Ted’s and my Nile River cruise ended in Luxor.  From there, we flew to Cairo and spent a night in a hotel with our fellow river cruisers.  It was our last day with this group of people.  We and three other couples exchanged email addresses so that we can stay in touch.  The following day, Viking took us all from the Cairo hotel to the airport to travel to our next destinations—home for most of the group; to Istanbul for Ted and me where we’ll embark on a 30-day Mediterranean cruise from Istanbul to Barcelona.

I was nervous about our arrival in Istanbul because of the lack of English we’d experienced in Israel and in Egypt as well as the absence of a Viking guide to walk us through the local security processes.  Ted and I agreed that most people at the airports go from the plane to the baggage terminal to the exit, so we decided to follow the crowd.  Sure enough, there were very few signs printed in English, but we followed the crowd, as planned.  If we got off-track, there was always someone in a staff uniform who used international gesture language to tell us where to go—one hand up with the palm out for “stop,” then an extended arm with a pointed index finger for “go over there.” 

At the terminal exit, there was a booth with English language signs (at last!) indicating we could boost the local economy by paying them to reserve a hotel, arrange a city tour, rent a car, etc. for us.  There was another English-language sign that said, “Spend as much as you can.  Leave Türkiye green.”  We gave the booth attendant the name of our transport service and he directed us to our transfer company just outside the exit door.  The transport agent also spoke English.  We showed him our printed reservations, we got on the indicated bus, and we arrived at our hotel.  Well, that was easy!  We set our travel bar for “Can we do it?” at “We made it through the Istanbul airport, so we can handle anything.”

For unknown reasons, Viking would not transfer us from a river cruise to an ocean cruise, but our travel agent made reservations for us at the hotel where all the guests for the Viking Mediterranean cruise were staying. That made it easy for us to board our bus for the Viking transfer to the ship the following day.  We knew for sure that we were in Türkiye when we entered the hotel lobby and saw the hookah at the door.

There was no problem checking in at the hotel, but the staff was adamant about refusing us the Viking group dinner and breakfast.  It took at least three or four different hotel staff members and another two Viking staff members to convince the hotel staff of our Viking group membership meal privileges.  We didn’t get the group dinner, but the restaurant dinner we had on our own that evening was the best meal of our entire trip, so no worries.

After we checked out of our room the next morning and were waiting for our Viking bus to take us to the ship, we walked around the public areas in the hotel lobby to pass the time.  At one point, a nice lady in an upper-level hotel uniform came up to us and said she would like to introduce us to the hotel manager.  We wondered how we rated that, but thought, “Oh, well, . . .” 

Three men in suits approached us and the lady introduced us to the manager.  We shook hands and then one of the other men introduced himself as the head of the accounting department.  Still puzzled at the attention, we smiled and shook his hand too.  We all chatted for a bit and then the third man said, “I apologize.  You aren’t who we thought you were,” and all three men abruptly left.  Huh??? 

The woman downplayed the (near house arrest?) incident by asking if we’d had a pleasant stay, if we’d enjoyed the full breakfast, and if everything about our stay had been good.  Ted and I decided that, in some way, we must have resembled someone who didn’t pay for the hotel charges.  It was weird.

We left the hotel on our assigned bus, boarded our ship, and had lunch, followed by a relaxing afternoon onboard with some time spent unpacking our things for our 30-day stay.

On our fourth day in Cairo, we visited the Church of the Virgin Mary, aka, the “Hanging Church,” in Old Cairo.  This part of Cairo is also called Coptic Cairo because it was a stronghold of Christianity in Egypt before and during the Islamic era.  (Coptic is a generic term for Egyptian Christians.)  The church was probably built around 690-692.

The courtyard at the entrance to the church has decorations scattered on its surface.

This is the front entrance to the church.

The Hanging Church is not actually suspended.  The nave of the church is built on top of the gates of an old Roman fortress and there is an open passage between the gates and beneath the church.  You can’t see the open passage through the scratched plexiglass in the photo below, but it’s there.

The church is beautifully ornate inside.  Here is an icon of the Virgin Mary at the altar.

This is one of the stained-glass windows in the building.

Here are two of the church ceilings.

In the first century, women did not have equal stature to men, so they had to remain out of sight of the men.  (On a personal note, 20 centuries later, we’re still waiting for equal stature.)  “Windows,” like the brown box in the left photo below, allowed women to look into the church’s courtyard without being seen by the men. 

This picture shows the window box from the inside.  From my photo distance, you can see blue sky and a darker building beneath it, but if you go up to the window to look through the openings, it’s possible to identify things in the courtyard.

As we were driving back to our hotel, we passed this cemetery.  The box-like structures are burial units.  Families of the deceased add “rooms” to the units over time, much like the pharaohs did with their tombs and temples, but in a far more humble manner.  Some of these rooms are currently used by homeless people for shelter.  According to Hanan, homelessness is not a great problem in Egypt because there are laws requiring the wealthy to care for the poor, and because other laws prohibit demolishing any structure that is more than 100 years old.  Homeless people are allowed to live in vacant structures and, in Cairo, there are over 1,200 areas designated for “irregular dwellings” that do not need to meet building codes.  As a result, homeless people may build shacks or other structures in those areas without penalties.  There is, mathematically, more housing than is needed in Egypt, but not all of it includes a safe environment, safe drinking water, or wastewater treatment.  Even though these residents may not be homeless, they do not necessarily have a good quality of life.

Every city and country has monuments to its heroes.  This memorial honors the unknown soldiers who died to defend Egypt.

The tower on the right in this photo commemorates Egypt’s former president, Gamal Bidel Nasser.

We’ll be back in Cairo in nine days to fly to Istanbul but, first, we are going to fly to Luxor tomorrow to begin our eight-day cruise on the Nile River.  Here’s my favorite picture from the last four days.  I think it clearly says “Egypt.”

Ted and I saw some interesting vehicles on our BT.  Jerusalem has a desert climate, so rainfall is scarce.  As a result, Jerusalem is a very dusty city.  I think vehicle owners see no point in trying to keep their vehicles clean, so they clear the windshield and go.  I’ve never seen as many dirty vehicles as Ted and I saw in Jerusalem on our 2023 BT.  I mean every car and every truck! It’s probably like living alongside a gravel road.  You can wash your car, but as soon as you take it on the road, it’s dirty again.  Practicality wins.

While Israeli vehicle styles tended to look like those in most major cities, Cairo and Aswan had a great variety of transportation modes, varying from sedans and large modern buses to three-wheeled mini-cars to donkey-drawn carts to handcarts propelled by human feet.  They all shared the streets with no apparent rules of the road.

The street in front of our Cairo hotel had four lanes of traffic moving in each direction.  There were no painted traffic lane lines, no stop signs or stop lights, and no marked crosswalks.  One couple in our group wanted to cross the street to stand on the banks of the Nile River and said it was like taking your life in your hands to do that.  Hanan told us later that “it’s easier to take a cab and make a u-turn than it is to cross the street in Cairo.”

The traffic seemed to move smoothly, but with the constant sound of horns—some long, some short—as cars moved forward, smoothly gliding from one lane to another, as if it was a dance.  From our upper-story hotel window, it looked like a video game.  I suspect there was a “horn code” with different horn signals to tell adjacent drivers, “Don’t change lanes because I’m passing you” and “Ok, thanks for letting me know.” 

