Bill and Lynne Grand Tour

We were thrilled to be able to find a cottage for rent in Lavenham. Angel Cottage was built in the 1970's and fits beautifully into the back garden of the Angel Gallery.


Our landlords' Angel Gallery

The gallery is a 15th Century cottage and while we were staying in a medieval cottage in Hessett and hitting our heads on the beams and doorways until we were dizzy, we decided a new cottage in an historic village would suit us just fine.


Low Doorway in Hessett

We first got to know Lavenham 30 years ago when Bill was doing research at the Sedgewick Museum in Cambridge. We never dreamt we would get to live there. Wendy and Philip Gibson, our landlords have been wonderful; introducing us to friends at dinners in their home; furnishing the cottage with all mod-cons and kitchen aids and being great fun to be around. We have loved having a succession of family and friends drop by for a meal or a weekend and get a kick out of showing them the sights of Lavenham.

Lynne volunteers in the office of the Village Hall once a week and it has been remarkably easy getting to know people coming through and knowing what was going on in the social calendar. She also helps to shelve books in the local library. Lavenham has a population of 1,700, four pubs, at least five tea rooms and a staggering number of clubs, organizations and events. All 1,700 of us were in the Market Place to see Charles and Camilla when they came to visit the Guildhall in July. We could be doing something social most days (not always with Charles and Camilla) if our energy held up. We really enjoyed the concerts in the church (a cathedral-sized monument to the wool boom) and Pride and Prejudice in the grounds of Kentwell Hall. The Church of St Peter and St Paul is packed when the Lavenham Symphonia performs and we have got used to getting a glass of wine and resting it on the hymnal ledge, with a very soft cushion for the pew while we appreciate fine music. The welsh choir was mind-blowing.


Church of St Peter & St Paul, Lavenham

Lynne has made Xmas puddings for charity, attended numerous coffees and Bill has attended various metal-detecting rallies and detected the local farm and both have enjoyed dinners in the fascinating homes, been to a variety of lectures in the Guildhall and been charmed by the villagers of all walks. Kyle was with us for Guy Fawkes and was expecting twenty people in the grounds of Melford Hall on bonfire night. There were thousands, and at least 50 food carts, a fun fair and a bonfire of pallets the size of a small house. The Brits do fireworks so well. The local grocer and baker are at our doorstep and the butcher a block away (Melinda tells me she has to walk farther to her kitchen than I do to buy milk or bread) and it is a treat to be able to dash out to get something I have forgotten. It is a great social aid too as you cannot get into the baker without seeing someone you know.

We have traversed East Anglia visiting stately homes, museums, castles, churches, cathedrals, Roman sites, Saxon reconstructions and walked the fields and river banks. Cambridge is an hour away and even though it has grown enormously in the past 30 years, the old part is the same and Lynne still marvels at how lucky she was to work in the Kings College Library in 1974.


King's College Chapel, Cambridge

We have taken the coach from Bury St Edmunds up to London a few times and made a number of excursions farther afield - Darwin's house in Kent, the Roman site at St. Alban's, the White Horse at Uffington and Grafham Water in Cambridgeshire on a hunt for trout while Kyle was here. One of our favorite spots is Flatford Mill on the River Stour in Essex, originally owned by the Constable family and where he did so many of his most famous paintings. Choosing the perfect village meant we were forced to visit every one in Suffolk on every list of prettiest, quaintist, most historic or most liveable - no hardship at all.

It will be hard to leave Suffolk but we are getting into the Nashville mode ready to get home after Christmas and see all our good middle Tennessee friends again.

LS

Captions have now been added to our pictures. They can be viewed by clicking on Photo Album of our Trip in the Links.

We have reached the end of our wanderings and have taken a cottage for six months in Lavenham, Suffolk. Angel Cottage can be viewed at www.angelgallerylavenham.co.uk and hitting the "cottage for hire" button.

