was truly enormous.
Here Jeremi was being accosted by one of the many men wandering around the site who offered to help him adjust his headscarf, and then did so without really waiting for an answer. Then he suggested we take a picture of the two of them together, and offered Jeremi some small scarab beads as a "gift". Of course this all ends with him asking for money, but before it go to that point he then approached me to put his scarf on me. I wanted nothing to do with this and tried to tell him repeatedly, and finally got so upset that he apologized and left us alone. After this I refused to speak to anyone - I just wasn't comfortable with being manhandled by someone I didn't know, and then have them expect to be paid for it.

We were actually allowed to climb up part of this pyramid. Apparently if you offer the guards a bit of money they'll look the other way and let you climb right to the top, but it's pretty dangerous, and also pretty difficult. Remember how big those blocks were behind Jeremi? It's really not like climbing up a long flight of stairs (although the area in the picture below had stairs added for easier access).
Next we went inside one of the pyramids, the one that was open on this particular day. They open them up in rotation, I presume so that they can maintain some level of preservation of the interior. Our guide tried very hard to discourage us from going in, saying that it was difficult to climb down and back up, hard to breathe, and not very interesting as all of the treasures had been taken to the museum already, and so it was money and trouble just to see a couple of empty rooms. Still, we were determined, and I'm glad we stuck it out. It proved to be more trouble than anticipated - they'd changed the way the tickets were sold the day before, so we could no longer pay at the pyramid, but rather had to go way beyond it to buy tickets from the main entrance. We also weren't allowed to bring our camera inside, and weren't officially allowed to leave it with the guards outside, but for a small baksheesh (tip) they'd watch it while you were inside.

It really was difficult to climb up and down - the ramp at the entrance was quite a steep descent, almost 45 degrees, and the height of the tunnel was only about 1.2 meters, so we were bent over at the waist to walk down. They'd put a wooden ramp with horizontal slats in, otherwise I think it would have been near impossible. It was also quite narrow, so that you had to wait for any people coming up before beginning the descent (and vice versa). Certainly not recommended for those who tend towards claustrophobia. And the air really was hard to breath - it was incredibly warm and humid. As soon as we walked in we were both drenched in sweat. It was like the steamiest sauna imaginable - not the hottest, but definitely the steamiest.

Once down the ramp we were able to stand, as there were two rooms inside, joined by another couple of ramps and a corridor. The rooms really were pretty well empty, with the only painting on the walls being done by an Italian expedition that was there in the early 19th Century. Still, we both thought it completely worth our while just to see what the passageways looked like inside. Here we were after exiting (after getting our camera back), trying to show how wilted we were after all that sweating.

From there we rode over to the Sphinx, which is only a couple hundred meters away, directly in the same area. The path we followed was a raised stone causeway, that was built at the same time as the pyramids, and was used to transport the stones along. It was somewhat covered with sand, but there were smooth stone slabs underneath. This was not the ideal footing for the camels, and their feet were slipping out from them pretty regularly. While they were always able to recover, I was not loving it, also because a fall at this point meant a fall onto stone slabs, rather than the more forgiving sand. And camels are tall. Still, we made it there without incident. The Sphinx was pretty damn impressive too, I might add.
And then, finally, after a great meal of foul medames (fava bean paste, a standard breakfast dish in Egypt) with pita, salads, and spicy pickles, we made our way back to town. Unfortunately we couldn't get a cab right away (or at least not for the price that Karam wanted), so first we took one of the many microbuses, these ancient vans with no doors, which seem to have semi-defined routes, and stop to pick up and drop off people along the way. This is something that we would never have been able to negotiate without a decent knowledge of Arabic, as you have yell out to the driver where you're going while he's driving past, and negotiate the fare, all while piling into a van filled with a dozen or so other people, with little kids hanging out the open doors and windows. Madness, I tell you, but it got us where we were going!