There was likely to be a horse- or donkey-drawn vehicle or a handcart in the traffic, but it was generally ignored, and the cars just beeped their horns (probably in code) and went around it.  We occasionally saw a vehicle driving against the traffic in an outer lane, but the other drivers went around it as easily as they did the handcarts.  Other times, we saw vehicles parked in the outermost traffic lanes (either side of the road) and drivers of cars simply weaved around those as well.  If you needed to make a left turn, the secret seemed to be to do it with confidence.  If you entered the intersection with confidence, oncoming drivers slowed or stopped to allow you to turn, then proceeded with their weaving and horn-honking.  I asked Hanan what kind of traffic laws were in effect, and she said that, basically, you just drive as you please, but speed limits are very strictly enforced. 

Mini-sized vehicles were everywhere in Egypt.  I saw several at a single intersection in Aswan.  Notice the absence of lane markings and stop lights at the corner.

In Esna, we saw this horse-drawn buggy. The cart on the right is donkey-drawn.  Heavy traffic didn’t bother them.  I wish I’d been able to photograph at least one of the manual pushcarts we saw.

This donkey-drawn wagon was rolling along in Aswan.

Little trucks were plentiful too.  This vehicle looks like the front half of a motorcycle with a two-wheeled wagon attached.

This little truck in Athens is also three-wheeled, but includes a cab.  We saw a lot of these carrying loads higher than the side rails.  As long as the load was balanced, there seemed to be no height limit.  Sometimes, there were people sitting on top of the loads, even if the load was higher than the truck bed.

This truck in Qena, with three men sitting on the top, is underloaded, compared to others we saw.  Maybe they just completed a delivery.

Mini vehicles transporting large numbers of people were also a common sight.  Is there a contest to see how many people fit on a motorcycle?  The motorcycle in the photo below has only four people on it.  (The mom is holding the baby.)  We saw no helmets and no visible fear of traffic danger.  During one of our pre-excursion onboard talks, the speaker told a joke about motorcycles in Egypt.

A policeman stops a motorcycle and asks the driver, “Do you know you have six people on this motorcycle?”  The astonished driver replies, “Six?!  What happened to Ahmed?!”

If a vehicle is too full, people simply hang outside of it, like these folks in Aswan. 

We saw so many station wagons like this one that I asked what they were.  I learned that this is an Egyptian national taxi service.  You can go to the taxi station and buy a ticket to travel to any city in Egypt in these cars.  There were a lot of these on the roads in the early mornings and late afternoons, so I think they might also be used as local taxis for people going to work and coming home afterward.

Thank goodness we always had a professional driver for our excursions, so that we didn’t have to figure out the roadway protocols in Egypt, or ride with five other people on a motorcycle.

Our Nile River cruise excursion today took us to the Aswan High Dam, one of the top 10 dams in the world.  As we went from place to place in Egypt, it was nice to see lots of beautifully colorful bougainvillea along the road on our routes.

The Aswan High Dam, which formed Lake Nassar, is an engineering feat that protects the fertile land along the Nile River from flooding.  At 300 miles long, Lake Nassar is the second-largest man-made lake in the world.  The photo below shows Lake Nassar behind the Aswan High Dam. We were standing on the dam, so it was impossible to take a picture of it.  The dam is made of granite, not concrete, so it’s technically a 365-foot-high pile of rocks.  Granite from this area was shipped downriver from Aswan to Cairo to build the Great Pyramids of Giza. 

The SUE (Soviet Union-Egypt) Friendship Monument (below) is near the dam.  It represents the friendship between Egypt and Russia and commemorates Russia’s assistance in constructing the Aswan High Dam.  Although the U.S. and some European countries contributed to the cost of the Aswan High Dam, Russia was by far the largest contributor.  The monument’s shape suggests the lotus flower which closes at night and goes beneath the water, then rises again to open the next day.

After visiting the dam, we went into downtown Aswan and stopped at a spice market.  It smelled wonderful! I was surprised that Aswan appeared to be a cleaner, more dynamic, and more prosperous city than Cairo, Egypt’s capital city.

The indoor store must have offered every spice imaginable.  The photo below shows about half of the store.

The main downtown market was the nicest and largest one we’ve seen so far (photo below).  It was similar to an outdoor shopping mall in the U.S., but with Egyptian products and determined vendors.  The market is two miles long, with shops on both sides of the walkway. The lattice top keeps the walkway (relatively) cool, making it pleasant to walk and browse.  Of course, the vendors had to do their thing, so if we even glanced into their shops—and it’s hard to avoid looking—they rushed out to the walkway to offer us their wares.  Unlike the foot vendors we’ve encountered, these shop vendors were less aggressive and did not follow us down the walkway—they needed to tend the goods in their shops.

After our time in the market, we sailed for an hour on the Nile River in a felucca—a wooden, single-sail boat like those in the photo below.  While we were sailing, a half dozen boys 8-10 years old swam out to our boat on paddleboards, put their arms over the sides of the felucca to anchor themselves, and sang to us.

The awning over the boat and the river breeze through the open sides provided us with a lovely ride. Even here, we couldn’t escape the vendors.  The table in the right center of the photo below has a cloth over it covering items that were later revealed for sale.

Our felucca passed the Old Cataract Hotel and Elephant Island, named for its rocks (below).  Aswan is at the first of six cataracts (waterfalls) on the Nile River. The rocks on Elephant Island reminded me of those in Elephant Rocks State Park in Missouri.

The Aswan dam was the southernmost point of our Nile River cruise so, after our felucca cruise, our ship turned back to the north, heading downstream toward Luxor.  On the way to our Edfu stop, we passed the Kom Ombo Temple of Sobek. Say “Kom Ombo” aloud.  Pronounce it the way it looks.  Isn’t it fun?  Doesn’t it sound African? 

We docked in Kom Ombo that night, but did not go on any organized excursions in the city, so I took a picture at the dock where there was—what else?—a market.

Whew!  For our BT, Ted and I woke up at 4:00 a.m. on Tuesday, and arrived in Tel Aviv just before noon, local time, on Wednesday.  We spent Thursday, Friday, and Saturday taking daily eight-hour tours in Jerusalem and Bethlehem in upper-90s heat.  Sunday was a travel day from Jerusalem to Cairo.  Monday and Tuesday included two more consecutive days of 8-hour tours in Cairo and Giza with temperatures in the low 100s.  On Wednesday, we were awake at 4:00 a.m. again to fly from Cairo to Luxor and, upon our midday arrival, headed out in the 108-degree heat for a four-hour tour in Luxor before boarding our ship to begin our Nile River cruise on Thursday.  Can you spell “exhausted”? 

Hanan told our group that “you aren’t here for vacation; you’re here to learn.”  I can’t speak for anyone else in the group, but Ted and I were there for a vacation, hoping to learn new things from our travels. 

Today featured a tour of a nearby temple, but after ten long days of travel and walking outdoors in the heat, Ted and I chose to take the day off.  Besides, we toured the second largest ancient temple in the world (Karnak) two days ago.  We had a wonderfully relaxing and quiet day onboard the ship with a half dozen other people who also chose to skip today’s temple tour.

Because we took the day off, I have no tour information to share, but here are a few notes about Egypt in general.

• The restrooms on our Egyptian tours have been—interesting.  Hanan tells us in advance which ones are awful and should be avoided and where a (relatively) nicer alternate is located.  Most of the restrooms don’t have toilet paper, so Hanan told us to always carry some with us.  An attendant sits outside the restroom door, offering a roll of toilet paper for users to take inside and to return when they leave.  You don’t get the roll until you pay the tip—about $1.00.  Instead of giving the attendant a tip, we were told to simply say “Viking” and to make a “V” with our fingers so the attendants would know we were with the Viking cruise group and would give us the roll of toilet paper tip-free.  Before leaving, our three guides paid the attendants a flat fee for the restroom use.  Even so, some of the attendants asked us for more money.  I guess it doesn’t hurt to try, does it?

