I first visited Egypt 30 years ago when I was stationed in Germany. I went on an organized tour that included Turkey, Israel, Jordan and only three nights in Cairo, Egypt. During the short time in Egypt, the tour included the pyramids of Giza, the Step Pyramid at Saqqara, Memphis, the Citadel, Muhammad Ali Mosque and the Egyptian Museum. The King Tut exhibit was on tour in the states then and I saw it in San Francisco shortly after I returned home from Germany. That was a lot to cram into a few days but was only a small portion of the places of interest found throughout the entire country. I rarely return to countries I have visited but I always had a desire to return to Egypt to see what I missed on my first trip.

A few months prior to this trip we received a brochure in the mail from Grand Circle Travel (GCT). They were offering a special price on their Egypt/Nile River cruise. The itinerary was loaded with sites I hadn’t seen as well as several “discoveries”. The value was exceptional compared to other tour companies and after Kathy’s boss at the travel agency convinced her Egypt was really worth seeing, we signed up and got the last available cabin on the cruise ship.

The trip did not start off smoothly. We drove 100 miles to San Francisco and stayed overnight at a hotel near the airport that lets you park your car for two weeks at no extra charge. The next day we still had to wake up at 3:30 a.m. to catch the flight to New York. When we got to our gate, we discovered the Delta Airlines flight would be delayed an hour or more due to a mechanical problem with the aircraft. We had three hours in New York (JFK) between that flight and our flight to Cairo so we thought we were OK when our flight landed in JFK only about an hour late.

The problem was we sat on the ramp after landing for about an hour because there were no gates available. We thought we still had an hour to catch our flight to Cairo but when we got off the plane, we were met by a GCT representative who informed us that Egypt Air closes their flight one hour before departure so we missed our flight by about 20 minutes. She assured us that Egypt Air told her we could get on the flight the next day and Delta Airlines put us up at the JFK Ramada and gave us food vouchers for three meals. We could not get our checked bags as they were sent to Egypt Air and they were now “closed”.

The next day when we got to the Egypt Air ticket counter at 2:30 p.m., we were told that they had no record of us, the flight was overbooked and we would have to wait on standby. They never put our name on a standby list and just told us to wait “over there”. After sweating bullets, they finally said there was space for us at 5:00 p.m. In all my travels, I have had my checked bags lost three times but have never missed a big connection like this.

Fortunately, the itinerary for the first day in Cairo only included a visit to the Egyptian Museum and a welcome drink and meal. We later got a make-up tour of the museum so we ended up not missing much. It could have been worse as one couple in the group did not get their checked luggage until a few days before the end of the trip and a camera was stolen out of one of their “lost” bags. On my trip 30 years ago, my checked luggage was lost between Jordan and Cairo and I spent the whole time in Egypt without a change of clothes. All part of the adventure!

There were 131 people on our tour and we were divided into four groups of about 30 people, each group having their own coach and guide. We stayed at the 5-star Cairo Marriott Hotel, probably one of the nicest hotels in Cairo located on an island in the Nile River. Our room was deluxe and they have a great pool and spa as well as many restaurants, shops, bars and even a casino all open 24 hours.

After the 10 hour flight from Cairo, there was little rest for the jet-lagged weary as that night was the first “discovery” on the itinerary – a home hosted meal by a local Egyptian family. We were broken up into smaller groups of about 15 and our group had dinner with Ghada, her son Omar and her mother Nawal. They served all kinds of authentic Egyptian food explaining what each was. Most of the food tasted very different than anything I have ever tried but I liked it all even though some was fairly spicy. All three hosts spoke English and it was interesting speaking with them and seeing firsthand how the average Egyptians live.

The next day, we headed for Giza to see the Pyramids. On the way we noticed hundreds of apartment buildings that were unfinished. The upper floors had exposed rebar sticking up, no ceilings and were empty while the lower floors were occupied. Our guide Hisham Miniawy explained that the main reason for this is that as long as the buildings are not finished, the owners don’t have to pay property taxes. Another reason is some builders just run out of money to complete the buildings.

