only the beginning.

Long before the vastly overused term "bucket list" entered the common parlance, I had something like one. Only it was my "List of Places to Go Before I Die," and I think mine dates back to the fourth grade, when I learned the difference between archaeologists and paleontologists. Instantly, I determined that in order to become the latter, I needed to visit places full of fossils, such as Dinosaur National Monument and the Petrified Forest...and the list was born. As I got older, of course, my interests expanded: there were medieval castles and cathedrals, then ancient temples and pristine natural environments, and next, modern architecture and foodie destinations... And then I started to realize just how big and how full of things-to-experience the world really is, and the list became nearly infinite. There's no way a single human lifetime could ever be long (...or leisurely, or wealthy!) enough to see all of the things on my list, but it's fun to read and dream.

That having been said.

For my last two birthdays, thanks to my generous and adventurous husband, I have been inexpressibly fortunate, in that I've gotten to begin crossing items off of my list.* Last year it was Istanbul--specifically, Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque--and this year, friends, it was the temples at Karnak and Luxor and the pyramids at Giza. What an incredibly charmed life I lead. I could probably write a book about this trip--reflections and observations and adventures--and so you're going to have to bear with me a bit, as this may be somewhat text-heavy. Apologies in advance.

As with Istanbul last year, Egypt was a surprise for me. I knew when we were leaving and what the weather would be like, but I had no idea where we were headed until we checked in at the airport...and then talk about a jolt of insane excitement, tempered with just a touch of trepidation. We headed out on a Thursday afternoon and arrived in Cairo mid-afternoon, whereupon we proceeded to sit in the craziest traffic I have ever seen. (I saw exactly two stoplights in the city the entire time we were there, and they were merely flashing yellow.) Despite the presence of three painted lanes on the highway, those absolutely insane drivers made the traffic five or six cars across, not counting the bicycles and scooters that were weaving through. The cars, too, were constantly weaving, and if a car was more than a meter from the rear bumper of the car in front of it, irritated honking ensued. Actually, the honking was more-or-less uninterrupted, but it was usually more of a "Hey, I'm here!" notification, and less of the angry, generally curse-filled honking that occurs in the US. A different world already, and full of complete traffic insanity.

We got to our hotel with a little time before dinner, so we headed up to the rooftop bar for a strawberry shisha and some tea. It was surprisingly chilly up there, but the views were not too shabby.

That's the Nile, people. The honest-to-goodness Nile River, right next to our hotel. Those little bright spots are party boats (all of them decked out in crazy neon lights and blaring super loud music) that put on dinner shows featuring belly dancing and a 2-hour cruise down the river. 

Dinner was absolutely outstanding--maybe one of the best meals we had on the whole trip--at a place called Zooba, which looks more like a little take-away market at first glance, but serves up some seriously spectacular food. We went mezze-style and shared a bowl of classic koshari (rice, lentils, wee pasta, and chickpeas, topped with tomato and chili sauces and fried onions, classic Egyptian lunch fare and holy smokes so good!!); a bowl of their house ful (Arabic fava beans cooked for hours with--in this case--dill, parsley, coriander, tomatoes, onions, and hot peppers); some spicy sausages mixed with grilled onions/peppers/tomatoes; and some white cheese mixed with tomatoes, topped with olive oil, and served with the softest ever rounds of flatbread. It was an astounding spread, and some of the best simple food I've had maybe ever. Dessert was a cup full of chopped sugarcane that we chewed on for a while, and I also got to try karkadai for the first time--it's a beet-pink hibiscus tea that they serve both hot and cold. Tasty stuff.

The next day, after indulging ourselves at the hotel's huge breakfast (best bits: build-your-own ful --peppers, tomatoes, onions, cumin, chili powder, and olive oil were on offer--and some amazing soft white cheese with bell peppers), our first full day started with a bang: we headed to the Egyptian Museum, which was directly across the (rather long) bridge from our hotel, on Tahrir Square (whose name you might recall from such revolutions as the one in 2011, as well as many smaller protests since). It is with the greatest of regret that I have to inform you: probably most wisely for the Egyptians and their cultural heritage, there are no cameras allowed in the Egyptian museum--or in most of the unbelievable indoor-ish treasures we saw, for that matter--but what I can do for you is to try to briefly describe the highlights, and then maybe get a little link-happy. (I am so sorry. It's the best I can do.)**

Anyway, away we went.