• Many places in Egypt still farm and produce goods using the same methods they used 5,000 years ago.  That explains the hand-pushed carts we saw on the busy streets, along with the cars and the buses.

• A lot of buildings have rebar extending out of the rooftops.  Most buildings had rugs and/or laundry hanging on the railings, indicating that the buildings were inhabited, but I couldn’t figure out a reason for the rebar, so I finally asked Hanan if she knew its purpose.  Well, . . . not surprisingly, no one anywhere, including Egypt, likes to pay taxes and everyone everywhere uses any tax loopholes they can.  Egypt’s tax laws don’t tax buildings that are unfinished.  If rebar extends above the top of the building, the building is technically ready to add another story, thus qualifying the building as incomplete–even if it’s inhabited–and making it tax-free.  It’s not very attractive, but it’s cost-saving for the building owners!

• As we drove from place to place during our river cruise excursions, we saw banana trees and papyrus.  Papyrus likes to grow in the marshy soil along the banks of the Nile River. Yes, papyrus is still used to make specialty writing paper, especially for artists and calligraphers.

• Vendors were annoying in Egypt.  I understand that they are trying to make a living, but they’re so aggressive!  Their prices are very flexible, and bargaining downward is easy, but very time-consuming.  For example, Ted and I wanted to purchase a mini pyramid as a souvenir of Egypt.  The vendor immediately went into his spiel.  We politely listened, then offered what we thought it would be worth in the U.S. (about half the vendor’s price). The vendor pretty much ignored our offer and, instead, became chatty with us.  “How many women live in your house? How many children?” etc. Our answers were “one” and “zero” at this time. Then he went into his story about how many women and children he supports, and why he needed us to pay more for the pyramid.  (I think the message was that, even though he knew the product wasn’t worth the price, he wanted more money out of sympathy for his plight.) 

We liked the pyramid we’d selected and we wanted to purchase it, but it was nearly a 30-minute process before he came down and we went up to an agreeable price.  I’ve heard people say they love doing that kind of bargaining, but I’m not fond of shopping.  I like to know what I’m after, go where I know I’ll find it, pick it up, pay for it, and go home.  I don’t like bargaining, and I hate buying a car just because of that.  On the bright side, as my Aunt Ruth would say, if stuff like this didn’t happen, we wouldn’t have stories to tell, and I just told a little story.

• I like the picture below.  It provides a glimpse of what we saw in the small Egyptian cities.  Naturally, there are buildings with exposed rebar on the roofs.

Today started very early for some of the people on our Nile River cruise.  I’m not sure how far away the hot air balloon ride was, but the bus leaving for the balloon site departed from our dock at 3:30 a.m.  The balloon ride excursion was weather-dependent, and the go-no-go decision wouldn’t be made until the departure time.  Luckily, the weather was good, so our friends didn’t get up early for nothing. Ted and I have already experienced (1) a hot air balloon ride; (2) the Great Forest Park Balloon Race; and (3) the Albuquerque Balloon Festival, so we slept in until 6:30.  When we got up, we saw hot air balloons across the Nile from us.  Maybe some of our group members were in them.  We couldn’t ride in them like the early birds did, but we could enjoy how beautiful and peaceful they looked.

Today was another major highlight of our visit to Egypt.  We visited the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens near Luxor.  On our way, we passed the excavation sites pictured below, as well as many others.  As Hanan said, “There is something under everything in Egypt.”  As a result, excavations usually yield results.  In fact, the Egyptian government is moving people out of the Valley of the Kings to allow for more excavation.  The picture below shows part of the excavation of the Lost Golden City at Aten. 

I don’t know what’s being re-discovered in this photo, but that’s pretty much what the landscape looked like all the way along our route in the Sahara Desert.

When we were at the Step Pyramid and I learned that we were going to go into the tomb, my first thought was “Great!  It will be cooler down there.”  That was so-o-o-o not true!  I was hoping for cave-like temperatures of 55 degrees (I would have settled for 85 degrees), but that was not to be.  The reasons:  (1) There’s a lot of heat in the air; (2) there is probably at least as much heat in the sand and the rocks that hold the desert heat; (3) the tombs have little air circulation inside; and (4) the tombs have been storing heat over the centuries just like the sand and the rocks.  The result:  It’s even hotter underground.  Amazingly, it was a relief to come out of the tombs into the 110-degree heat!

The kings chose this area for their tombs because it was hidden and would therefore prevent robbers from finding the treasures in the tombs.  By this time, the pharaohs had given up on labor-intensive pyramids.  In addition, pyramids were essentially a beacon to grave-robbers, clearly announcing “Come in, come in.  There’s a lot of good stuff in here for you to steal!”  There are more than 60 pyramid-less tombs carved into the rocky hills in the Valley of the Kings.  Our first stop was King Tutankhamun’s tomb (photo below).  The pyramid-shaped pile of sand and rock over the entrance was added after the excavation of the tomb.

Typically, kings added to their tombs over the years of their reigns.  King Tut died when he was 19, having ruled for only nine years, so his tomb is small.  The photo below shows King Tut’s sarcophagus.  The tomb was discovered in 1922 and, after scientifically examining the mummy, the mummy was replaced in 1926 and is still inside the sarcophagus.

Three coffins were discovered inside King Tut’s sarcophagus.  The outer two were made of wood, covered in gold and semiprecious stones.  The third (inner) coffin held the king’s mummified body and was made of solid gold.  The image of a pharaoh is that of a god, and the gods were thought to have skin of gold, bones of silver, and hair of lapis lazuli, so the death mask of Tut that we are familiar with shows him in his divine form in the afterlife.  It is regarded as one of the masterpieces of Egyptian art.  (It was one of the things we could not take pictures of in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.) Below are pictures of some of the hieroglyphs inside King Tut’s tomb.  King Tut’s tomb is less splendid than many of the other tombs.  Its main claim to fame is that it is the only tomb archeologists found intact, with a literal treasure trove of artifacts inside, as well as the undisturbed mummy.

The next tomb we visited was that of Ramses II.  He lived to be around 90 years old and reigned as pharaoh for 66 years, so it’s not surprising that his is one of the largest tombs (26 rooms) in the Valley of the Kings.  All of those rooms were cut into the subterranean rock!

Ramses II was one of the greatest pharaohs of Egypt and ruled during Egypt’s Golden Age.  He is known for his military and cultural accomplishments, his good leadership, and the monuments and temples he built, including the Karnak Temple.  On a personal note, he had over 200 wives and over 100 children.  It makes you wonder when he had time to do any of those other things he is remembered for.

In the photo below, you can see a hallway in Ramses II’s tomb.  The tomb is so large, there are other hallways branching off from this one.

Here are close-ups of some of the beautifully detailed hieroglyphics in Ramses II’s tomb.

We left the Valley of the Kings and moved on to the Valley of the Queens, where over 90 tombs have been discovered so far.  The queens had to be buried separately from the kings, so the Valley of the Queens is on the opposite side of the mountain from the Valley of the Kings.  It was originally intended to serve as the burial grounds for the royal queens of ancient Egypt, but princes, princesses, and other high-ranking nobility are also buried in the Valley of the Queens.  Question:  Does anyone besides me think it’s odd that the men liked women enough to have 200+ wives and to father 100+ children, but could not tolerate women enough to be buried beside them after they were dead?

The most beautiful and best-preserved of all the tombs in the Valley of the Queens is that of Nefertari, the first of the Great Royal Wives of Ramses II.  Nefertari always wanted to be a man and wore men’s clothing; as a queen, she wore a king’s crown.  There were other queens in Egypt, but Nefertari was the only female pharaoh, and she very successfully ruled Egypt for 20 years.

