Day 4, 5, 6 & 7

Wow - We're back in Cairo after having a fantastic time in Luxor and Aswan! So many new sights and fun things to see. We loved the cruise up the Nile - fyi, the Nile flows South to North - we started in Luxor and headed South, upstream to Aswan. With so many fun things to report, and only an hour on our internet connection here are the highlights! Hope you enjoy!!

- 4 hours to kill the first morning in Luxor, carriage ride through town - definitely a highlight!!

- loaded cruise ship, met tour guide and 8 new friends! 4 women from Augusta, Georgia a couple from Lebanon and a couple from Saudi Arabia

- tours of 6 temples dated from 1350 B. C. to 250 B. C. and 40 gigs of pictures so far!

- learning how to NOT look all of the peddler's in the eye and say "no thank you" - better to completely ignore!!! Steve has a hard time doing this, I've become an expert. Usually by the time we get on the bus Steve has at least one trying to sell him something he hasn't been able to shake!

- visiting papyrus shop and perfume store - and wow that was a strong smelling store.

- cruising for a total of about 10 hours up the Nile river (not sure how many miles is was)

- only men serving and working - no women

- Steve's sunburned fore head from standing for hours on the top of the cruise floating down the Nile taking pictures of everything in site! Atleast 20 of the 40 gigs.

- experiencing a two phase lock on the Nile (cool night shot off the bow)

- Valley of the Kings - paying off the door keepers (with help from our guide so Steve could take picutres - the indoor colorful pic's) well it almost worked good.

- Seeing King Tut - his real mummified body, he was a tiny little man.

- Valley of the Queens

- Granite quarry

- seeing as many mosque's as there are LDS chapel's in Utah

- listening to chanting and prayers over the loud speakers twice a day

- listening to Steve talking Japanese (mixed with Spanish) to the 40 Japanese tourists on our

Cruise ship from Osaka - weird huh - that's where Steve served his mission.

- dividing everything by 5 to learn how much in dollars we need to pay

- belly dancer and other wacky Middle East performers on the Monday night floor show on the ship and others :) joining in on the fun! (who says you can't have fun and never have an ounce of alcohol - although it did help our Southern girls)

- and best of all - watching Steve figure out how much it would cost him to get his camera back after trying to sneak pictures in the no photo Rameses VI tomb!!! (thank goodness for a great tour guide and $50 bucks!!!) Not sure how much it costs to bail someone out of an Egyptian jail??? Glad we didn't have to find out - and we still have the camera!

A few more interesting Egypt facts and highlights.

- Egypt has 80 million people living on 8% of the land.

- 23 million people living in Cairo

- Tourism provides 50% of the national economy

- 2nd is nondomestic employment, or Egyptians working outside of Egypt and sending money home to their families.

- Muslim's pray 5 times a day and can pray anywhere they are

- No more crocodiles in the Nile below the new dam at Aswan, but you certainly don't want to go swimming above the dam! In fact it is prohibited.

-The new dam created the biggest man made lake in the world - 300 miles long.

- the young couple in our tour group from Saudi Arabia and 5 month old baby - was an arranged marriage and they are 1st cousins :] and the baby seems really normal!

- She wore the long black dress with different beautiful scarves covering her head everyday and was so cute and probably close to 20 years old.

- Steve and I had the same flight from Aswan to Cairo today with our new Lebanise (?) friends. A couple just older than us - they started asking us about our religion - Steve gave the basic 1st discussion - Carly would be proud!

- just met the new 4 ladies that will be with us the remainder of the tour - they are from Mesa (I know we couldn't believe it!) AND 2 of them are in our Stake and basically live across Val Vista from us! hahahaha - hmmmm small world

We love talking to all the people over here and finding out about their lives. Lot's of interesting hard working people living in a 3rd world country.

Off to the Egypt museum and pyramids tomorrow!

(sorry about the text vs. pictures thing - still figuring out how to blog :)