They'll at least let you use your camera outside. Here, the front of the museum, plus their papyrus and lotus fountain, which represent Lower and Upper Egypt, respectively. 

Inside: untold ancient treasures. Namely...

• The panels of Hesire, a set of nearly-5,000-year-old carved wood (!) panels depicting a noble in various stages of life.
• Three black schist sculptures of Menkaure (builder of the smallest pyramid at Giza) and the goddess Hathor with an additional female figure representing a province in Upper Egypt, from around 2535 BC. Important 'cause the stone was so hard--meaning that a master artisan created these--and because of where they were found (in Menkaure's valley temple, near his pyramid).
• Painted limestone statues of Rahotep and Nofret, really remarkable for their inlaid quartz eyes (4th Dynasty, roughly 2600-2500 BC).
• The Amarna room with fine glass-work sarcophagus and statues of Akhenaten, the "heretic" Pharaoh who instituted the relatively monotheistic worship of Aten (the sun); drastically changed artistic styles and subjects (seriously, look at his quasi-feminine figure and the shape of his head and lips! and, he allowed himself to be portrayed as being affectionate towards his family, gasp!); and may have been King Tut's father. This guy is super interesting and worth a little read, in my opinion. (Also included: an unfinished sculpture of the head of his most famous and beautiful wife, Nefertiti.) 
• The Meidum geese, dating to between 2600 and 2500 BC, and so sharp and detailed that modern ornithologists have no problem at all determining the species. (Thanks for the info, Lonely Planet!)
• A sledge chair, alabaster sarcophagus, and entire embalming room (with canopy, golden chair, bed, and head rest!) from the tomb of Hetepheres--the only queens' artifacts in the museum, from around 2560 BC. (In the same room as the tiny statue of Khufu, the only existing physical representation of the Great Pyramid's builder.)
• Some really interesting granite sphinxes from the reign of Amenemhet III (~1800 BC), which look pretty much like these. (Check out those goofy ears and gigantic beards/manes!)
• Heaps upon heaps of false tomb doors of all sizes; a huge hall full of statues and sarcophagi, ending in an immense statue of Amenhotep III and his queen Tiye; some entire and intact (small) tomb burial chambers covered in hieroglyphics on the inside; and a huge, glass-covered, vividly painted floor that I initially mistook for mosaics. Remarkable stuff.

And that was just the ground floor, through which we basically flew. The famous stuff was on the first floor...

• Artifacts from Tanis, with lots of gold jewelry, a few big gold funereal masks, and most impressively--at least, for me--two giant silver sarcophagi (the one from Sheshonq II has a falcon head!). (If you think Tanis sounds vaguely familiar, it's where they found the Map Room in 'Raiders of the Lost Ark.' Naturally, I had to see that collection!)
• More fayum portraits--in fact, an entire wall. I could have spent an hour in there, they were so beautiful. (And--I'll say it--really soulful. I just cannot believe how individual they are.)
• A whole room full of animal mummies! Cats, fish, birds, a goat, some baboons, a dog, a beloved pet pony, a couple of sacred bulls, some enormous (maybe 10 feet long?) and some tiny alligators...even fake mummies (to celebrate the idea of the animal, rather than the physical being) and some tiny, tiny scarab coffins. (Interesting factoid from the museum: animal mummies served roughly four purposes--commemorating/preserving pets; worshipping deities associated with specific animals; food for the afterlife; and votive offerings. Good article here.)
• People mummies! I think there were at least 10 of them in there, and famous ones, too, like Rameses II, probably the most prolific builder of ancient Egypt; and Hatshepsut, the most famous and intriguing female Pharaoh. (A few mummies still had hair and/or were covered in their original flower garlands. Genuinely incredible, if a bit creepy [especially the ones with teeth, for some reason].)
• Last, but most certainly not least, three exterior shrines and two inner sarcophagi, waist-high alabaster canopic jars and shrine, massive quantities of gold and lapis jewelry, and ridiculously famous funerary mask of King Tut himself. (The exhibit is supposed to be insanely crowded at all times, but we were quite literally nose-to-glass with everything. Practically empty. In other news, see how all of his shrines/sarcophagi fit together here.) It was just as impressive as you might think--plenty of exquisite details, precious stones, and gold everywhere. What's really interesting, though, is that he only lived to age 19, and accomplished basically nothing but a little building in his short time as Pharaoh (which began, for him, at age 9).***

And I think that wraps up at least the highlights of the Egyptian Museum. It's a vast and impressive and important collection, but I think you'd have to see it over several days. We only had a half-day, but that was all right, because after lunch, we were headed here.