Nefertari’s tomb has been described as the “Sistine Chapel of Ancient Egypt.”  All the hieroglyphs we’ve seen in the tombs we’ve visited are in their original state.  The dry climate of Egypt and the fact that the tombs are underground provide ideal conditions for preserving artifacts like these.  Some of my photos of Nefertari’s tomb are below.  It is, beyond a doubt, an extremely beautiful place to visit—more like an art museum than a tomb.

After spending most of the day admiring hieroglyphs underground, we came up for (hot) air and visited the Colossi of Memnon, two massive stone statues of Pharaoh Amenhotep III that have stood in front of the Mortuary Temple of Amenhotep III to guard it since 1350 BCE.  The temple was originally the largest and most opulent in Ancient Egypt (larger than Karnak), but very little of it is left today, except for the Colossi.  Now, I guess they guard the temple ruins.

Our last stop of the day was at the house of British archeologist and Egyptologist, Howard Carter, the man who led the team that discovered the tomb of King Tut.  The house was not remarkable, so I didn’t take any pictures of it.  The best thing about the Carter House was that it was surprisingly cool inside (relatively speaking), with spacious rooms and a lovely breeze—yes, a real breeze! —on the front porch.

And that concluded our time in the Valleys of the Kings and the Queens.  I mentioned in an earlier post that much of the stone for the Great Pyramids was quarried near Luxor and shipped to Giza.  Obviously, the desert is filled with sandstone and granite, but this area also has a great deal of alabaster, and alabaster factories are plentiful.  One of them is shown in my picture below. 

You need a lot of extra time to deal with security checks at the airports in Israel and Egypt, so today, Ted and I had to wake up at 4:00 a.m. (yawn) for our private charter flight from Cairo to Luxor.  I’ve never been on a charter or a private flight before, and our flights from Jerusalem to Cairo and from Cairo to Luxor qualified for both.  We’ll have another private chartered flight from Luxor back to Cairo at the end of our Nile River cruise.

A private chartered flight sounds awesome but, in reality, it was a well-used ordinary passenger plane from a commercial charter company—there were no lounge chairs, no gold fixtures in the bathrooms, no fully-reclining seats, nor any other luxury amenities.  The private part of the flight was that it was a small jet and, including Viking personnel and 80 cruisers-to-be, we filled the plane.  The good part was that, even though the flight took less than two hours, we were served a full, hot meal for lunch.  It seemed like a treat at the time, but I suspect the meal was included as a time-saver because, when we arrived, we put our luggage on one bus and rode in a different one.  Our luggage went to the ship for our Nile River cruise; we passengers embarked on a four-hour tour of the Karnak Temple—one of the Egyptian sites our guide, Hanan, helped to excavate. 

As we drove from the airport to the temple, we crossed the Avenue of the Sphinxes which was buried under sand for centuries.  This avenue includes 1,050 sphinxes in the 2.25 miles it traverses between the Karnak Temple and the Luxor Temple.  Sphinxes originated in Egypt and had three distinct types:  The Androsphinx had a lion’s body with a person’s head; the Criosphinx had a lion’s body with a ram’s head; and the Hieracosphinx had a lion’s body with a falcon’s or a hawk’s head.  Here’s a photo of one part of the Avenue of the Sphinxes.

Luxor has been the spiritual capital of Egypt for 15 centuries.  The visitor’s center outside the temple complex had a model of the Karnak Temple (photo below).  This temple is the second-largest in the world (the largest is in Cambodia) and was embellished for 1,500 years by 30 pharaohs.  The entire complex includes 26 temples and could fit the equivalent of ten cathedrals within its walls.  It also had a huge sacred lake (the blue rectangle in the photo below).  Most of its construction is not unique, but its size and the number of its features are vast.

The building in the photo below was near an entrance to the temple.  The columns are described as “megaliths.”  Well-named.

The part of the temple shown below is referred to as the ancient avenue.  If you look at the photo of the model (above), this view looks through the left wing of the temple.

The obelisks shown below are called tekhenu and are usually placed at the entrance to a temple.  The Karnak Temple originally had approximately 20 obelisks; these two are the largest to survive.

The columns in the photo below were in the Great Hypostyle Hall.  They are decorated with religious scenes showing the pharaohs in the company of Egypt’s gods.  There is a progression of scenes on every wall, column, and gateway in this hall.  The hall has 134 massive columns arranged in 16 rows.  Most of them are 33 feet high, but 12 of them are 69 feet high and 10 feet in diameter.  They once supported a towering ceiling.

These criosphinxes (ram-headed) signify the god Amun, lord of Karnak.

This small room was a place for high-ranking personnel (priests and pharaohs) to pray and/or to meditate.  The shaft of light probably has some religious meaning.  There is also a sun god’s shrine in the Karnak Temple complex.  It was built to focus sunlight on the shrine at the winter solstice, but we were there in August, so we didn’t see that.

The statues in this hall are “Ramses II as Osiris.”  Ramses II was one of the pharaohs who enlarged the Temple of Karnak.  He commissioned this hall in which he is portrayed (repeatedly, in case the gods didn’t get the message) as Osiris’ mummy.  Osiris, the god of the dead, was one of the most worshipped and respected gods in the Egyptian religion, and was the first mummy in history; therefore, every mummified body afterward followed in the steps of Osiris.  One of the prevailing tenets of the Egyptian religion was the desire to enter the realm of Osiris after death, and these statues illustrate Ramses II’s desire to do that. 

Ted and I quickly learned that, in the Sahara Desert, the sun has been warming the sand and rocks for millennia, and the sand and rocks have been efficiently storing that heat.  In Egypt, while the sun beats down at 110 degrees, the heat also reflects upward.  The natives we saw didn’t seem to be suffering (i.e., sweating or tiring) as much as we were, so acclimatization probably makes a big difference in tolerance for the heat.

Having been a member of the excavation team at the Karnak temple, Hanan is justifiably proud of what has been discovered at this site.  After we’d walked around the temple for the scheduled four hours in the 108-degree afternoon heat, Hanan offered additional supplemental information to anyone who was interested and would like to follow her.  She also suggested that some of us might prefer to wait on the bus.  I hope her feelings weren’t hurt when all of us headed for the bus.  In our defense, we’d all been up since 4:00 a.m. for our flight to Luxor. The bus took us to our air-conditioned river ship where we unpacked our things for our eight-day cruise, showered, and enjoyed a delicious onboard dinner with our friends.

Our third day in Egypt took us to Giza, directly across the Nile River from Cairo, where we saw pyramids and sphinxes.  Pyramids were built as temples to the gods to glorify life after death, most famously as monuments to house the tombs of the pharaohs.  There are 118 pyramids in Egypt.  In Egyptian culture, a sphinx represents the solar deity and symbolizes royalty and sacred status.  There are thousands of sphinxes in Egypt.  Their purpose is to guard the tombs and to ward off tomb raiders.  Given the number of tombs available for tours, that didn’t work out too well.

It was date season, and we saw lots of ripe dates hanging from the date palm trees all along the route to Giza.  Dates are a popular and important source of food in this part of the world because they dry and store well and, best of all, they’re said to be delicious.  (I don’t like dates.  Just give me some raisins, please.)  Egypt produces more dates than any other country in the world.

The first pyramid we saw today was the Pyramid of Djoser (silent “D”).  When it became visible from our bus windows, there was an audible, excited intake of breath from the group.  A pyramid! This is what we came to Egypt to see!  The Djoser Pyramid is usually referred to as the Step Pyramid, for obvious reasons.  (See the photo below.) 

