Tag: Vacation

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Travel

Egypt: Karnak Temple

Our first thought on entering an Egyptian temple was: Damn that’s big! Particularly when you realize that everything is built of cut stone and with manual labor. Massive props to the engineers and workmen!

As an engineer myself, I tend to analyze the possible building techniques before I even notice the art and aesthetics. But beyond the amazing architecture, they are beautiful, well-built structures and I was duly impressed.

Gate Pylons at Karnak Egypt

Our first temple was Karnak, one of the most iconic Egyptian temples. This is the most visited temple after the Pyramids at Giza. Karnak has appeared in many movies and is usually the one pictured when they want a generic ‘Egyptian temple’ in the media. However, what they don’t show is that the temple is right next to the river Nile and surrounded by a modern city.

Both the Karnak and Luxor temples are located in the city of Luxor and most of the economy is driven by the tourist trade generated by the temples.

The Avenue of Rams at Karnak

Our first approach to Karnak was down the Avenue of the Rams, which appeared in one of my favorite movies: The Mummy Returns (2001). The first thing you notice is the different heights of the two pylons of the gate. These were a late addition to the temple and ultimately unfinished and undecorated. The remains of the mud-brick ramps used for construction are still in place. This detail got me pretty excited. …Engineering-nerd, what can I say.

The temple is dedicated to the worship of the god Amun, the sun god, and was added onto for over a thousand years.

During the Opet Festival when the Nile floods, a statue of Amun would be carried on a symbolic barge from the temple of Karnak down the Alley of Sphinxes 3km to the Luxor Temple where he would be ceremonially married to the pharaoh, thus promoting the fertility of Amun and the pharaoh and all of Egypt.

The Alley of Sphinxes is still extant and walkable. I was unable to talk my wife into the hike, so we were shuttled to the Luxor, just down the road.

The Temple of Karnak is iconic and absolutely beautiful, and yet a little of a letdown.  This is a working tourist site and has a worn-in and trampled feel that can take away from the experience. However, I found that I could ignore that and turn my mind inward to experience the atmosphere. I could almost feel time hanging in the air like cobwebs.

The Great Hypostyle Hall at Karnak

The most famous and photographed part of Karnak is the Great Hypostyle Hall. It is 50,000 square feet of COLUMNS!! I love me some columns! Karnak is a column farm. 134 of them. Most are 33 feet tall with another twelve 70 feet tall! There are several examples that are not completed showing how they were constructed. The unshaped rock was stacked and mortared into place, then craftsmen shaped the column, followed by artisans that would carve the art and hieroglyphs into the stone. Finally, everything was painted in bright colors. Most of the paint is now faded and gone, but there are places where it can still be glimpsed.

At Karnak, I first encountered the ramps used in the construction of the temples. For some reason, these are never mentioned in any of the books I’ve read. The stones were cut, roughly shaped, and placed on barges at the quarries in southern Egypt. Then when the Nile flooded, the barges would be floated down the river and into preconstructed canals leading right up to the building site. They used the same technique for the pyramids. Amazing engineering!

The Ramps at Karnak
Categories
Travel

Balloon Over Egypt

Our first full day in Egypt began with a boat ride across the Nile at 4:30 in the morning! We were to welcome the dawn from the basket of a hot-air balloon over the Egyptian desert. We’ve always wanted to go up in a balloon and when Sheri found out that we could do it in Egypt, she jumped at the chance. The worst part of the experience was that it was so early after arriving in Egypt. We were still suffering from jet lag and were a bit punch drunk from the international travel experience. But we weren’t going to miss this for anything!

Of course, the balloons are popular and we were part of at least a hundred people on this particular morning. There was an entire field of them going up at once. Watching fifteen feet of flame shoot up into the night is pretty exciting. I took hundreds of pictures on this trip.

The baskets are large and hold sixteen or twenty people at a time, divided into little compartments. The pilot is in the middle surrounded by tanks of propane. The tanks don’t last long and he changes them out quite often. The balloon pilots are actual trained pilots with uniforms displaying their wing pins. Our pilot was very professional. Sheri and I were placed directly next to him and got to watch as he worked his magic.

The flame was directly above us and HOT.

From the balloon, we could see the Nile twisting through the country with a narrow band of green fields on either side. West of us was the Valley of the Kings and the Temple of Hatshepsut.

In the hills, we could see openings cut into the rock. Were they ancient tombs waiting to be explored, but off-limits to tourists? It made me muse on what wonders we are not allowed to see?

From our height, we were able to look down onto some of the local houses and businesses. There on the edge of the desert life is clearly harsh and hasn’t changed all that much in 3000 thousand years. There were more carts than cars and more donkeys than bicycles. But even then it seemed peaceful and content. The lack of noise that surrounds us in our normal life was stripped away at that height and it was both exciting and calming.

Even with a pillar of flame above me, I found peace and contentment in the sky above Egypt. Part of the allure of Egypt is what we imagine is there but aren’t able to see. We conjure up cities of ruins under the sea of sand and hold our breath as we round each corner.

