Pyramids or camel safari anyone?

We spent a glorious week in Egypt and I absolutely loved it. I hope to return there someday because it was such an amazing experience.
I have so much to say, but writing it down in a couple of blog posts just won’t do it justice, so I’m sorry. Once again, you’ll have to wait for more details until I get home!

After several orientation meetings telling us to never drink the water - only drink bottled water and be wary of what we ate along with being safe by going everywhere in a group of four with at least one male and remember to bring toilet paper and lots of hand sanitizer because the bathrooms aren’t as high quality as we’re used to…(you get the point) we finally left Sunday January 23rd.
We stopped at a few archeological sites in Israel – Tel Beersheba (Genesis 21-21, 1 Samuel 9:1-3) and Tel Arad (King Solomon’s time) we spent the night at Kibbutz Keturah. Monday we crossed the border into Egypt and I got a pretty sweet stamp/sticker in my passport! We spent most of Monday in the bus until we reached Cairo that night and watched the Sound and Light show at the Giza Pyramids!!!!
Tuesday January 25 we went to the pyramids and took tons of pictures and toured the valley temple by the Sphinx…it was surreal. Everyone was so excited and kept mentioning checking something off of their bucket list. Heck yes. And just so you all know, the pyramids really are as amazing as you might think – even more so. They are huge and hearing all of the work and engineering that went into building these magnificent structures gives you an even greater appreciation for them. We also went to a papyrus factory and saw a demonstration on how they made a papyrus sheet. It was a cool demonstration and I was in the very front! We took a plane to Luxor and stayed in the Sheraton Hotel for a couple of days.

Luxor was definitely my favorite part of Egypt. Wednesday January 26th we went to the Valley of the Kings. We weren’t allowed to bring cameras, so I didn’t get any pictures. It was so much fun touring the tombs there. We got to go into King Tut’s tomb and see his sarcophagus…and his mummy! He was such a short, small little man. Granted, he was only 18 when he died, so that could have something to do with it. That was a really cool part. We went into 3-4 tombs and I was in awe for every single one. The hieroglyphs on the walls were my favorite part. So much work and detail was put into each wall or column or ceiling or anything! And some of the hieroglyphs were so well preserved that they still had their color. I can’t even imagine what these tombs must have looked like when they were originally created. We toured a few more sites, then returned to the hotel for lunch and a falukah ride across the Nile to our…camel safari! We each rode a camel for about 45 minutes around the country of Luxor. We rode in a train and had so much fun laughing and talking to the boys who were pulling our camels. My camel ended up last in the train because he was taking his sweet time! The boy pulling my camera would pull and tug and yank on the rope and get no where! Finally the camel got moving and we jogged a little bit to catch up. Let me tell you – riding a camel is nothing like riding a horse! Ha ha It was so much fun though.

Okay – that’s about half way through the trip, so I’ll give you a little break and continue later. ☺
I love you all!