The Step Pyramid was designed by the first named architect, Imhotep, around the 27^th century BCE.  Imhotep used stone in place of mud brick, wood, and reeds.  It was the first pyramid and the first stone building in history.  The burial chamber is at the end of a central shaft about 130 feet below the surface of the ground.  The pyramid was part of a complex described as a “vast city of the dead” with a mile-long wall that was originally 34 feet high.  Imhotep was later worshipped as a god for his remarkable craftsmanship in this complex, and today, this pyramid is the oldest important stone building in Egypt.  The photo below shows where we entered the tomb of the Step Pyramid.  There are wooden crossbars on the ramp to keep people from slipping on the steep ramp as they enter and exit the tomb.

After we reached the bottom of the ramp and some stairs, we walked through this tunnel/hallway, . . .

. . . to the central part of the tomb.

These are some of the hieroglyphics we saw inside the tomb.

The Collonade Entrance to the Djoser Complex was originally lined with 20 pair of columns.  This was the first appearance of stone columns in architecture—also designed by Imhotep.

Ted and I thought Jerusalem was hot, but that was before we came to Egypt.  Don’t tell me about dry heat!  When the temperature is above 100 degrees and the sun is reflecting off the rocks and the sand, I think dry heat might be worse than heat with high humidity.

We had a chance to cool off in our air-conditioned bus as we left the Step Pyramid and drove to a rug-weaving factory.  The factory hires children to do the weaving because these silk rugs have 400 stitches per square inch, and the children have small fingers that fit more easily between the vertical threads. (No one mentioned child labor laws and I wasn’t going to ask with all the security and rifles around.) 

These are some of the beautiful rugs these children weave.  Naturally, they were available for purchase.

After a delicious lunch, we headed for the highlights of the day:  the Great Pyramids and the Great Sphinx.  The Great Pyramids of Giza are the last surviving Wonder of the Ancient World.  The first sight of them is breathtaking.  Pyramids, as I previously mentioned, are tombs.  These three pyramid/tombs were built for three generations of Egyptian kings:  Khufu, his son Khafre (the statue in the Egyptian Museum with the falcon on his head), and his grandson Menkaure.  Some smaller pyramids at Giza were constructed for these kings’ wives and mothers.

The Great Pyramids of Giza are unbelievably huge and took 27 years to build.  The largest was 481 feet tall (about 45 stories) but has lost 31 feet from its top and now stands at 450 feet tall.  You can see the flat top where the capstone is missing. 

There is consensus that the Great Pyramids were built by paid laborers, not by slaves.  Building them required 5.5 million tons of limestone, 8,000 tons of granite, and 500,000 tons of mortar.  The granite likely came from Aswan, 530 miles upstream on the Nile.  If you’re wondering how many stone blocks are in the largest pyramid, the answer is 2.3 million.  (I’m not the one who counted them.)  For scale, zoom the photo below to see people climbing on the pyramid below the large hole on its side and standing at its opening.

Here’s a close-up of one of the Great Pyramids.  The surface used to be covered with limestone to make it smooth, like it is near the top.

Near the Great Pyramids, it was possible to buy a ticket to ride a camel.  Several members of our group did that.

Until I saw it, I didn’t realize that the Great Sphinx was within walking distance of the Great Pyramids.  How handy for sightseers! 

The Great Sphinx was carved from a single piece of limestone.  It was built by Egyptian farmers who needed to be fed during the spring months of the annual Nile flooding, hundreds of years before the Israelites (slaves) came to Egypt.

Giza and Cairo are across the Nile River from each other, so we could see Cairo from Giza.

Hanan told us the vendors at the Great Pyramids are extremely aggressive.  She advised us to just say “no” and to keep walking.  Ted and I can testify to the vendors’ aggressiveness.  As we were walking away from the Pyramids to get a better picture of them, a man invited us to join him and his camel, Moses.  We said “no,” but then he offered to take our picture with the pyramids.  We kept saying “no” as we turned and began walking away from him.  At one point, he grabbed Ted’s arm and tried to position it so he could take a photo that would look like Ted’s hand was resting on the top of the Great Pyramid.  Things started getting very weird, so we just gave up on taking our picture and walked faster toward where Hanan was waiting.  (The vendors get in trouble if they get within a certain distance of a venue.)  We turned around at one point and saw the vendor bothering someone else.

Our tour group of 22 people flew together from Tel Aviv to Cairo today for our first of four days in that area.  At our hotel, we were joined by 58 more people who were taking the eight-day Nile River cruise with us.

The flight was smooth and on time, but not without problems.  One of the two airports managed to tear the main handle off my suitcase and lost my luggage ID tags as well.  Yes, they stripped the bolt out of the wooden frame of my lifetime-guaranteed suitcase.  I’m not worried about the repair; I can have that done at no cost at a shop that’s about 15 minutes from our house.  The annoying part of this is that we have eight flights on the BT and this was only the third one, so I’m stuck with a suitcase with a missing handle for five more flights.  At least the telescoping handle for rolling the suitcase still works, so once I pick up the suitcase, I can still haul it around.  This isn’t the kind of adventure I was anticipating on the BT, but stuff happens and travel goes on.

We were taken directly from the airport to our hotel in Cairo, and I took this photo of the Nile River and the city from our hotel room.  I couldn’t believe it!  I was in the exotic country of Egypt right across the street from the iconic Nile River—the longest river in the world. 

The furniture in the hotel room clearly said “Egypt.”  Notice that there’s a handy ashtray on the table.  I don’t think any of the 32 countries Ted and I have visited has smoking laws as strict as those in the U.S.  It’s so odd to be in public rooms with smokers and to have ashtrays wherever someone might wish to sit down to smoke.

Note:  The hotel staff was so attentive that, when I sneezed at dinner, a server brought a box of tissues to me in less time than it took me to get one out of my purse!  When we asked staff members for directions to particular places (rest room, dining room, elevator), they not only gave us directions, but also escorted us so they could open the door and/or press the elevator button for us.

After a good night’s sleep and some breakfast, we headed for our tour meeting place and were introduced to our Egyptian guide, Hanan.  Hanan is a dual citizen of Egypt and the U.S.  Her archeology degrees specialize in Egyptology, and she has participated in a variety of archeological excavations in Egypt, including some that we will visit.  Her passion for archeology and the depth of her knowledge of Egypt are astounding.

While our group was getting acquainted with Hanan, the other 66 travelers in our enlarged group were divided into two groups and were being introduced to their guides.  Thereafter, we became groups A (us), B, and C for the remainder of our time in Egypt.  It was nice because the groups were small enough to make good friends during the time we spent together in Egypt, plus the additional four days in Israel for group A.  Then we were introduced to our bus driver, whose name was Muhammed Ali, and to our security guard, also named Muhammed–the most common name in Egypt.  I wonder what the odds are that you can walk up to an Egyptian man, say, “Hi there, Muhammed,” and be right.  Again, as in Israel, we were told not to drink the water or to use it to brush our teeth.  Egyptians can drink it because they do so from birth and their bodies have adjusted to it. 

After the group assignments and the introductions, we started our sightseeing in Cairo at the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities (aka the Egyptian Museum).  The photo below shows a replica of the Rosetta Stone.  Like many archeological artifacts from Egypt, the original Rosetta Stone is owned by another country.  In this case (and many others), it is in the British Museum.  The Rosetta Stone was the key to understanding Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Below, you can see the sarcophagus of Akhenaten, an ancient pharaoh of Egypt who reigned in the mid-1300s BCE.  He was the husband of Nefertiti and the father of King Tut.