But the grandeur we seek is long gone, only the vestiges remain among an impoverished populace that sells access to the illusion. I don’t blame them for it; this is their inheritance. But I am nostalgic for what we’ve lost.

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Travel Uncategorized

Egypt – Finally

In our travels, my wife and I avoid tourist traps. We like foreigners and travel to meet them on their home turf, not to hang with other tourists. We seek to experience foreign parts with the locals. However, our vacation to Paris and Egypt was absolutely focused on tourist traps: the Eifel Tower, the Louvre, Notre Dame, Luxor temples, Valley of the Kings, Giza Pyramids, and the Egyptian Museum. There was no avoiding tourists.

Yet, we were helped by the fact that our visit was at the end of summer before the busy season, so most sites were at less than medium capacity allowing us to enjoy them in relative peace. We also had a private tour guide for most of the trip. We shared a guide with another couple for our cruise down the Nile, which included the Luxor temples, Edfu (my favorite), the Valley of the Kings, and the Temple of Isis at Aswan.

Ready for Adventure

Our days began at 7 or 8am to avoid the heat and crowds, allowing us to really experience the temples intimately without the crowds.

As the day progressed we had to contend with larger and larger groups of tourists. Busloads of people would be following a single guide around the temples. It turned into a cacophony of different languages. I can’t imagine they received much information from their guide. It didn’t look like a good time. We were usually done and back on the boat by early afternoon.

Our guides from Memphis Tours (https://www.memphistours.com) did a knock-up job, they were more than knowledgeable; actual Egyptologists. Not some random guy with a notebook.

The heat of Egypt was brutal and this Minnesota boy did some serious melting. My best suggestion to survive Egypt is to purchase a good quality Egyptian cotton scarf (not the $10 scarves sold by random vendors) and learn to make a turban. Once I was properly equipped, the trip was much more enjoyable. I sport a bald head and my dome was thoroughly baked after the first day. The turban was a life-saver.

We found the Egyptian people to be super friendly and helpful – for a tip. Tourism is really the only economy in Egypt and much of the local market is driven by tips. Don’t be stingy, but don’t be taken too easily. There is a fine line between being generous and being a sucker. I was caught as a sucker a few times, I know.

This trip was in the planning stages for almost four years; meant to be  Sheri’s fiftieth birthday trip. She wanted to scuba dive in the Red Sea. I learned to swim and then got my scuba certification for this adventure. We were set to go in the fall of 2020, but then disaster, pandemic, and general idiocy ensued ruining our plans.

As the date of our trip approached – again – I kept expecting something to happen; another outbreak of stupid, or an asteroid, or pilot strike… something. But nothing happened and we finally found ourselves on a plane to Paris and then Cairo! Crazy!

Three years of anticipation were finally coming to fruition and man was it worth it. I have 3000 pictures to sort through and memories to last a lifetime. Which is exactly why we travel.

The world is a really big place and we can never truly understand that if we never explore it. I love home and my boring middle-class American life, but I can never truly appreciate it until I experience other places. Only then can I recognize how fortunate I am to live where I do and how completely spoiled we are here. Never take where or how you live for granted, we are all only a stroke of luck away from living in a hovel or sleeping on the ground.

Enjoy life and see the world!!

More to come…

Categories
Life

Timeline by Google: Lost in the Traces

While writing my previous post, I wanted to remember the little café we had stopped at on our first day in upstate New York.

What was the name of that place? Oh, I can find it on google maps. I’m good at maps.

I assumed I would be tracing our route on a map and locating the café that way. But once I got to the Maps page, I remembered Google Timeline. I had used the app before but had forgotten about it.  It was hidden in the drop-down options menu.

There was more than a decade of my travel history displayed on the world map. It showed my travels from 2009 onward. Almost every place I had been was there. All the restaurants, stores, places I’d worked and just driven by! I spent an hour reliving my trips and recalling wonderful places I had forgotten about.

It wasn’t until later that the creepiness started to hit me. Who else was seeing this? Could someone hack into my Google Timeline page and know where I had been, when, and for how long? And, if so, what could they do with that information?

It was at this point that my writer-imagination clicked on.

What could be done with this information? Hmmm…

– A killer could predict my daily route to work and set up an ambush or an ‘accident’.

– Someone could research my travel itinerary and pose as someone I might have met on the trip as a means of getting closer to me.

– A door-to-door salesman could predict when I would be home and available!

– An employer could check to see what I was really doing on the day I called in sick.

– A sexy foreign spy would know what coffee shop I go to alone on Saturdays and make sure to be there sitting next to me. (All foreign lady-spies are sexy by default. Foreignness plus spyiness equals sexy – period.)

I am not one to see hidden conspiracies in every shadow, nor do I have a knee-jerk distrust of new technology or BigTech. So, I actually don’t mind being tracked or filmed or recorded or whatever my Alexa is doing. But then, I am also not involved in any illegal or seditious activities. So track away. I’ve got nothing to hide.

