Hi,
We are off to Egypt tomorrow morning...thank goodness we are flying with Delta instead of American with all the delays they are having. We will spend the night in NYC near JFK and then leave for Cairo on Saturday afternoon at 6:30 PM. The flight from JFK to Cairo will be 11 hours and we will arrive on Sunday at 11:30 AM (6 or 7 hour time difference). I am attaching our itinerary in case anyone wants to keep up with where we will go! Just hit the download button at the bottom. Scroll past the contact list to the 2nd sheet for the itinerary.

Be back two weeks from Saturday!
Love, Kay

Hi, I don't even know what day it is now but we made here and we have been to the pyramids, rode a camel, today we went to the city of Alexandria and we just got back to the hotel and it is 9:30 PM... so a very long day. Tell everyone hello and that we are having a great time!...~K

We have an armed guard with on or tour so we feel very safe!

We are now on the Nile river cruise and everything is going great but it is hotter here. This was my first camel ride and it was at the pyramids in Cairo and I have some good stories to tell aout it. Today we went to Abu Simbel and it is a temple and it was the most impressive thing we have seen so far. We no longer have our armed guard with us but there is security at all of the tourist sites. The armed guard was not just for us but for our bus group of 30. We feel very safe because they are very protective of the tourist here because it is a good thing for their country so they even have tourist police employed by the government. We feel very safe and the Egyptian people , especially the children are very friendly!

Better go for now...tell everyone hello!...~K

Hi, just a quick note to let everyone know that we made it back safely from Egypt! It was a wonderful experience that we will always remember but hot and dusty so it's good to be back home. One day when we were in the southern part of Egypt on the Nile Cruise it was 112 degrees when we were visiting the tombs of the pharaohs in the Valley of the Kings...they said unseasonably warm! Of course the ship was air-conditioned so comfortable when we were on board. Life along the Nile is like a time warp and much as it was hundreds of years ago with many people riding donkeys and working in the fields with no modern tools, women washing clothes in the Nile, etc. The children along the Nile would sometimes wave and yell "Welcome....Welcome". The Egyptian people were very friendly and seemed genuinely glad we were there.

It was not as hot the first week in Cairo where we visited the Egyptian Museum and saw dead people! It was amazing to see the mummy of Ramses II (Yul Brynner in The Ten Commandments). We saw all of the treasures taken from the tomb of the young King Tut among many other ancient treasures.....items 3,000 to 4,000 years old. Cairo is very chaotic and the traffic is awful but I found it very interesting. There are hardly any traffic lights so it is amazing that the traffic moves at all. The saw the pyramids and sphinx in Giza which is right at the edge of Cairo...we had an interesting experience riding a camel while we were there!

Click both links below for great pictures:

images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.crystalinks.com/votkmap.gif&imgrefurl=http://www.crystalinks.com/valleykings.html&h=535&w=700&sz=92&hl=en&start=1&um=1&tbnid=hKQp91Hz6ikXiM:&tbnh=107&tbnw=140&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dvalley%2Bof%2Bthe%2Bkings%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26rlz%3D1T4IRFA_en___US252%26sa%3DN


images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.uncp.edu/home/rwb/valley_kings_mid.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.uncp.edu/home/rwb/lecture_ancient_civ.htm&h=300&w=386&sz=16&hl=en&start=2&um=1&tbnid=ZTQ4X3xWGk46cM:&tbnh=96&tbnw=123&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dvalley%2Bof%2Bthe%2Bkings%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26rlz%3D1T4IRFA_en___US252%26sa%3DN

Following is Kay's email sent April 30, 2008.

"This is so cool....and I am glad to get some of those photos...like the one of Ramses II because we were not allowed to take pictures in the museum. Also, the one of Abu Simbel that you included was our favorite "wow" of the whole trip. I am enclosing a picture of us there. The amazing facts are listed below:"

"Not only are the two temples at Abu Simbel among the most magnificent monuments in the world but their removal and reconstruction was an historic event in itself. When the temples (280 km from Aswan) were threatened by submersion in Lake Nasser, due to the construction of the High Dam, the Egyptian Government secured the support of UNESCO and launched a world wide appeal. During the salvage operation which began in 1964 and continued until 1968, the two temples were dismantled and raised over 60 meters up the sandstone cliff where they had been built more than 3,000 years before. Here they were reassembled, in the exact same relationship to each other and the sun, and covered with an artificial mountain. Most of the joints in the stone have now been filled by antiquity experts, but inside the temples it is still possible to see where the blocks were cut."
Click here for more pictures:
www.touregypt.net/featurestories/abusimbel.htm

While we were visiting the Great Pyramids I bought some postcards from Mohammed (age 9 or 10...don't know why he wasn't in school!) and he later came up to me and wanted to take my picture with my camera. I knew of course he wanted a tip for doing this but he was so cute and so I let him have my camera to take a picture. Then he told me exactly how to pose and what to do with my hands. I had an idea of what he was doing but didn't know how they would turn out. I just did exactly what he said. I look pretty goofy in the pictures but it is a very special memory for me of the interaction with Mohammed (that's what he told me his name was anyway). He looks older in the picture with me but he is standing on a rock or something to be as tall as me. The Egyptian people are very outgoing and friendly. Part of it is because we are tourists and they depend on us for their economy but even the young children are friendly when there is no gain for them.

The oldest and largest of three pyramids near Cairo

I climbed up on the stones of the pyramid which are very large when you get up close.

Here are some pictures from our camel ride out behind the pyramids. They turned us loose with about a 9-year old boy who led the camels around. The camels started nudging each other and he promptly straightened them up by snapping the rope.

When the ride was over he asked for his tip. Then another boy came over and put the scarf on my head for a picture. He promptly told us we needed to give his friend a tip for using the scarf. They learn young!

Then another kid
came over and plopped a scarf on my head so he took another picture with the scarf
on my head so I guess I would look like an authentic Arabian camel rider. He promptly
told us we needed to give that kid a tip too! He was not as tactful and sweet as the Pyramid
Kid and clearly street smart & savvy about the tourist.

Notice the smug look on the camel's
face...I think he was in on the tipping scam!

Glen examining how the stones were placed together on the pyramid.

A few hundred metres south-west of the Great Pyramid lies the slightly smaller Pyramid of Khafre, one of Khufu's successors who is also commonly considered the builder of the Great Sphinx shown in the picture.

The top two pictures are the girls at the library. The first lower one was at a park and again they
came over and ask if I would be in their picture. The bottom right one was taken at the Quaitbay Citadel
a famous castle in Alexandria. This young man came up and asked us if we would be in a picture with him.
This was all on the same day trip to Alexandria.
I still don't get it...maybe it was "Take a picture with an American" day in Egypt!

Another story is the day we rode the train from Cairo to Alexandria. We were at the famous Library of Alexandria when I noticed some young girls in very colorful outfits complete with scarves for their heads. The library is right next to a university so I am sure they were students there. They looked very stylish and made a fashion statement while still keeping with their culture. I really wanted to take a picture to show my granddaughters but thought I should ask them first. Before I had a change to ask them they came over and asked if they could take a picture of me! So after they took their picture I had someone take one with my camera. This happened to me several times that day so I think they must think it is good luck or something. Either that or it was some kind of scam and I may find my picture plastered all over the internet in Egypt!

Looking the same

Angela Kay Key and Kay Reid Weekly, part of the class.