First day in Cairo

After getting back from our wedding and cross-Canada tour, we were in Germany for just a few days (I think I was at work for three of them) before heading to Cairo for a week. This was mostly a honeymoon, but the exact timing and destination were determined by the wedding of Omar, a friend of Jeremi's from the Navy, who was getting married there at the beginning of August. (Otherwise, we might not have planned a vacation to the desert in August, but the heat really wasn't as bad as we'd feared.)

Our first day in Cairo was a bit insane, I have to admit. Our plane arrived around 2:00 am, which isn't a great start, and then we had to wait in this incredibly long and slow line at immigration, because there were really that many planes arriving in the middle of the night. (I think the last scheduled flight got in around 4:30, and then there was nothing until 9:30 or so, which should have been the first indication that the hours of operation there are not quite the same as those that we're used to (especially here in Germany!).

We also didn't really understand the process properly, and thought we could buy the entry visa (which cost something like 10 euros each) at the customs desk, but were told once we'd made it to the very front of the line that no, we had to go back and buy it from one of the bank tellers that were operating there. We had thought that these were jut foreign exchanges, but they were also selling visas. And so we had to go back, buy the visas, and then wait in the whole line again. A planeload or two from Saudi Arabia had arrived in the meantime, so the line was even longer, In the end, it took us more than two hours to make it through customs.

By the time we went to pick up our luggage, it had long been removed from the belt. We looked around for a long time before finding it in a room off to the side, accompanied by some airport employees. Then they wanted us to pay them some baksheesh, or tip, for, you know not stealing it. I was not impressed, and I was really tired, and refused so strongly that they didn't ask again.

From then the next step was getting a taxi to the hotel. There were some fancier limo-type hotels, but these were rather expensive. I'd read online beforehand the going rate for a standard taxi fare, and most recommended taking one of the ubiquitous black and white cabs, if only for the experience. These are mostly really old cars, which are often missing such niceties as bumpers. They're driven in the most aggressive fashion imaginable in the most insane traffic that we'd ever seen. They're all equipped with open luggage racks on the top, where the driver put our suitcase without any straps or ties to secure it, but it did make it safely to the hotel, so I can't complain. We also ended up sharing a cab with a guy from Yemen who was there on business, which led to quite a detour on the way to the hotel (at 4:45 am, after being up all night), but it did let us cross the Nile twice, and wonder over the number of people on the sidewalks in the middle of the night.

Finally we got to our hotel, and collapsed for a few hours before being woken by the sounds of the city, specifically the rather insistent call to prayer. We got ourselves up, and headed out to explore a bit.

Also online we'd read that it was pretty easy to get lost in Cairo, and that there was a good street atlas available for sale at the bookstore of the American University in Cairo, with English transcriptions of all the street names, so this was our first destination. The bookstore was located toward the north end of one of the major islands in the Nile, so we headed toward the river, not far from our hotel. Here I am, checking out the river for the first time in daylight:
To get there, we had to cross a couple of busy streets. Being a city of about 20 million people, there are lots of cars and lots of pedestrians. What there aren't a lot of is traffic lights (at least not any that are obeyed) and pedestrian crossings. The traffic was entirely organic, as if someone had just introduced a few million cars to a city full of people, and let them all decide individually how the rules should evolve. Jeremi likened it to the flow of blood cells, where they all sort of bump up against each other, but end up getting where they're going. However, as inexperienced foreigners trying to cross the street, it was a little scary at times. Mostly we just tried to cross when other people were crossing. Occasionally when we'd been waiting for a while for a break, some nice local would even walk us across the street. (How pathetic is that!)

This is a picture of the road running directly parallel to the Nile at this point, and you can see a family crossing altogether. They're standing directly in the middle of one lane of traffic, and you can see a car approaching from the left, coming toward them. But the lane markers are just suggestions anyhow, that truck loaded with tomatoes was sort of driving in the middle of the two lanes. While everyone there was completely used to it, Safety Bear Julia was cringing in fear. (Aren't you just waiting for that little boy to drop the ball that just barely fits under his arm, and run after it?)
The island we crossed onto was pretty posh, with a big country-club like compound, and a lot of foreign embassies. There were also lush gardens along many of the roads. Here Jeremi's checking out one of the beautiful blooming trees, which had giant seed pods (one of which he's holding between his fingers).
And some more lush, irrigated landscaping:
After wandering around for quite some time and asking directions more than once, we found the bookstore, and bought not only the map but also a few novels for each of us. The store was filled with English-language books, and the selection of novels was way better than we can get in Jena, and much better than that found in major train stations (which is where I buy most of the rest of my books for pleasure reading).

