Egypt Honeymoon: Almost Dying in a Jeep

We hitched a ride in a jeep to some of the infamous dahab diving/snorkling sites, like "the blue hole" and "the canyon." The sites themselves had too many people and too much trash (which is pretty much the grossest thing ever when you are snorkling). The jeep ride there was pretty fun though.

Before, when things seemed to be calm and composed:

After, when the driver decided to go 100 mph and tease us that he was going to flip the jeep:

Off Topic

I love all of Maira Kalman's pieces, but I particularly loved this one today. Read [and look at] it!

http://kalman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/29/e-pluribus-unum/

It is close second to my very favorite one ever, the one where she got to meet RBG.

http://kalman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/may-it-please-the-court/

Egypt Honeymoon: Mt. Sinai

We decided since we were "in the area" we should probably climb Mt. Sinai. According to everyone we talked to and our guidebooks, this was best done at night (because of the heat) arriving at the top at sunrise. We left our hotel at 12:30 am, and arrived at St. Katherine's monastery, where we would be beginning our hike, around 2:30 am.

We got to the top around 5 am, about 45 minutes before sunrise.

There were a ton of other people up there with us, as it is somewhat of a religious pilgrimage. Lots of French, German, Russian, Indian, British, etc. We did see a group of American tourists- they hired camels to take them almost the whole way up! (The last mile is straight up steps, so they had to leave the camels behind there).

There were a lot of people singing religious songs, chanting, etc., trying to summon Charlton Heston.

We were not given Commandments 11-20.
But we did get to listen to a lot of French religious guitar songs.

The sun started peeking out at about 5:45. We were tired but it was pretty awesome.

Once it became light we got to see all the cool, moonrock-esque landscapes we had been missing out on when we were hiking in the dark.

There were a lot of Bedouin guides helping people out to the top. The only people who have ever figured out how to live in the Sinai Mountains are the Bedouins- I'm still confused about how they could possibly live there, it is about the most inhospitable landscape I've ever seen. Not one indication of plant life.

On the way down we saw a lot of cool stuff we had missed on the way up- arches built over the trail, small churches along the way, etc.

We got down the mountain, waited for the monastery to open at 8:30. Apparently they have a descendant of the burning bush there- a very tiny branch, obviously, because we toured the whole monastery and didn't see it. Or we did and didn't know.

We left to go back to Dahab around 10 am, returned around 12 pm, and spent a very exhausted afternoon reading and swimming.

Egypt Honeymoon: Dahab

So we started out our trip in Dahab, a place that Lonely Planet calls the Egyptian Ko Samui. I've never been to Thailand, but if it is filled with awesome snorkling, pancakes, sheesha, stray cats and wild camels, then I would say they are comparable. Dahab is kind of a ex-hippie colony, that exists now mainly to cater to tourists. The tourists mainly seem to be a fairly laid back backpacker type, but there is definitely the sense that it is starting to get some of the sharm el sheik russian/british/german "package tourist" overflow.

The restaurants were all very brightly colored, with crazy pillows, and all situated right on the beach.

We did a lot of sitting on carpets on the floor eating delicious food after a hard day of snorkling, swimming and reading.

Egypt Honeymoon: Travelling

So, when we bought out tickets for our honeymoon, many months ago, we decided to go the cheaper route of getting round trip tickets to Istanbul (which, since we were flying from Portland, meant we went from PDX-Boston-London-Istanbul), and then get round trip tickets from Istanbul to Sharm el Sheik (stopping in Cairo), where we would then get a cab for the hour drive to Dahab, where we were staying our first couple nights. Great idea in that it was cheaper, not that great idea in that we visited six airports and travelled straight from 4 AM October 13th through 10:30 PM October 14th. And lost our luggage. Luckily, we had anticipated that it was a pretty small chance our bags would make all of those transfers, and we had all our stuff for Egypt in our carry ons.

Matt eating his favorite: breakfast, and breakfast dessert. Breakfast dessert comes first.

Egypt Visas.

Arriving at our hotel in Dahab, where they had fruit and chocolate waiting for us when we arrived. Made the 36 hrs of travelling ALMOST worth it.

Egypt Signs

As our friend Duffy knows, English signs in foreign countries can be pretty funny. These are some of the greatest hits of Egypt.

This restaurant was similar to the other restaurants, but in some ways unique.
But you don't have to print your sign in broken English for it to display some comedy:

You can even forgo English altogether, so long as the pictures imply untenable claims about your business. This example is from a barber shop:

I'm not going to lie, it's weird running into Tom Cruise in an alley in Islamic Cairo.
This next picture is actually just a good name for a liquor store in any country:

And for the grand finale, a menu from a seemingly reputable restaurant in downtown Cairo:

We didn't order it.

and.... we're here!

After two weeks of traveling in Egypt, we have finally arrived at our apartment in Istanbul. It's pretty sweet. We just need to have a little convo with the mosque next door to ask them to push back their call to prayer a couple hours.

The Turkish people were so excited about our arrival, they decided to have a parade!

Matt says they do this often, and that this was a protest related to negotitions with Kurdish seperatists, but I think it was a parade for our arrival.

Turns out we also arrived on the eve of the BIGGEST DERBY GAME around- Fenerbahce vs. Galatasaray. Fenerbahce won, which means our neighborhood (Galatasaray fans) are pretty bummed out.
Anyway, we've got a lot of sweet pics from our Egyptian honeymoon to share, and will also documenting our time here in Turkey on this blog. Please feel free to leave suggestions (more pics of Turkish cats!) and constructive criticism (less pics of Turkish cats!) in the comments.