Man...this photo would be perfect, were it not for that stupid blue car. But behold! The Great Pyramid of Khufu (built around 2550 BC) and the slightly smaller--but actually higher, due to the ground on which it's built--second pyramid of Khafre (2558-2532 BC). 

Just for some scale, here's people climbing about on the Great Pyramid. It didn't look so big as we were driving towards it, but man...it really is great. This thing is huge.

Nobody really ever tells you that there's so much more around the pyramids than just the things themselves. These are nobles' tombs right next to the Great Pyramid, and the hillsides around this area are positively honeycombed with more tombs (and several additional really small pyramids).

Also amazing: in the far distance, we could see the step pyramid at Saqqara. This thing is older than the ones at Giza, and I hadn't realized how close by it was. Neat.

The second pyramid, with its remaining limestone covering at the top. (Ensuing pharaohs were unable to get to the limestone to "recycle" it into their own building projects, and so it survived up there.)

We could have climbed around inside of all three pyramids, but as there's not much to see, we opted to skip the line and go for the second one. You enter via this downhill shaft that forced both Mike and I to hunch over entirely (they were not large people, these ancient Egyptians!), enter a small horizontal hallway with just enough room to stand, then hunch back up another uphill shaft that then enters the burial chamber. While not unimpressive--it's inside a pyramid, for crying out loud!--it's a large-ish, stuccoed, whitewashed room that has absolutely zero decoration other than small niches for candles carved into the walls, and contains the giant gray granite exterior sarcophagus of Khafre (also unembellished). No cameras allowed, but that's ok, 'cause there wasn't much to see. Really, we did it simply so we could say that we'd been inside a pyramid.

The third (and by far smallest) pyramid of Menkaure. Most likely built during the Fourth Dynasty--2613-2494 BC--but no one actually knows!

Because it was included in our tour, we broke down and took a short (and extremely goofy) camel ride. The camel on the left was mine, and was much nicer than Mike's troublemaker. 

Goofy, yes, but fun. Camels are silly animals.

Got to see this guy, too. We had to walk through a temple with alabaster floors (!) to get to him, and he's a lot bigger than I was expecting. (Side note: in order to get those really amazing, uninterrupted long shots of the pyramids and/or the sphinx, you have to have hike/ride quite a ways away from everything. It's incredible how big and far-apart this complex really is.)

This was about the best we could do, and it was from the hilltop where we met up with our camels. Good thing we opted in. (And that Mike had his phone out! All of my photos with the big camera somehow involved shots of tour buses and/or kids posing for their parents' photos. Boooo. Out of the way, jerks!)

It's pretty surreal to be driving through Giza and to see the tops of the pyramids suddenly rise up between buildings. As we learned from our lovely guide Katryn, Giza itself (where she lives with her family) is crazy overpopulated and full of illegal buildings centered around tiny patches of farmland--built this way by people who could no longer afford to live in Cairo proper and started building on their own land. So there are miles and miles of this:

Unfinished buildings around tiny patches of green. It appeared as though maybe only a third of these buildings were actually occupied. (Pardon the shot-from-a-moving-car photos here.)

Other interesting things we saw on Day 1: 

The 14th-century aqueduct that also stretches for miles, and, in some places, is maybe only a meter or two high.

The burned-out headquarters of Mubarak's NDP party, left that way since the 2011 revolution. (This thing is immediately next to the Egyptian Museum on Tahrir Square.)

Goats in the streets of Cairo! There was a surprising abundance of livestock (goats, I think some sheep, plenty of donkeys) in the city itself. Donkey carts drove on the highways right next to the cars, and everyone just went with it. I've never seen anything like it.