The Great Pyramid of Khufu (the Greeks called him Cheops) is the largest of the 97 pyramids in Egypt. It is the oldest of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World and the only one that survives to this day. Just recently, new theories have come to light about how it was built but we will never know for sure. Some amazing facts: It took 20 years to construct and was completed around 2560 B.C. The original height was 146 meters and about 2.3 million blocks of stone weighing on average 2.5 tons a piece were used in its construction. Originally, the pyramid was covered from top to bottom with a smooth polished casing of fine limestone and capped by an apex or a pyramidion that reflected the first rays of the sun. This must have looked spectacular but unfortunately, almost all of the casing was stripped off in the 13th century A.D.

After walking around the base and up to the entrance to the King’s chamber, our bus took us to a high point overlooking Giza where we had a great view of all the pyramids. Some of our group chose to ride a camel here. I did that 30 years ago and still remember my Arab guide saying crazy things like “hi-o silver” and “giddy up”.

From the lookout point, we went back to the Pyramids where we chose to do two options. The first was seeing the Solar Boat Museum which contains a 4,600 year old boat that was discovered in an air-tight pit next to the Great Pyramid of Cheops in 1954. The boat was found dismantled with its parts labeled in hieratic script. It took 14 years to reassemble the boat which is 43.5 meters long and made of 1,224 pieces of cedar wood from Lebanon without the use of nails. The museum sits over the pit where the boat was found and is a fitting home for the world’s oldest boat.

The second option we did was to go inside the second largest pyramid at Giza built by Khufu’s son Chephren. I went inside the Great Pyramid to the King’s Chamber 30 years ago but getting to the King’s Chamber in the Pyramid of Chephren was much more difficult because a good part of the 100 meter long sloping passageway in only about 1.5 meters high so I had to “duck walk”. It was very hot inside also. I made it all the way to the King’s burial chamber and by the time I got out, I was soaked with sweat and out of breath. My quadriceps were very sore for about three days but to me, it was worth it.

Our last stop at Giza was at the Sphinx. The Sphinx was chiseled out of a single block of limestone approximately 4,500 years ago by Chephren, builder of the second pyramid of Giza. However, some archaeologists believe the Sphinx may really be up to 5,000 years older than that. It was fun sitting near the Sphinx and watching all the tourists pose for photos “kissing” the Sphinx or posing like the Sphinx.

We signed up for the optional tour to see the step pyramid of King Zoser at Saqqara not far from Cairo. This is the oldest man-made structure on earth and the very first Pyramid built in Egypt about 100 years before the Great Pyramid of Cheops. The architect was a fellow named Imhotep who was also a great physician and was practically deified by the Egyptians for a few thousand years. On the way back to the hotel, we stopped at a carpet school where they demonstrated how the carpets were hand woven and then hope you buy some. When we got back, we went directly to the pool…a great way to cool off after a fantastic day in the dessert.

By this time, we noticed a man wearing a suit looking like a secret service agent riding on our bus in the front seat. We discovered that he was an armed guard and that we would have one or more armed escorts everywhere we traveled in Egypt. This came about because of the massacre of 58 tourists from Switzerland, Germany, Japan, Great Britain, France and Colombia at the Djeser-Djeseru temple near Luxor on November 17, 1997. Four Egyptians were also killed: three police officers and one tour guide. The six Islamist terrorists were all killed by police or committed suicide shortly after the attack.

The terrorists did this in order to destabilize Egypt’s economy which relies heavily on tourism and then take over the government turning it into a radical Islamic state like what happened in Iran. They somewhat succeeded as tourism fell off sharply in Egypt for the following year. The massacre, however, marked a decisive drop in Islamist terrorists’ fortunes in Egypt by turning Egyptian public opinion overwhelmingly against them. In order to prevent future attacks, a portion of the Nile River is still off limits to tourists and the rest of the areas have tight security. The security we noticed included the “secret service agents”, men in jeans carrying automatic rifles who looked like terrorists themselves and uniformed police who drove in front and back of our buses. We even had a machine gun mounted on the stern of our river cruise ship! I was ready to man it if needed.

Currently, there are no U.S. State Department warnings against travel to Egypt. Nothing bad happened to us, so for us, Egypt was safe. While it appears the Egyptian government is doing everything they can to protect tourists from terrorist attacks, no place on earth is 100% safe. The way I look at it, if you stop doing what you love to do (in my case, travel the world), then the terrorists have won. Having said that, I’m not stupid. I would love to see the Ziggurat of Ur and the “cradle of civilization” in Iraq but I don’t think that will happen anytime soon.