The statues of Rahotep and Nofret (below) are idealized to represent them as eternally youthful.  This is typical of most Egyptian sculptures.  Rahotep was a high official in the government in the mid-2500s BCE and Nofret is described as “known to the king.”  They had six children, so I’m guessing she was probably well-known to the king.

The statue shown below is King Khafre.  He is thought to have commissioned the Great Pyramids of Giza, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

The interesting part of this statue is that, when you look at it from behind, you discover that what looks like his headpiece is actually the falcon god Horus, protecting the back of the king’s head.  Horus cannot be seen from the front, indicating that Khafre is not only protected by the gods, but is a god himself.  Talk about having an ego!

The little chair in the glass case in the photo below is King Tutankhamen’s chair.  He became king when he was only 9 years old, and he died at the age of 19.  The most memorable action of his reign was to reverse all the religious changes made by his predecessor and father, Akhenaten (the sarcophagus above).  He is usually referred to as King Tut, and his fame is largely due to the fact that his is the only royal tomb found intact in modern times.  An entire room in this museum is dedicated to artifacts of King Tut (mostly done in gold), but guests are not allowed to take photos in that room.

The Citadel of Salah el Din was built in 1176 A.D. and is still used by the Egyptian military today.  It was the seat of government and the residence of Egypt’s rulers for 700 years.  It dominates the Cairo skyline, and includes the Mosque of Muhammad Ali, known for its gleaming alabaster interiors.

Here’s a picture of the central courtyard of the mosque. 

In the main worship space of the mosque, there are 365 single-globe lights arranged in rings—one for each day of the year.

Because the Citadel is set at the highest point of the city, its upper wall provides a broad view of Cairo.

Don’t you get tired of airport security?  Tired of metal detectors in public buildings?  Tired of sending your personal items through a scanner before entering a venue?  Ted’s and my 2023 BT showed us real security! 

We flew from St. Louis to Newark, then to Tel Aviv.  The serious (more than normal USA) security began at the Newark airport.  We had already gone through security at STL and had not left the EWR airport concourse, but that wasn’t good enough to go to Israel.  Gate areas usually have chairs and windows, and you sit there to wait for your flight to board.  You can get up and leave to walk around, use the restroom, buy a snack, or whatever.  That’s not so easy if you’re flying to Israel, and it was our first taste of the security we’d be facing in Israel, Palestine, and Egypt on our 2023 BT.

The Tel Aviv gate area was enclosed by movable room partitions.  You could look at the tarmac from the concourse windows, but not at the concourse itself.  There were two narrow openings in the partitions.  We had to enter at the one marked “Entrance” (duh!), show our passports and boarding passes, and go through a detailed screening.  We were only carrying backpacks that had been screened by TSA, but they were x-rayed again, wanded, and swabbed for explosives.  Then we had to walk through a metal detector and have a wand scan as well.  Our flight to Tel Aviv was delayed for about 30 minutes because it needed more cleaning than usual.  (A messy crowd before us?)  Before boarding, Ted and I wanted to use the restrooms, which required leaving the partitioned area through the second opening.  At the exit, a very serious-faced security guard verified that we had our passports and our boarding passes on our persons before allowing us leave the area.  When we returned, we had to show our passports and boarding passes again to be re-admitted, and we also had to have another metal detector and wand scan.

A Viking representative met us at the airport in Tel Aviv, walked us through the entry process, and then took us to the bus to go to our hotel in Jerusalem.  I’m not sure what the entry process was about because no one seemed to care about the little blue card we had to purchase and were told to carry at all times in the country.  Personally, I think it was a way to make money from each visitor—something a lot of popular destinations are doing now.

The next morning, we went on our first excursion in Jerusalem.  We were immediately told that none of us should ever sit in the two front seats of the bus.  The seat on the right was for a guide and the seat behind the driver was for the armed security guard.  This was the pattern for every excursion we took in Israel, Palestine, and Egypt.  At every checkpoint (they were everywhere), the security guard got off the bus, talked to the security guards who carried automatic rifles, and waited while the guards used dogs and mirrors to verify that the bus was not carrying explosives. Here’s a picture of one of our bus security guards.  You’re required to remove your shoes when you enter a mosque.  Frankly, I was surprised the guard removed his shoes.  (They’re behind the box-like thing on the left.)  What if he had to chase someone or rush to our defense?

The city of Jerusalem is divided into four Quarters:  Jewish, Christian, Armenian, and Muslim.  No one except Muslims is allowed to enter the Muslim Quarter, and that’s enforced by these guards.  Check out the guns. 

Even with their automatic rifles, the Egyptian security guards looked a little less frightening because they wore white uniforms due to the heat.  They looked more like U.S. Navy officers or medics than security guards–except for their rifles.  Still, there were so many checkpoints and so many big guns and so many times we had to show our passports that it was kind of scary. Ted and I literally wore out our RFID passport holders and had to tape them to keep our passports from falling out.  Were we really safe traveling in those places?  Is this how visitors to the U.S. feel about the gun violence in our country?

At the Luxor, Egypt airport, one guy’s suitcase didn’t make it through the rolling scanner.  The guards (with rifles, but thankfully not pointed at him) made him remove every single item from his suitcase right there on the rollers, not on the nearby table.  Then he had to re-pack it, picking his things up off the floor while the long line of people behind him (including us) waited for the scanner to re-start to move their luggage.  Nothing dangerous was found in the man’s suitcase.  Ted was held back for a deep look at his backpack (also in Luxor) and we were both a little nervous, wondering what problem might be found.  Nothing, thank goodness. 

At the Tel Aviv, Cairo, and Luxor airports, security personnel spoke very little English and English signage was nonexistent or limited, so we always had an English-speaking guide to escort us through the security check.  I was thankful for our guide at the Cairo airport as we were leaving for Istanbul.  My right knee is bone-on-bone, so if I’m going to be on my feet for a long time (e.g., airports), I wear an elastic knee sleeve to stabilize my knee joint.  The security woman (separate lines for men and women in those cultures) did not speak English, so our guide explained to me that the woman wanted me to remove my knee sleeve so that she could examine it.  Fortunately, my long pants leg was loose enough to pull it above my knee, allowing me to remove the sleeve without taking off my pants.  Without the guide/translator, I’m not sure how long it would have taken me to know what I was supposed to do because the security woman was very adamant and becoming quite loud when I didn’t understand what she was asking.  Thoughts of detention were running through my head.  Seriously. Sending my purse through a scanner in the U.S. doesn’t seem so bad any more.

Our visit to Israel included an excursion to Bethlehem, which is in Palestine.  Israeli passports are not accepted in Palestine and vice versa so Amir, who is Israeli, had to leave us on the Israeli side of the border.  Then our van drove forward a few blocks and picked up our Palestinian guide on that side of the border.  Amir told us that he has friends who live in Palestine, and they visit each other, even though it’s technically illegal.  He added that there is no way he can do that with a group of tourists because he would be risking, not only his own safety, but ours as well.

The highlight of our time in Bethlehem was seeing the location of what is believed to have been the birthplace of Jesus Christ.  The marker of the location is housed in the Church of the Nativity.  Below is a photo of the sanctuary of that church.  We were standing in line looking at this view.  The church is not air-conditioned; the outdoor temperature was in the upper 90s; the building was crowded; and there was little air circulation.  Lots of drinking water was required while we constantly wiped sweat off our faces.  We were in line for over two hours and were told how lucky we were to be there in August.  During the Christmas and Easter seasons, the line is 6-8 hours long.  Well, it would probably be a little cooler then, but imagine standing in line for six or more hours!

Israel and much of the Mediterranean world have been conquered by a variety of dynasties.  Over time, conquerors plundered the 24-carat gold in the church’s murals and painted the walls black.  Restoration has been in progress for 20 years, and it’s a slow process.  The photo below shows one of the murals that is being restored.