Our address is

Angel Cottage
16 Market Place
Lavenham
Suffolk CO10 9QZ

Phone: 01787 248152

E-mail: william.g.siesser@vanderbilt.edu

Danube in Budapest

We came back to Budapest on our coach tour and spent a couple of days in this lovely city. The architecture is impressive and beautifully laid out as it was all rebuilt to celebrate their 1,000 year anniversary. We took a cruise on the Danube at sunset and watched the lights of the city come on. It was quite magical. The empress of the Austro-Hungarian empire built an enormous palace on one of the hills on the Buda side and we spent a happy couple of hours wandering around and enjoying the views from every corner. The local guide took us on a bus tour of all the major sights and gave us a thumb-nail sketch of the incredible history. We enjoyed Heroes' Square with its huge statues of legendary kings through the ages. Many were dressed as Asterisk and Obelisk, which gave us a kick.


Heroe's Square

The Leger Holidays coach tour was fun but it takes many days to drive from England across Europe to reach Hungary and Romania so we were pretty tired of sitting by the end of the fourteen days. Fortunately we had time on the way back through Germany to take a Rhine cruise at the lunch-break and it made a nice change to wander the deck watching the fairy-tale castles as we floated by. On the outward journey we stopped in Vienna and walked around the sights Bill and I had seen in our youth. Most of our fellow travelers had done many coach tours before, for one reason or another, and I am glad we did it but I think flying to a country and spending more time there rather than days looking at the trees on the autobahn is preferable.


Rhine Castle

LS

Our Leger Holidays coach with us and 26 British subjects crossed the border into Romania and were met by our Romanian guide who directed us into the middle of a town where we were stuck as the roads were too narrow and cars were parked so haphazardly the coach could not go forward or reverse. Our Welsh courier, who has bright pink streaks in her hair and does not mind what comes out of her mouth was undaunted, leapt out and within a few minutes had waiters from nearby cafes and unsuspecting passers-by, manhandling cars out of the way and onto the sidewalk. Our coach then carried on its merry way hoping there would be no more detours unfamiliar to our guide. Time on the coach was spent spotting storks' nests. They appeared on roofs, blocking chimneys and on telephone poles. Because it was late spring, the young were sitting upright, waiting for mom or dad to bring the food. Some villages had a nest on every second roof. We were told the fertility rate of those villagers was particularly high.


Stork Nest

A big deal was made of Dracula coming from Transylvania and the build-up to Bran Castle was tremendous. It is a very picturesque summer residence of a former Queen but we were relieved to hear the guide at the castle tell us that Bram Stoker had chosen Transylvania and the legendary Dracul for the setting of his book as they fitted his fiction so well. Vlad, the Impaler was a very cruel leader and did awful things to the criminals in his district but did not have vampire tendencies. This fitted with what we had learnt years ago in Highgate Cemetary in London, where the grave that inspired Stoker to write Dracula was pointed out to us. I disgraced myself by getting an attack of claustrophobia before attempting the secret passage and took myself off on another route to meet up with the castle tour farther down the route.


Peles Palace

The most impressive palace in Romania was Peles Castle which was built by the first king invited from Germany to rule the new country during the 19th Century. It was splendid inside and looked like the typical picture book castle. Ceausescu "Peoples' Palace" is the second largest building in the world after the Pentagon - some 10,000 rooms. Our Romanian guide is sure that after 9/11, it is now the largest, which I thought was a little tactless. Ceausescu paid for the palace by exporting food and starving his people and was thrown out of office and executed before it was complete. The horror stories of his time in office were legion. He wanted to improve the view along the road between his residence and the airport so had all the old houses along the way demolished and four/five storey blocks of flats built to relocate the residents. But to save money, there were no elevators, running water or toilets put in the flats as he maintained the citizens were not used to them in their old homes anyway.


People's palace

We visited the quaint medieval town of Sighisoara where Vlad, the Impaler was born and had a fine time wandering around the citadel on the hill. One evening we were taken to dinner in a farmhouse and had authentic Romanian food, homemade wine and plum brandy. Another evening, we had appetisers in a wine cellar, after navigating rows and rows of enormous wine barrels and glasses and glasses of different wines.to taste. The floor show of Romanian folk dancing and singing in the restaurant upstairs afterwards was, consequently, a great hit. Romania is working hard to be ready for EU membership and is encouraging tourism and we wish them luck. Safety regulations are hit and miss - one hotel had the firedoor on the eighth floor unlocked to the outside but had removed the stairs as they were concerned about villains walking in to rob the rooms.