The next day, we took the optional tour to Alexandria, founded by Alexander the Great in 331 B.C. We took the train and I think it was much nicer than the typical Egyptian train although the toilet was unusual (hopefully no one walks on the tracks). Our first stop was at the Roman Amphitheatre dating to the 2nd century A.D. It wasn’t uncovered until the 1960’s. There is also a whole residential area next to it that is still being excavated. It is believed that there are probably many more ruins buried under the modern city and recently, a tomb has been discovered that could be the tomb of Mark Anthony and Cleopatra or maybe even Alexander the Great. Underwater archaeologists are also bringing up statues and other artifacts from just offshore in the Mediterranean Sea that ended up there due to a large tsunami that hit Alexandria in 365 A.D.

We got a tour of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, the beautiful modern library inaugurated in 2002. The impressive glass and steel building will eventually hold eight million books and 50,000 rare manuscripts as well as a huge computer that is storing every web page in the world if I understood the docent correctly. The famous ancient library in Alexandria contained just about all knowledge known to man at that time. It is where Euclid discovered geometry and Eratosthenes measured the earth’s circumference. The ancient library along with its vast collection of scrolls was destroyed by fire.

We also saw the King’s Summer Palace and the Fort of Qaitbey, built on the site of the Pharos Lighthouse. The Pharos was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. It was constructed in 279 B.C. and rose to over 120 meters. An earthquake in 1100 A.D. damaged the Pharos and another earthquake in the 14th century completely destroyed what was left. Some of the original debris from the Pharos was used to construct the Fort in 1480.

The next day was a free day for us as we chose not to take the optional tour visiting the El Muallaqa Coptic Church of Egypt, the Ben Ezara Synagogue mosque, (yes Christians and Jews are allowed to worship in predominantly Muslim Egypt), Muhammad Ali Mosque, the Citadel and the Khan el-Khalili Bazaar. I saw some of the places on my previous trip and it was nice to explore a little on our own and relax by the hotel pool.

The next day, we had a 3:30 a.m. wake up call to catch our flight from Cairo to Luxor (ancient Thebes). From the Luxor airport, we went directly to the Luxor Temple dedicated to Amun-Ra built by two pharaohs, Amenhotep III (1390-1352 B.C.) and Rameses II (1279-1213 B.C.) and restored by Alexander the Great (332-323 B.C.).

Most of the Egyptian temples we saw on this trip are quite well preserved for being thousands of years old. Some were buried under the Nile silt preserving them quite well while some were damaged by earthquakes. They all had huge columns, many rooms, many statues and every inch of the walls and columns were covered with hieroglyphs and carvings. Originally, all the carvings and hieroglyphs were painted in many different bright colors and some of the color can still be seen. Most of Egypt south of the Nile River Delta never gets any rain but you’d think the intense sun would have completely faded the paint after thousands of years. Some of the temples had man-made lakes that were connected to the Nile River so they could predict the annual floods. A few of the temples had huge obelisks and a few still had their stone ceilings in place. A few were built by the Romans and Greeks in the same Egyptian style as they figured it would be easier to rule the Egyptians if they recognized the Egyptian gods. Altogether, we would visit seven major temples on this trip.

After Luxor, we boarded our ship, the M/S River Anuket. The ship is owned by GCT and was quite nice. All cabins are outside cabins and are actually larger than any of the cabins on the several ocean cruise ships we have sailed on. The décor wasn’t too garish – nice wood paneling throughout. The top deck had a pool, bar, a few exercise machines and lounge chairs in the shade or sun. The crew was great and we even had a towel animal on our bed each night. They served a good variety of food. All meals were open seating so you got a chance to meet as many of the other people as you wanted although we noticed after a day or two some people took “dibs” on the same table all the time. There are several hundred of these ships that cruise the Nile River and there is not enough room at most of the ports for them all to dock separately so they end up docking side-by-side up to four deep. When you get on or off, you have to walk though the other ships so you can compare them.

