So where did I leave off?

Oh yes, that's right! I left off with my slide in to third base...or rather the Nile.

So, for the Eid we ended up getting another surprisingly long holiday, and a friend and I decided to head to Aswan for some relaxation before the kiddies were to arrive in the classrooms.

Aswan is not much further "up" the Nile from Luxor, but it is very very different. For one, you have crossed in to Nubia. The Arabic accent is different, the architecture is a bit different...


But best of all, the landscape is so different. The topography of Aswan is hilly: the town on the East bank rising gently away from the water like a Mediterranean village. The tombs of the nobles on the West bank rising sharply above the Nile. In the water, large grey stones, smoothed over milennia from the rising and falling of the Nile tide provide a beautiful contrast to the orange desert to the West, and green islands dotting the center of the island.

There is a museum in Aswan that is somewhat neglected, but also is so unique and unusual. It is perched on the archaeological site at the south point of Elephantine Island. They actually looked startled at our arrival by felucca (almost the only way to reach the museum) just a few days before the Eid. At the museum, handwritten labels themselves are as much antiquities as the "Head of a Man Mummy" and "Group of Red Polished Pottery - OK" that they described.





People in Egypt are generally nice and friendly, but in Aswan it is taken to a whole new level. A few stuttered words of Arabic and goods were half price, felucca rides were half price, and we were welcomed with smiles, but very little harassment or difficulty in the bazaar.
The bazaar, on a Friday morning (my favorite time to go to souks in Egypt) was nearly empty, no hassle (REALLY!), and I came away with some lovely trinkets. As with any language, bartering is one of the first things I learned, but now I've gotten good at my numbers and, well...I only bought one thing that I didn't get for at least half off the quoted price.



But that's not why you're reading, you want to know about how I fell in the Nile.



Well, I'll say it's better told in person but, thankfully for my health, only my right foot got wet; though I am still a bit scraped up and bruised from the two, yes TWO slides and falls while trying to board a felucca that was not docked, but instead about two feet away from the concrete shore.

I'll likely never be back to Aswan, but it was lovely.

** a note about the pictures. Yes, I did take these. I'm quite proud of them. I had permission from the man at the Aswan museum to take pictures, or I wouldn't have. I did not use a flash as I am pro-preservation :)