LS

We have follwed the Knights of the Order of St. John from Rhodes to Malta. When Suleiman the Magnificent threw them out of Rhodes, they ended up in Malta (the Spanish king leased it to them for two falcons per year) and the Hospitallers built the same fortifications, inns and hospitals. We have felt quite at home.


Valetta


Malta harbor

Our hotel overlooks Marsamxett Harbor looking across to Valetta, the capital. We took a fabulous harbor cruise that chugs around each of the nine creeks of Marsamxett and the Grand Harbor so could see the fortifications, buildings and major ship building from the water. Valetta was laid out by an engineer when the knights decided to build a new capital after they held out against Suleiman in the Great Siege. All the streets are straight so as to catch every breeze from the water and it is a delight to walk in the shade of the limestone buildings with a cool breeze in your face. The balconies are unique and a definite part of Maltese life. 99% of the islands is Catholic and feast days for the 365 churches form a great part of the summer season. The streets are decorated, flags flown and when the statue of their particular saint is paraded, they stand on their balconies tossing confetti and ticker tape.


Azure window

We took a sedate fishing boat ride to see the Blue Grotto and then next day, a less- sedate ride to see the Azure Window. We left from a calm inland sea, sailed through a narrow passage and were suddenly in the not-so-calm Mediterranean. The waves looked awfully big, but the fisherman steering the boat kept pointing out rocks shaped like crocodiles or men's faces. As the Maryland priest touring with us that day said, "H...., I had no time to look at rocks, I was too busy holding on to the boat." We found the life jackets in a locker after we were back on dry land.

Malta has some really ancient Neolithic temples: 3800 BC - we laugh at Stonehenge at 1900 BC. For a small island, there is a range of history through the millenia and even though Valetta, particularly, was heavily bombed during the Second World War, they have rebuilt in the old style. King George awarded the George Cross to the whole island for their bravery in holding out during WWW II. The local limestone is readily available so almost all the buildings are built out of it. Mdina, the old capital is called the silent city as the streets are deserted, most of the noble inhabitants have other homes in Italy or Valetta and they have wisely kept the souvenier sellers outside the walls.

Everyone speaks English as well as Maltese, which is a Semitic language with much Italian and English thrown in. At least the Roman alphabet is used and we could tell where we were. One of our tours was with a Dutch group so I got a kick out of understanding what was being said. The Maltese guide spoke it with as much of an English acent as I have speaking Afrikaans so it all sounded perfectly normal to me. The Dutch themselves were amused but knew what she was talking about.

LS

The Russian Church
We set off by bus in the dark from Athens and had our first stop a couple of hours later and thought it all very civilized as we had time for a drink and loo stop but things went downhill from then on. When we did stop to drop off or collect other passengers the stop was either too short or you had to go through full security with bag searches and x-rays, except between the Greek and Athens borders where a long stop was made at the duty free shop (no loos there though - this was shopping time). All the Bulgarians were loaded with liquor which they managed to consume quite quickly so after that there were frantic calls to the driver for him to pause in the middle of nowhere for some happy guy to disappear behind a bush. The road became progressively worse as we neared Sofia and the last 20 km was so bad that some major part under the bus broke with impressive bangs and bashes. The bus continued at 5 kph and we limped into the city until it finally died at a busy traffic circle. As we speak no Bulgarian, we were never sure what was happening but were lucky enough to discover that one of the passengers worked at the US Embassy and spoke very good English, found us an ATM and a cab and headed us in the direction of our hotel.