After getting something to eat, it was approaching sunset, and we thought it would be a nice time to visit the Cairo Tower, which offers a great view over the city, in order to get our bearings.

Here's the view looking directly to the south, where you can see the two branches of the river splitting around the island, as well as a substantial layer of smog over the cityscape. And then looking to the west, across Giza. (Cairo is actually sort of two cities, Cairo and Giza, lying on the east and west sides of the Nile respectively.) There, deep in the smog, along the horizon, you can almost make out some shapes if you squint...
Okay, so it's really hard to see here, but at the full resolution of the photo (or with our eyes, at the time) you can just make out the shape of the pyramids in the distance. I thought this was pretty damn cool.
Then we were waiting for the big finish of the sunset, as I thought that with such a heavy smog layer the colours might be really fantastic. What I hadn't anticipated was that the smog was so heavy that the light would be completely absorbed and back-scattered, and there wouldn't be any left to make a nice scene...Still, it was a nice view over the city, and it was beautiful to watch the city slowly growing dark, and all the lights coming on. Here's a short video Jer took to show the general scene, as well as how windy it was up there!

From there we headed back toward the main city, and were wandering around Ramses train station looking for a bar I'd read about online, looking at our map, when someone asked us if we needed help finding something. We really did, and we ended up striking up a bit of a conversation with the guy, Khalid, who spoke quite good English. His friend Karam also spoke some English, but was completely fluent in German, as he'd studied in Germany, and was married to a German woman. We ended up taking them up on their invitation to join them at a coffee house nearby, where we sat enjoying some strong, sweet tea (in my case) and some chilled hibiscus tea (in Jeremi's case, with ice cubes that left him rather ill the next day). They were really friendly, and able to answer lots of questions we had about the culture, and what was and wasn't appropriate (especially in my case, with what I should be wearing). Khalid was Muslim, as are the majority of residents, while Karam was a Coptic Christian, like about 10-15% of the population, and were able to tell us something about these communities as well. We chatted for quite a while, and finally parted ways at around 1:00 am, after agreeing to meet up the next morning to head to the Pyramids.

Walking back to our hotel, we couldn't believe how many people, including families with little kids, were out on the street. Part of the reason is the weather - it's so hot during the afternoon, that many people stay in to avoid the worst of the sun, and go out in the evening instead - but much of it is also a cultural difference. Here we were around 2:00 am on a major commercial street, and people were out shopping! Most of the stores in this neighbourhood were open particularly the abundant shoe stores. It was really strange to see, especially coming from Germany! In some ways it was good that we'd had such a late night the night before, as it helped reprogram us for Cairo time (which is only an hour ahead of Germany in terms of geographical time zones). On a side street we also stumbled across this shop...
...yup, it's called "bazar", like my mom's maiden name. I thought it was worth a photo at least.On our way back to the hotel, we also stumbled across an alleyway only a block away, which was completely lined with fruit and vegetable stalls, with a few bakeries thrown into the mix. (A short aside about the bakeries - it was possible to buy fresh flatbreads at any time day or night, because there was a small army of boys wandering the streets with a wide box filled with bread balanced on their heads, waiting to sell their wares.)

The smell was intoxicating, as the guavas were all ripe. The selection was amazing - they have as many varieties of mango as you'd see apples in Canada, rangin in size from five centimeters to twenty-five, and in varieties of colours. Naturally, we bought a few things to bring back to our room.
Here's a picture of one of the vegetable stands, displaying just some of the variety of eggplants, okra, zucchini, peppers, etc. It was such a pity that we couldn't cook while we were there. Finally, we made our way back to our room, and got some sleep before the adventures to follow the next day.