In truth, I have an appreciation for Google Timeline. Rather than just having a file of pictures from my trips that will require me to remember where they were taken and who is in the view, I now have mapped moment-to-moment tracking of the route we took. In addition, my pictures have embedded date and time data that I can then match to the map. So, if I wanted to, I could create a minute-by-minute itinerary of my trip with pictures of that moment. How’s that for a vacation slide show?

 Google maps tracks me every day, and I am very cool with that. I find it both extremely handy and kind of creepy. However, unless I become a target for spies or start thinking about trading in contraband, my life is much too dull for this detailed information to be useful to anyone.  

“How odd… I stopped at the guitar store on the way home. And now look, Marge, here is an ad for a deal on strings at Amazon. How do those online algorithms know so much?!”

Hmmm…

Categories
Travel

New York and Poutine!

For vacation 2021, we went to New York: four days in the Syracuse/Finger Lakes region and three days in NEW YORK CITY!! I’ve never been to NY other than passing through Kennedy airport, so I was excited for new adventures. I consider NYC to be one of the things every American should do once, like seeing the Grand Canyon. It can put things into perspective for you.

I am very much a Midwestern guy, and the coasts are relatively unexplored by me. Sheri, my lovely wife, and manager has relatives in the Syracuse area and has been to NYC a few times. She was to be my guide.

I’ve seen enough travel television and movies to have a few expectations of New York City. Upstate New York, on the other hand, was a blank. I had no expectations at all. I spent most of my youth in Northern Minnesota, and found the Finger Lakes area to be very similar. It felt rural but with a big city tourist patina that prevented it from being hick.

The one thing about Upstate that I knew about and was very much looking forward to was Poutine! Poutine is a Canadian dish that I have wanted to try for years. I finally got it, and it was AMAZING! A Poutine is usually french fries with brown gravy and cheese curds. I had mine as a breakfast on fried potatoes with brisket and fried egg. It was divine. I highly recommend it. The savory gravy brought it all together, and the cheese curds provided an occasional surprise gush of flavor.

We stayed in Brewerton, NY, and stopped at the aptly named Brewer Union Cafe  (https://brewerunioncafe.com) on our first morning. Breakfast is our favorite meal, so we always go big while on vacation. The staff was friendly and attentive and whoever they have mixing it up in back knows what they’re doing.

For vacation 2021, we went to New York: four days in the Syracuse/Finger Lakes region and three days in NEW YORK CITY!! I’ve never been to NY other than passing through Kennedy airport, so I was excited for new adventures. I consider NYC to be one of the things every American should do once, like seeing the Grand Canyon. It can put things into perspective for you.

I am very much a Midwestern guy, and the coasts are relatively unexplored by me. Sheri, my lovely wife, and manager has relatives in the Syracuse area and has been to NYC a few times. She was to be my guide.

I’ve seen enough travel television and movies to have a few expectations of New York City. Upstate New York, on the other hand, was a blank. I had no expectations at all. I spent most of my youth in Nothern Minnesota, and found the Finger Lakes area to be very similar. It felt rural but with a big city tourist patina that prevented it from being hick.

The one thing about Upstate that I knew about and was very much looking forward to was Poutine! Poutine is a Canadian dish that I have wanted to try for years. I finally got it, and it was AMAZING! A Poutine is usually french fries with brown gravy and cheese curds. I had mine as a breakfast on fried potatoes with brisket and fried egg. It was divine. I highly recommend it. The savory gravy brought it all together, and the cheese curds provided an occasional surprise gush of flavor.

We stayed in Brewerton, NY, and stopped at the aptly named Brewer Union Café  on our first morning. Breakfast is our favorite meal, so we always go big while on vacation. The staff was friendly and attentive and whoever they have mixing it up in back knows what they’re doing.

Poutine Breakfast!!



Categories
Travel

Plane Spotting

Our new house is not far from the local airport allowing me to watch planes take off and land. I happen to love traveling and flying in particular. Flying is freedom in my mind. So, seeing these flights taking off for points unknown makes me smile. Someone is getting out and seeing the world and that is a great thing. I wave at them sometimes to be funny. I’m so jealous.

Flight to Somewhere – cooler than here.


Today I am sitting in my backyard on a beautiful sunny day and dreaming of travel as the planes claw their way into the sky. They are both an inspiration and a taunt. There is a world out there to experience, but I have to wait to board and explore. I’ve been waiting since last year. It’s time.


Our next trip is to New York City in August, only 37 days away! I’ve never been to NYC and I’m very excited. We’ve planned a sailing tour of the bay, a visit to Ellis Island and, of course, Times Square. Those are the big ones. We tried to get tickets to a Broadway show, but like they say in NY ‘fuggedaboutit’, ain’t gonna happen. Which is fine, there are a million other things to do there. Like deli’s, food trucks and one hundred thousand coffee shops. I’m excited!


We will be spending the last days of the trip in Syracuse, sitting on a lake and relaxing. I am actually looking forward to that more than the tourist thing. Give me a chair, a beverage, and a book, and I’m good for a few days. Can’t wait.
In the meantime, there goes another one.

Wave, everyone! Have a nice trip! See ya! Bring on August so I can get to the airport on time!