The next morning, we visited the Valley of the Kings, Valley of the Queens and two giant statues known as the Colossi of Memnon. So far, 62 royal tombs have been discovered in the Valley of the Kings. Tutankhamen’s tomb was the last one discovered in 1922 but a few years back, a large tunnel complex was discovered and it is still being explored. Both valleys are located in the desert mountains on the west bank of the Nile River. The tombs are carved into the mountains or underground and the tomb walls are covered with hieroglyphs and art. The paint colors are extremely well preserved. We saw the tombs of Rameses III, Rameses IV, Thutmes III and I paid a little extra to see Tutankhamen’s tomb. Tutankhamen’s tomb is the smallest tomb in the Valley of the Kings but it was my favorite because his mummy is still inside the tomb. I could barely see his ornately decorated coffin which lies inside a sarcophagus.

A few months after this trip, I watched on TV as they actually took his mummy out of the coffin and put it in an air-tight case inside the tomb, so now you can see the actual mummy of King Tut. Sometimes, timing is everything but I was happy seeing the tomb. The coffin in the tomb is the innermost of three coffins – I saw the other two in the Egyptian Museum as well as the famous Gold Mask and more than a thousand pieces of treasure removed from his tomb. What makes Tutankhamen’s tomb so special is it was found relatively intact with almost all of its treasure still inside while most of the other tombs were plundered within a few hundred years of being sealed. Also, most of the mummies were removed by the tomb guardians and placed in two caves to keep them safe.

The Valley of the Queens is similar to the Valley of the Kings only smaller and is actually misnamed. There were males buried there as well as queens. We saw the tombs of Titi and Amon-Her-Khopsef. In this area is also located the Valley of the Artisans, the Valley of the Nobles, the Ramesseum (funeral temple built by Rameses II) and the monumental complex of Deir el-Bahari which we could see from a distance but unfortunately wasn’t on our itinerary.

In Luxor, there were several horse-drawn carts waiting at the cruise ships to take tourists on tours of the city. Most of the horses did not look in very good condition (underfed, not enough water and tied up in the heat all day) and Kathy so was upset at seeing how the horses were (mis)treated that she wrote a letter voicing her concern to the editor of an English language Egyptian newspaper after we got home.

While in Luxor, we had a choice of going to the Luxor Animal Hospital or to a developmentally disabled children’s care center and perfume factory. I chose the animal hospital and Kathy chose the latter. The veterinarian was a woman from England who has lived there for eight years trying to treat the animals (everything from cats to camels) in the area. Many of the animals are sick or injured due to abuse or just because the people don’t know how to properly care for them. It’s a daunting job as she does it for free and the Egyptians almost never even thank her. I call her the Mother Theresa of animals in Egypt. The animal hospital operates solely on donations and one of the people in our group brought supplies, medications, etc. from their vet back home. Kathy said the perfume factory was just OK but she found the tour of the care center interesting and was surprised that the conditions and care were close to what she has seen in the U.S. (she has worked with developmentally disabled children).

Our next stop on the Nile was a town called Quena. I took the optional tour to the Temple of Dendera, built by Romans and Greeks in the Egyptian style dedicated to the goddess Hathor. That night we rode Disneyland type “choo choo” trains pulled by a tractor “locomotive” to and from a folklore show. We were told that this town is a real showcase town in Egypt but because it is not completely safe for tourists, we could not venture in to town on our own. We had armed escorts in front and back of our “train” cars and we were a real hit with the kids as our convoy of “trains” went through town.

I’m not really sure why GCT chose to transport us this way instead of the buses we usually used other than since the cars were open, if we were attacked by terrorists, we’d have a fighting chance of hopping off and running out of harm’s way where we’d be sitting ducks on buses.

That night, we sailed back to Luxor and the next day, we visited the Karnak Temple complex – the largest temple in the world. Built and enlarged over a period of 1,300 years, its huge Hypostyle Hall is a grand architectural marvel large enough to enclose the Cathedral of Notre Dame. It was great exploring way in the rear areas of the complex where most tour groups didn’t venture.

That afternoon, we sailed to the town of Edfu passing through the locks at Esna. While we were waiting our turn to enter the first lock, our ship was surrounded by small boats with vendors selling clothes, etc. They would throw the item in bags up to us on deck, the price would be negotiated and we would either put our money in the bag and throw it back or throw the item back if we didn’t want it. In all my travels, this was the first time I witnessed shopping this way.

