“Is it too early for ouzo?” 1-29-07

Today we crossed into Turkish occupied Cyprus. We went to Famagusta, Toumazou’s hometown. He was not allowed to come with us though because he fought in the Turkish- Cypriot war in 1974 and there is still so much hostility. The old hotels and beach resorts from before the war are fenced off and no one is allowed to take pictures of them. When we walked onto the beach, there was a guard on top of one of the hotels making sure that we were only taking pictures of the beach and water. The beach was beautiful but it was a pretty sad sight.

1-28-07

Today we went to the Monastery of St. Neophitos, a Cypriot Greek Orthodox saint. Hs skull is in a gold box to the side of the icons and the rest of his body is glass casket beside his head. The priest of the church served us juice boxes. In Egypt we were served a lot of juice boxes too- orange juice, lemon, guava, mango, et al. It is pretty hilarious though to see grown Greek men walking around after church drinking out of a juice box.

1-27-07 Larnaca, Cyprus

This morning before we left for our sites, Catherine and I went down the street to a fruit market. Most of the vendors were old Cypriot men. We bought tangerines, oranges, pears, olive bread, almonds, and pastellaki for lunch.

1-26-07 Egypt is CLOSED.

After a week of hearing that everything in the entire country of Egypt “is closed,” we’re finally leaving. The zoo was closed. The pool was closed. The 24 hour hotel store was closed. Everything that could possibly be closed when it was supposed to be open was closed.
Arriving in Cyprus felt like coming home. It was such a relief to be able to drink the water again and not be yelled at in Arabic. The first thing we did after checking into our hotel was head to Takis Kabob House for halloumi sandwiches.

“House of the Thous.” 1-23-07

We got up really early today to drive to Alexandria. We visited a catacomb, Pompey’s Pillar and the Library of Alexandria. The modern library is pretty impressive. This was our second day with our tour guide Sayed. He is a very nice man but it is very apparent that he should never be a tour guide, at least not an English one. He told us that he hadn’t spoken English in six months, only Spanish. So, he sometimes gives us words for things in Spanish because he doesn’t remember them in English. It was a challenge to decode words like “columen” (column) and “thous” (south).
The highlight for the day was without a doubt the best lounge singer in the world who performed at our hotel tonight.. She was wearing a very tight dress with color that faded from dark to light blue and then back. She and her male partner, who was on the keyboard, were remarkably similar to the AltaDina Middle School music teachers from SNL. They played hits like “Aisha,” a Saturday Night Fever disco medley, and of course, “No Woman I Cry.”

“Cypriot donkeys are the best donkeys in the world.” 1-22-07

First day in Cairo- our hotel is “authentically palatial.” It’s an old palace that’s been converted into a Marriot. We went to Giza to see the pyramids and the sphinx. The men with their horses and camel trying to rip off tourists for a ride were pretty miserable; they seriously detracted from how beautiful the pyramids are. When we got there a man kept asking me to take a picture of his camel, then he wanted to take a picture of me with his camel. No one warned us about exactly how manipulative the men are so the second I say on the camel, he had the camel standing and walking away. Jess and Jeanna had to run after us to make sure he didn’t steal my camera or me. I was seriously wondering how bad it would hurt if I jumped off the camel; I decided against that one. He finally let me down after a few pictures and my friends prying my camera out of his hands.
At the next pyramid we realized that if they think you don’t speak English, then they’ll leave you alone. That worked for a while until a man started following us and said, “Do you want to ride a horse? This is a horse.” When I started laughing, it was very obvious that we spoke English.
After Giza, a group of us decided to walk around Cairo. About half of us felt pretty comfortable with it, the other half was a little more nervous. When it began to get dark, we all decided to head back together on a new route. The actual roads didn’t work exactly the way the map suggested so we got a little lost. A woman with her two daughters felt bad for us and walked us further into the city to a bus stop and waited with us to tell the bus driver where we wanted to go. The bus driver seemed pretty annoyed about letting a bunch of American kids on his bus but walking down the aisle, we saw the every other person on the bus was laughing at us as we tried to squeeze in. I’m sure it was especially funny to them because they understood was the bus driver was saying.