After an hour, we made it from the main sanctuary to a smaller room that was even hotter and even more crowded.  It took another hour to inch our way through that room and to finally see the area that led to the site of Jesus’ birth.  The icon shown below hung outside the door to the birthplace room (for lack of a better term).  It is the only icon in which Mary is shown smiling.  I think she deserves to smile; after all, she’s a new mother holding her baby!

The entrance to the birthplace room is very low, requiring visitors to bend over in humility to enter the sacred place.

During the two hours it took us to get this far, we were told more than once that we would only be allowed time to kneel and to touch the star marking the place where Jesus is believed to have been born.  That was not an exaggeration.  Each visitor had roughly five seconds in front of the 14-point star before being asked to move on.  Hours of waiting for a five-second peek!  This photo shows the setting of the birthplace marker with our friend Pom kneeling for his allotted five seconds.  The bearded man was our Palestinian guide. Part of his job was to keep the line moving. 

This is what Pom (and the rest of us) looked at.  The 14-point Star of Bethlehem represents the 14 generations between Adam and Abraham, 14 more from Abraham to David, and 14 more from David to Jesus.  It also represents the 14 Stations of the Cross.

The next day, we toured with Amir in Jerusalem again and transitioned from Jesus’ birth to his crucifixion.  Walking the Via Dolorosa (Sorrowful Way) is an important part of visiting Jerusalem.  We walked the entire length of the 14 Stations of the Cross.  It’s only about 2,000 feet, but it’s all uphill, and progress was very slow because of the crowds and the 14 stops.  Do I need to mention that it was hot?–around 100 degrees again.

Station I is the point at which it is believed Jesus was sentenced to death; Station XIV is the point thought to be where Jesus was crucified and placed in the sepulcher. (Note: The difference between a tomb and a sepulcher is that a tomb is usually underground or in the basement of a building, while a sepulcher is a cave or is carved out of rock.)

The picture below shows Station III, marking where Jesus fell for the first time (see the stone carving above the doorway).  Each station was marked in a similar manner.

This is the Ecce Homo arch where, for centuries, scholars believed Jesus was whipped, crowned with thorns, and covered with a purple robe, then mocked by Pilate with the words, “Hail, the King of the Jews.”  Archeologists, however, have found evidence that this arch did not exist until a century after Jesus’ trial and crucifixion; however, there is some evidence that a large plaza formerly existed beneath this area.

Station XIV, the last of the Stations of the Cross, is at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and is named “Jesus is laid in the tomb.”  The church is beautiful.

There is also a large mural in the church, showing (right to left) Jesus being taken down from the cross, being anointed, and being placed in the tomb.  Note:  the arrow indicates Amir, our Israeli guide.

In addition to the time we spent visiting a variety of historical places in Jerusalem, we also had a lot of fun.  Because our group of 22 people spent 8-10 hours together every day doing the same things, we got to know each other very well.  Viking sponsored a group dinner at the hotel that was fun, and another evening, we went to a very nice restaurant with two other couples.  There was also time to walk around the area near the hotel and to sit outside and visit with group members and other people.  The Israel-Hamas war began seven days after Ted and I returned from our BT.  We and other members of our group with whom we are keeping in touch are concerned about Amir and others that we met in Israel, and we hope they are all safe.

Tomorrow, we’ll fly from Tel Aviv to Cairo.  I’m looking forward to cruising on the Nile River and to seeing the Great Pyramids and the Great Sphinx.  We’ll be in Egypt for 12 days, so there will be many new things to see and to experience.

Note:  As Ted and I walked around Jerusalem on our day-long tours, we noticed a lot of litter and no trash cans.  That makes two things in which the U.S. excels:  (1) we have very little litter in public areas; and (2) smoking has greatly decreased in the U.S., although it is still widespread in much of Europe.  Cheers for us on these two counts.

Five days in Israel were included in the BT as a pre-cruise excursion.  Two of those days included arrival and departure; each of the other three featured an eight-hour tour and some group activities, as well as time on our own.  Twenty people in addition to Ted and me signed up for this excursion, and the 22 of us had fun together during those five days. 

During our time in Jerusalem, our group of 22 all had the same tour at the same time with the same guide, Amir.  The first thing Amir told us was that it is unsafe for us to drink or to brush our teeth with the water in Israel.  We were instructed to consume bottled water only. 

Most of our touring time was spent outdoors, and Amir always stopped in places where we could stand or sit in the shade while he talked.  Can you say “hot”?  We can verify that there is a significant temperature difference between full sun and even partial shade, although both were uncomfortably hot in the mid- to upper 90-degree temperatures we experienced.  By mid-afternoon, it felt like everywhere we went was uphill and included long flights of stairs to climb.

In Israel, tour guides are required to have a master’s degree that includes studying the country’s culture, history, people, religions, societal norms, etc.  An additional certification is also required. Our guide’s name was Amir, and he was with us every day.  He was very personable, very knowledgeable, and an excellent storyteller—important skills for good tour guides.  I love history and learning, and I found his stories to be fascinating.  I knew at the time that I’d never be able to remember all the interesting things he told us, and I was right, but I’ll do my best to describe our time in these historic places.

Jerusalem is also known as the City of David.  All Western religions can be found in Jerusalem, and the city is important to each of them in some holy way.  For Jews, Christians, and Muslims, it is the place where God dwells, and all three sects have a major temple in Jerusalem.  The city is divided into four quarters:  Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and Armenian.  During our time in Jerusalem, we walked in all four quarters–in the heat, of course.  Amir shared the fact that Muslims have 5 commandments, Christians have 10, and Jews have 613 in the Torah.

Our first stop today was Mt. Scopus, which provided a panoramic view of the Ancient City of Jerusalem. The gold dome in the center of the picture is the Dome of the Rock.  It is set on the sacred Foundation Stone, upon which Jews believe the world was created.  The rock is not visible until visitors are close to it.  A cylindrical shaft of light beams on it through an opening in the upper roof.  Look to the left of the gold dome and slightly upward to see two gray domes beside each other.  (Zooming in on the photo helps.)  That is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, believed to be the place where Jesus Christ was crucified and buried.  It is the ending point of the Via Dolorosa (Sorrowful Way or Way of Suffering), the path of the 14 Stations of the Cross.

You can see that Jerusalem looks uniformly light in color.  That’s because the law requires all buildings in the city to be constructed of Jerusalem stone.  Fortunately, there’s a lot of that stone available.  The hot, dry climate (average annual rainfall of 20 inches) and the rocky land in this area are not conducive to agriculture as we know it.

In front of the Dome of the Rock, there is a row of trees.  Below that, you can see the wall that encloses the Ancient City of Jerusalem.  There are three “cities” of Jerusalem:  (1) the Ancient City enclosed by the wall in my photo; (2) the Old City, which begins on the foreground side of the wall in my photo; and (3) the New (modern) City, which lies beyond the Old City wall.  There are a number of archeological guesses regarding the age of the city of Jerusalem, but the truth is that no one really knows how old it is.  Archeological excavations have revealed that Jerusalem has been destroyed and rebuilt at least 17 times.

Keep moving your eyes downward from the Ancient Wall in the photo above to the black line crossing most of the photo from the right.  That’s a road.  All the light stone in the photo below that road is a cemetery that extends for a great distance.  According to our guide and to the best of my memory, there is a belief that, at the end of days, the savior will come first to Jerusalem (where God dwells), and that the first to be resurrected will be those buried closest to the heart of Jerusalem and above the ground.  That’s why so many tombs are above ground.  It is also important to be buried with your family so that you will be resurrected as a group and will be with your loved ones in the afterlife.  The photo below is a close-up of part of that cemetery.