In Edfu, we saw the Temple of Horus, Egypt’s best preserved temple and late in the afternoon, we sailed to Kom Ombo to see the temple there. One of the temples there is dedicated to the crocodile god Sobek and we saw a few mummified crocodiles there.

The next morning, we sailed to Aswan where we saw the Old Dam built by the British in 1902, the Aswan High Dam built with the help of the Soviet Union in 1960 and took a small boat to the Philae Temple dedicated to Isis. Because the rising waters of Lake Nasser would eventually cover the Temple of Isis, it was painstakingly dismantled and reassembled on Agilika Island. We then went to the Papyrus Institute where they show you how the ancient Egyptians make papyrus. I went wild and bought several paintings on papyrus (the only items I purchased on the entire trip).

Aswan was the hottest place we visited with temperatures up around 41°C (106°F). In the late afternoon, we took a ride on a felucca, a boat that has plied the waters here for centuries. From the felucca, we could see the Mausoleum of Aga Khan, the great Ismaili Moslem leader up on a hill. That night Kathy went on a group tour to the local spice market (I chose to relax on the ship). After an initial briefing, the group split up and Kathy found herself mostly alone and was harassed by many of the vendors. Luckily, one other couple we met on the tour saw her predicament and came to her rescue by offering to walk with her.

The next morning we got up at 4:50 a.m. to catch our flight for what I called the “mother of all field trips”. This was an optional trip from Aswan to the temples at Abu Simbel located in Nubia, just north of Egypt’s border with Sudan. Both temples were built by Rameses II as a tribute to the deities and his favorite wife Nefertari (he had as many as 200 wives and concubines and 100 - 150 children). They were carved out of a mountain and the Rameses temple has four colossal statues each 60 feet high carved out of solid stone. Inside the temples there are more statues and the walls are covered with paintings and hieroglyphs. The whole complex is incredible to say the least. But that is only part of the story of Abu Simbel.

In a monumental feat of modern engineering, these massive temples were moved to their present location before the rising waters of Lake Nasser could submerge them. An international team of engineers and archaeologists had the temple cut up into blocks and reassembled on higher ground and into an artificial mountain built to resemble the original location. Rameses’ temple was constructed so that the rising sun shone between the statues of Rameses and into the inner recesses of the sanctuary for 20 minutes on February 22nd and October 22nd. Modern engineers spent a full year calculating the new placement of the temple to reproduce this occurrence.

After a short 40 minute flight back to Aswan, I cooled off in the ship’s pool one last time although it only got up to about 31°C (88°F). That night we saw a Nubian show on the ship. Part of the show had a Nubian “chief” dragging people (including Kathy) up on stage and making them repeat what he was saying (in Nubian?). It’s hard to describe but it was hilarious.

The next day, we flew from Aswan back to Cairo and stayed one more night at the Cairo Marriott. We had some free time so I took a taxi to the Egyptian Museum to really spend some time there (our initial tour only gave us time to see the highlights). I ended up spending 3½ hours there and didn’t even get burned out.

The last day of the trip was a long one – flying form Cairo to New York City, then to San Francisco and finally driving 100 miles to Sacramento arriving home at just before 2:00 a.m. local time.

Our ship was pretty much like a small cruise ship with the service being excellent. After dinner there were shows on the ship either put on by locals or the ship’s crew. My favorite show included a belly dancer and a whirling dervish. The belly dancer was OK but the whirling dervish was really mystifying. He must have spun around for 15 minutes nonstop and it appeared to me that he was in a trance. We also received lessons by each of the four guides on such topics as Egyptian politics, language and how to read hieroglyphs.

Our guide Hisham was excellent, blending the right amount of history with a little humor in his talks and then letting us explore on our own. The last night at the hotel, we had a farewell party and all four guides asked us to tell everyone back home about our trip in the hope that tourism in Egypt will stay strong. For an organized Egypt tour, I can definitely recommend Grand Circle Travel or its sister company Overseas Adventure Travel for their value and emphasis on really getting into the culture through home hosted dinners, etc. This trip was AWESOME!