A quick stop in Cold Lake

The weekend right after mine and Julia's wedding was Erik and Sherri's. Erik is a friend of mine from college, and he got married at the on-base chapel in Cold Lake, Alberta. Getting there was definitely a challenge since Cold Lake is about 3.5 hours from Edmonton, where our flight was arriving the night before. Once at the airport I tried to go get our reserved rental car only to find out it was quite impossible since I had a driver's licence in my name but only credit cards in Julia's name. (This doesn't seem to be a problem in Germany at all, as we've done it several times, but this is also a country where hotels sometimes take only cash.)

After Julia got all our luggage she joined me and I told her the bad news. She had unfortunately left her driver's licence in Germany so we couldn't change the reservation to her name. After calling the bus station and finding out that the once-daily bus from Edmonton to Cold Lake would only get us there at midnight on the Saturday of the wedding, we were getting desperate. Fortunately, a very nice man from Hertz was able to help us out with a car that had just been returned. If it weren't for that, we would have had to rent a very expensive pick-up which although fitting in in northern Alberta would have cost a fortune (not to mention the gas, which was much more expensive back then). But we finally got a nice Yaris for a good price thanks to the nicest car rental employee ever.

We got to Cold Lake after sleeping near the airport that night and driving 3.5 hours. Once in Cold Lake I had to rush to the bridal shop to get fitted for my tux for the wedding that was that afternoon. The tux fit great and soon we were at the chapel waiting for the ceremony to begin. Here is a picture of me and Erik about ten meters from the chapel with a beautiful construction site back drop.

The ceremony was a nice simple Catholic wedding complete with participation from the bride and groom's family and friends reading the lectures and all. Here they are officially hitched and walking back down the aisle.
After the ceremony we took pictures next to the chapel, down by the Cold Lake beach, by the harbour, out on Erik's boat, up on a hill overlooking the harbour, and finally in a big field of canola in bloom. Here we are at the harbour.
Unfortunately our camera crapped out during this and we were only able to get a few pictures here and there. After the picture taking session, we went to the officers' mess for the reception. There we had some nice food and I had to say a few words about Erik. I said we was a great guy but warned Sherri about his encyclopedic knowledge on boats, planes, fishing, hunting and all the other subjects he won't shut up about. Here we are at the head table at the reception.
After the formalities we went downstairs for the beautiful cake that Sherri had made her self, a few more pictures and drinks. We then danced until the end of the night with everyone but mostly with Erik's siblings, Joel and Jill. They were dancing machines. We had lots of fun.

Niagara

After leaving Toronto we headed to Niagara Falls. We had fabulous weather, and it was spectacular as always.
Naturally, we wanted to go on a tour with the Maid of the Mist, and didn't have to wait in line too long - that is a seriously stream-lined money-making operation.
Calin prepared himself for the mist well in advance...
...while Jeremi and I were playing it a bit more dangerously.
Susanne was taking no chances with her cute new hat.
Here we were watching the yellow-ponchoed tourists on the US side, climbing down the wet steps by the foot of the Bridal Veil falls.
A picture we could take before the spray got too intense...
And of course the ubiquitous postcard shot. We had a couple nice ones of the two of us, the stereotypical honeymooners at the falls, but they were all on our camera, and have unfortunately been lost. At least Calin and Susanne were with us, or you'd just have to read my boring descriptions with no pictures at all!
One of the many amazing rainbows that can be seen around the falls...
From there Calin and Susanne were heading down to Niagara Falls, New York to pick up their rental car, and we were heading to the airport to fly to Edmonton that night for Erik and Sherri's wedding. We still had a fair bit of time to spare, so we thought that we'd drive them across to the rental place, which was a few kilometers from the border, and a pain to get to with all their luggage if they crossed on foot. We figured that if it was taking too long at the border (we knew they had to get fingerprinted and photographed and all that as part of the US visa waiver process), then we'd just turn around and drive back so that we weren't late for our flight. We were going to drop the car at the airport for my family to pick up, and we were even hoping to get there early enough that we could call them and have them meet us there for supper, as we'd passed through Ontario without even seeing them.