Our second stop of the day was a visit to an ancient excavated reservoir.  Winter is the rainy season in Jerusalem and water needs to be collected for year-round use.  Water sources include underground springs, some lakes and rivers, and desalinated water from the Mediterranean and Red Seas.  I think this reservoir collected water from an underground spring. Can you imagine carefully excavating this a bit at a time to avoid damaging anything that might be in the ground?  I definitely don’t have the patience to play in the dirt as an archeologist!

The Church of St. Anne is near (nearly beside) the reservoir.  It doesn’t look like much from the outside.

The doors of the church are always open and Amir told us the acoustics are so amazing that people often go inside to sing just because they want to enjoy the acoustics.

One of our tour stops was the Western Wall on the border of the Jewish and Muslim quarters of the city.  It is the last remaining outer wall of the ancient temple, thought to have been started by King Herod the Great, and it is believed to be built on the Holy of Holies, the most sacred site of the Jewish faith.  It is also the site at which Muhammed is believed to have tied his winged steed on his Night Journey to Jerusalem before ascending to Paradise. 

Most of the Wall is reserved for men to pray; a small section is for the women.

A visit to the Shrine of the Book, the part of the Israel Museum that houses the Dead Sea Scrolls, was another tour stop.  The photo below shows the outside of the Shrine. Fountains cool the roof of the underground building to help preserve the documents inside. 

The pieces of the Dead Sea Scrolls that have been found are mounted on the white (lighted) part of the symbolic scroll sculpture in the center of the room.  The room is designed so that the Dead Sea Scrolls are elevated (see the stairs).  Walking around that center portion of the room, visitors can see many other historic documents.  Photos are prohibited inside the room, so I had to take this one from the doorway

A hospital seems like an odd place to take tourists, but the Ein Kerem Hadassah Hospital deserves a visit.  It is a university hospital and the sixth-largest hospital in Israel.  The Abell Synagogue on the hospital grounds is unique because it has twelve 11×8-foot windows designed by Marc Chagall.  Each window represents one of the twelve tribes of Israel, based on the 49^th Chapter of Genesis and the 33^rd chapter of Deuteronomy.  The brilliant colors in the windows are beautiful.

We had lunch at a city restaurant.  Here’s a picture of the neighborhood outside the restaurant.  It’s representative of much of the Ancient City.

The Old City of Jerusalem had seven gates in its wall, each named for the destination city outside the gate.  There are still seven main gates, along with two minor gates that have been opened by archeologists. We visited the Citadel at the Jaffa Gate, pictured below.  Leaving the Old City of Jerusalem on the road through this gate took travelers to the city of Jaffa.

The citadel is the highest point in the city, so it was a logical place to build a fort for protection. The walls of the fort have javelin slots, like the one in the picture below, to defend the city.  Amir told us that, during the 1967 Six-Day War, these slots were used again to direct rifle fire at the city.  Amir lived in Jerusalem during that time and described hearing gunfire from both directions.

Archeologists are excavating inside the fort walls.  The photo below shows some of the excavation, which is still ongoing.  The tall tower in the center is the Tower of David.

The Jerusalem Museum is within the fort.  I have pictures from inside the museum, but many of the displays were digital slide shows and videos that do not lend themselves to meaningful photographs.  The displays were awesome! This is one of the exhibits in the museum.  It’s called the cloverleaf map of the world and shows Jerusalem as the center circle on the map.  The three “leaves” indicate Europe, Asia, and Africa.  In ancient times, they were thought to be the only continents in the world.  The man in the photo is our guide, Amir, and he is confidently standing on plexiglass above a 30-foot-deep void.

The photo below shows a screenshot of the slide show depicting the centuries of Jerusalem’s growth.  The pictures changed every few seconds for about 10-15 minutes per cycle, and showed the city’s entire history of battles, buildings, growth, destruction, invasions, etc., in a unique and fascinating way.

This photo shows a similar display of the development of the calendar.  I’m sure it’s obvious that still photos of these light displays do not do them justice, but in person, they were excellent—clear, comprehensive, and concise.  One of the posted signs included with the calendar display described a calendar as “a system that illustrates the abstract concept of time.”  Wow!  A calendar seems concrete, so I’ve never thought of it being based on an abstraction.

No city tour would be complete without an opportunity to buy local items and/or souvenirs.  Frankly, I could live without the free time for shopping, but it’s amazing how many people look forward to that part most of all.  Two ladies in our group bought several things every day.  Ted and I are sure that, after 18 days of traveling, they needed at least one extra suitcase for each of them to bring all their purchased items home. 

For me, the markets were an experience more than a retail thrill, and the experience was mostly related to aggressive marketing.  As you approach a venue, the vendors on foot are ready for you, holding items in their hands, walking right up to you, raising their items almost to your face, and shouting “Ten dollah, ten dollah!”  We were told to simply say “no thank you” and to keep walking forward.  On the way out of the venue, we’d pass the vendors again and the price would have changed to “Five dollah, five dollah!”  With a little bargaining, the vendors often settled for one or two dollars. 

Other markets were more—shall I say “formal”?—with actual booths and tables.  I liked them better.  The vendors were less aggressive unless you showed interest in one of their items.  In that case, it was difficult to politely excuse yourself.  Amir gave us a code to help us decide how much to pay for items.  He gives tours every day, and he sees these vendors every day, so he doesn’t want to offend them. According to the code, if we questioned a price and Amir replied, “It’s very good,” that meant it was much too high.  If he replied, “That’s an excellent price,” it meant the price was fair.  One thing all the markets had in common was bright colors.

After an interesting but hot eight hours outdoors, we were all ready to get back to our air-conditioned hotel, get off our feet for a while, and start thinking about dinner.  Today was a good start to Ted’s and my BT.

Ted and I named our August-September 2023 overseas trip the “Big Trip” because it was seven weeks long.  During that time, we visited eleven countries on three continents. Wow! Several years ago, we set a goal to reduce our travel luggage to a backpack and a 35-lb. suitcase (the carry-on weight limit).  Unbelievably, we reached that goal for our longest trip ever.  When we finished packing, we each had a 13-lb. backpack and a 33-lb. carry-on suitcase.  The photo below shows the total luggage we traveled with for seven weeks.

For some reason unknown to me, every time Ted and I fly overseas, our flight leaves in the very early morning to arrive before noon the next day, local time; then we can’t get into our hotel room until after 3:00 p.m.  I wish we could just leave a little later (say, after sunrise) and check into the hotel when we get there so that we could take a much-needed nap.

As usual on the day of departure, our alarm clock went off at 4:00 a.m. for our flight to Newark.  We had a four-hour layover in Newark before leaving for Tel Aviv, where we were scheduled to arrive at 9:55 a.m. local time (yes, before noon) the next day.  Because we were traveling in business class, we had access to the airline lounge—a much nicer place than the concourse to spend four hours.  There are comfortable chairs and couches, a restaurant, a buffet, an open bar, sleeping suites, quiet suites, bathrooms with showers, etc.  Everything in the lounge is free (covered by the ticket price, of course), the seating is comfortable, the room is attractive, and it’s peaceful.  

Security for our flight from Newark to Tel Aviv was very tight.  Thanks to the meticulous security precautions, our flight was uneventful.  Our Viking cruise ambassador met us at the Tel Aviv airport and escorted us to a bus with other Viking guests.  It was an hour-long drive to Jerusalem, where we all checked into the King David Hotel, then took a walk to stretch our legs while we (as usual) waited for our rooms to be ready.  

We were 6,500 miles from home and ready for new adventures.