Antique Aswan

There are only 5 weeks left of my 'life in Cairo,' and last weekend I took a trip to Aswan to do the ONE THING I've wanted to do for years...

I stayed at the Old Cataract Hotel.

The Old Cataract is an elegant, magical piece of living history. Agatha Christie stayed there, King Farouk stayed there; as did Winston Churchill and a slew of dignitaries. The hotel has recently been restored and was closed the last time I visited Aswan. I cannot stress enough that my two night stay was worth the plane delays, the haggling with taxi drivers, and the cost. 

The balcony off my room was as big as my living room, with large, stuffed wicker chairs to relax in while looking down the Nile. 

(Facing North from my balcony.)

The food was great, the service was excellent, and the infinity pool facing the Elephantine Island historical site was a great place to relax and watch the sails of Feluccas gliding by.

(A felucca passes by as I watch from my sun-lounger.)

It was amazing.

Oh, and I also went to Abu Simbel. On the way the driver's car broke down in the middle of the desert (thank goodness the last bus in the convoy stopped to pick us up and take us the rest of the way). The tour guide was eager, kind, and chatty (and very excited about the elections taking place yesterday and today). Still, I'm not sure Abu Simbel was worth the 3 hours each way in the car.

(These guys are on the Egyptian 1 LE note. There's a commercial here where they get up 

and walk around taking pictures like tourists. It's all I could think about 

while looking at the monument.)

Actually, I think that before Lake Nassar was formed by the building of the High Dam, when Abu Simbel was still carved into the hillside the way much of Petra is, it was probably an incredible site. Just knowing it has been moved (no matter how skillfully) takes away some of the magic for me.

The coolest thing for me (and this is the coolest thing whenever I visit temples in upper Egypt) was the graffiti from the 1800's. I know, it's awful (explorer's back then had no respect for their ancestors!), but it also feels like a layer of history on history knowing that someone named Caulfield visited Abu Simbel in 1879, when the trip would have been by boat and quite difficult. (Literature Link: there's a good book about upper Egypt during this time period called "The Mistress of Nothing" which I read on my first trip to Luxor - based on an actual historical figure, it presents an interesting perspective on expat life in Egypt in the 1800's.)

(This is B/W so the graffiti stands out a bit better)

There are no more trips out of Cairo planned now that there are just 5 weeks left. Today I will be packing and sorting and tossing and trashing. Sorting through four years of accumulated knick-nacks from all over Egypt, Europe, and SE Asia; deciding what to keep and what to sell and what to donate to the school's theatre department for props while I watch Al Jazeera's coverage of the Egyptian elections.

Then I'm going to bake a quiche for dinner and a pie for movie night with the girls tomorrow night, cause that's how I roll these days.