Alas, it was not going to be as easy as we'd hoped. Gone are the days of easy, breezy, drive-through border crossings, at least if you've got a car full of people with anything other than US or Canadian citizenship. The border guard took all four of our passports and put them in a vacuum mail tube that disappeared into the building adjacent to the parking lot, and sent us all up to the processing room inside.

When we got in it was pandemonium. There were at least 30 people waiting there, including a family with many screaming children and Fox News blaring from the TV mounted in the corner. I had to go to the bathroom, so I thought I'd go there while Jeremi asked for our passports back so that we could leave poor Calin and Susanne in this administrative hell and get on our way to the airport. When I got back from the filthy, reeking toilets, Jeremi did not look happy. It seemed that since the four of us had arrived as one travelling party, we had to be processed altogether, and there would be no queue-jumping for us. There was no room for discussion. We sat down and consigned ourselves to our fate while nervously watching the time.

In the end it didn't take all that long, but it was an immensely uncomfortable wait (though much improved when the group with the screaming children left), and we were happy to get out of there when we could. Between this and the border crossing back (when we had some explaining to do about whose car this was, where do you live again? and why we were only in the US for an hour or so), we didn't have time to meet my family for supper. To be honest, I was so happy that we didn't miss our flight that the disappointment didn't really register until after I'd called my dad from the gate at the airport. (Poor Jeremi just went to the bathroom and came back to find me crying by the pay phones, and thought something terrible must have happened.) But in the end it all worked out okay, we made it to Edmonton, Calin and Susanne got their rental car, and my parents were able to pick up the car, even if they didn't get to meet us for supper.

And one final picture of the falls, to forget all about that stressful border crossing.

The T.

From Montréal we headed further west, ending up in Toronto. We were staying with our friend Selom who lives a bit north of the city. After stopping by his place when we arrived, we took transit down to Bloor and Yonge, and walked down Yonge St. to Union Station and the CN Tower.
Naturally, we wanted to bring them up the tower for a view over the city.
The line was pretty long, but we amused ourselves while waiting.
At the top we had a decent view over the city from the outdoor viewing area - it wasn't too overcast yet.
And of course we made ourselves squirm with the glass floor...
Susanne demonstrating both her bravery and the cuteness of her new hat that she picked up at the Eaton Centre on the way.
Jeremi and Calin are here trying to look tough with the souvenir Canada hats they picked up to bring home. (Okay, so Calin is trying to look tough at least. Jeremi is not doing so well.) These hats also provided some protection from the rain that started as we wandered around in search of Mountain Equipment Coop to buy some affordable outdoor clothes. I guess I hadn't been to the Toronto branch in a decade or so, as I was convinced that it was still just east of there on Front Street, near C'est What. This is what happens when you move every three years - you sort of know your way around a lot of places, but nothing is ever quite as you remembered it.
After our shopping spree at MEC (which we finally found) we found a bar on King St. W. where we could get pitchers, nachos, and wings while waiting for Selom to come down and meet us. (Notice my nice new jacket/sweater from MEC.)
Wings and nachos aren't common bar food here - in fact most cafés don't really serve much in the way of greasy snacks at all, which is probably healthier, but nowhere near so delicious. We managed to enjoy quite a few pitchers and salty, fatty food before Selom made it there.
And here he is, our charming host, looking smart in Susanne's new hat. He did his best to catch up to us before the five of us headed to the movie theatre to see The Dark Knight, which we all greatly enjoyed. (Well, at least the parts that Calin didn't sleep through. Perhaps we shouldn't have had that last pitcher or two.)
Then we all went back to Selom's place for the night, having a good sleep before setting off the next morning for a greasy breakfast at The Pickle Barrel and a trip to Niagara Falls, where we'd leave Calin and Susanne so they could begin the US portion of their vacation. But more on that in the next post...