Missy and Michele

This morning Missy and I went to the Savoy Market in Luxor to buy some souvenirs to use in our classrooms. We had some long bargaining sessions with several shop owners and came out with many items of interest that will help us set up great Egyptian displays. We quickly headed back to the hotel to ride the bus to the airport to catch our flight to Cairo. We traveled to the airport and boarded Egypt Air which our tour group had renamed "Egypt Scare" after the terrible landing we had when returning from Abu Simbel. Our tour group of explorers boarded the plane and landed in Cairo later that afternoon. We rode the bus back to the hotel where we all said our last goodbyes to each other and our tour guide, Mayer. It was ... read more

Today we left our fabulous Nile Cruise and headed to our hotel in Luxor. Luxor is a lovely city that is clean and beautifully manicured with the Temple of Luxor in its center and the Temples of Karnak at its edge. On the way to the hotel we stopped at the Luxor Jewelry Market. It was a great shopping excursion. The store had beautiful creations made of gold and silver in the form of many different designs representing ancient Egyptian culture like the key of life, the Eye of Isis, cartouches, and the sacred scarab. We traveled to the hotel where we all decided it was time for a McDonald's run for lunch. On the way to the restaurant we encountered some children on the street who did not have any shoes and were very dirty. ... read more

We left Aswan the night before and cruised to Kom Ombo. We enjoyed seeing the countryside when we woke with fishermen and farmers hard at work. Kom Ombo is 40 kilometers (28 miles) north of Aswan and since earliest times, has received visitors who have traveled through the Libyan and Arabian deserts from Sudan. The town of Kom Ombo was built on a high dune overlooking the Nile and gained importance during the Ptolemic age as it protected the southern border of Egypt and in the Roman period was a military station. Following breakfast we began the day with a visit to Kom Ombo. We got up early to beat the heat, but we did not beat the villagers who were lined up parading their treasures to sale. It seems like each day, they get more ... read more

We left our hotel early for the Aswan airport to head to Abu Simbel. Mayer explained that you have to go by plane or military convoy escort on a bus. Apparently, there has been a history of terrorism and tourists have been robbed and held as hostages by the Sudanese on their way through this secluded part of the desert. I felt better that we would be traveling by plane. We did have a little mishap at the airport again. One of group members accidentially left some maniucure scissors in her bag and the airport police were very upset. We could not understand their instructions, so we quickly found Mayer. They instructed Mayer to break the scissors. He had a hard time, but he managed to destroy them. I don't know why they just did not ... read more

Today was the day I had been waiting for: Cleopatra, The Catacombs, and The Library of Alexandria. We boarded our bus early and was shocked to see a special forces officer, who was packing numerous weapons around his belt, boarding the bus with us. All kinds of questions entered my head. Had a threat been made against us? Was Alexandria this unsafe? I already felt uncomfortable here much like an outsider or a second class citizen. I was able to ask Mayer what was going on in private, and he said when they did not have an assignment, they would escort tour groups because they did not want anything to go wrong with tourists. Tourism is their livelihood here in Egypt. That eased my mind a little. We were off to see Pompey's Pillars. Very little ... read more