Dinner that evening was at a smoky, but incredibly colorful and atmospheric, place called Abou el Sid. Mike also found this one himself, and because he knows my favorite food genre of food is the stuff like someone's mom might make at home, this place really fit the bill. We started with some incredible tangy fried (and caramelized!) eggplant with garlic and vinegar, a yellow lentil dip, and ful with peppers and onions; then Mike had pigeons stuffed with smoked green wheat (freekeh, as we learned), and I went a little nuts and tried out the rabbit-and-rice with molokheya--a super slimy dark green soup made from mallow plants. It's widely considered to be the unofficial national dish of Egypt, and while it was rather tasty while it was hot, as it cooled, it became denser and more gelatinous, and so you can imagine that I ate about half of it before throwing in the towel. It's basically a miracle that I got that far, but I had to try it. (Bonus, though: I'm fairly sure that the rice that came with it had been cooked in the fat from the rabbit. Yummmmmmm.)

I probably should save this for the very last Egypt post, but this has been on my heart since we returned, and people need help, so...here we go with another heartfelt plea. Despite the fact that we were in Egypt during the high season, every single place we went was shockingly devoid of tourists. Political instability has driven them away, which is good for us, but really, really bad for Egypt. The times are terribly desperate for anyone involved with the tourism industry, and so, if at all possible, go there. Take carriage and boat and balloon rides and see the sound-and-light shows and eat and shop and see all the sights (and there are oh, so many, and oh, so miraculous). Tour around and cruise the Nile and just make sure that your airline (for us, it was Swiss) is on top of any security alerts, and you should be just fine. (We found out that there was a protest scheduled in Tahrir Square for the day we were supposed to leave, so we switched to a hotel closer to the airport and had absolutely zero problems.) 

If a trip there is maybe outside of your time and/or budget, shop online for Christmas gifts (or any gift, really--even for yourself) from places like Ten Thousand Villages and SALT, which encourage fair and sustainable craft and trade, or donate to charities that support work in Egypt. Just now, I've found the Childrens' Cancer Hospital Foundation, Plan International in Egypt (childrens' rights and education), Coptic Orphans (which has a broader range of programs than you might think), We Owe It to Egypt (medical improvements), The Brooke (care for working animals, and believe me, lots is needed there), Misr el Kheir (lots of far-reaching programs), and this page, which seems to have a few broken links, but is a nice list anyway. (Disclaimer: with the exception of The Brooke, I have not vetted them or tested these links/donation pages myself. If you have any success with of these, please post in the comments.) Whatever your religious affiliation or beliefs, I'm sure you can find a charity that will do good things with whatever you are able to give them.

Whew. And on that note, I'm going to bring this one to a close. That was just the first full day, people, and what we saw and experienced was both wondrous and heartbreaking...sensations which would only get more intense with the rest of the trip. 

Next up: Islamic and Coptic Cairo. 

*Mike's pretty great, people. Like, probably, the best, in my estimation.

**I find it sad and ironic that the only photos I've ever posted of any sort of Egyptian artifact have come from the museum in Torino. Good for Cairo for protecting their collection--I think it's really wise that they outlaw cameras in their entirety, since most tourists can't figure out how not to use a flash indoors--but I'm torn as to whether collections like Torino's ought to be repatriated. On the one hand, it brings the culture and history to a much wider audience, and the artifacts are protected from any sort of internal strife in the country of origin (see: Baghdad); on the other, maybe most countries would prefer (and, frankly, deserve) to have their own historical items firmly in hand. I don't know that there's any sort of repatriation issue between Egypt and Italy--I just know that any time someone mentioned the English/French/Germans/Italians in the context of Egyptology, these sad and knowing smiles occurred all around. (On a marginally related note, I've read in several places that during Egypt's 2011 revolution, protestors formed a human chain around the museum to prevent looting, and even managed to capture looters in progress and to hand them over to the police. Wow.)

***Er, I don't know how or why this lady got to take so many photos of this exhibit while it was in Belgium, but good for her. I'm quite envious. These are absolutely stunning photographs, and there's no way I could possibly have done better--I just hope she doesn't mind my linking like a crazy person to her photostream...!