Sofia is an incredible mixture of the drabness of blocks and blocks of depressing communist-style apartments and the most upmarket shopping mall - TZUM, brand new bus station, many lavish churches and cathedrals and a very modern market complete with fast food. We found a self-serve restaurant in the basement serving Bulgarian food and with tables among Roman ruins. There are more McDonalds and KFCs per block than I have seen in any major city in the world. The infrastructure is minimal - wonderful green spaces, but with knee-high grass and, of course, the potholes in the streets. The EU already has road-construction projects going so everyone hopes that when Bulgaria joins the European Union in 2007, things will be better.


Roman ruins

During the Turkish occupation, no Christian churches were allowed to be built above ground so we enjoyed the subways which have been built to get pedestrians across busy thoroughfares. There is often a little mediaeval church or 15th century ruin in the center. Farther out on the outskirts however, none of the lights is working so we could never see what was being preserved under the streets. Parking is at a premium so the Sofians have solved it by parking on the sidewalks which means pedestrians have to walk in the street which can be very hazardous to your health as most of the drivers claim definite right-of-way.

At noon one day the sirens went off for a full minute and everyone froze on the spot, cars stopped and there was no other sound to be heard. Luckily, we were already sitting down in the shade in the square so did not embarrass ourselves as it was obviously a very special time. When the sirens stopped, everyone continued on as if nothing had happened. It was rather like the childhood game of statues, we used to play and even seeing it on the local news that night, did not clarify the occasion.

They were holding a childrens festival outside the National Theater in the park we walked through each time we left the hotel. It was fun to see kids from post- toddler to late teens doing their folk dances or playing in the latest heavy metal bands and singing in English. MTV is doing more for the global village than anything else we have seen. Bulgaria is trying to encourage tourists and the kids are leading the way. We found almost every teenager serving in the restaurants or selling at the stalls could speak enough for us to manage. The Bulgarian alphabet is different even from the Greek, with which we had become quite familiar. Finding the correct streets was a challenge as so many of the letters have no relationship to our alphabet. It takes time to translate P to R, N to I, X to H etc etc. We spent a lot of time on street corners gazing at the street names.


Bulgarian road sign

We ended up staying in Sofia and not taking any of the tours outside the city as planned, feeling a little insecure about whether the buses would make it in time for us to get back to Athens to catch our flight and tour in Malta. No hardship however as there were fascinating walks through the major buildings and statues and decorations on every important place.

Aegean Thesaurus were highly successful in putting us in the most spectacular hotels. In Rhodes the hotel was built into the city walls - small - we almost had to take turns in getting off the bed to dress, but the ambiance was great. In Heraklion, Chania and on Milos our rooms overlooked the harbor; on Santorini our balcony had a view of the caldera and the volcano island and on Sifnos the Windmill Bella Vista had the view of Kastro, the old city way below and half a dozen of the Cycladic islands that other tourists were climbing to see.

RHODES

The town of Rhodes is the largest inhabited medieval town and we were constantly getting lost in the narrow alleys but found if we kept walking eventually they would wind around to where we really wanted to be. It was our first experience of the multitude of cats in Greece. There are post cards celebrating them and one of our landlords confided, after the sixth ouzo, that when he was in Tunisia he asked them if they ate cats because he could not understand why there were none around. We walked the crusader walls, the crusader moat and tried to find every crusader inn around. A local bus took us to Lindos farther down the coast where the acropolis has Greek, Roman and Byzantine ruins and there as in every place after three weeks, we were still exclaiming over the unbelievable view of cliffs and ocean wherever we went. The food was great, Bill ate octopus, kalamari (squid) and cuttlefish and I became addicted to Pita Gyros for lunch and enjoyed lamb in every way.


Rhodes


Octopus for supper

CRETE

While in Heraklion, we took the local bus again to see Knossos. What an impressive sight and fortunately, it is early enough in the season that the number of tourists was managable. They have repainted a number of the friezes and rebuilt a lot of the palace so it meant so much more when we visited the archaeological museum in town and could see the originals. We took the bus down to Chania, where life revolves around the harbor (the cafe culture is a very social life-style) and there is a choice of wall to wall restaurants to sit and people-watch or enjoy the boats coming in. They are rebuilding the lighthouse so it is covered in scaffolding but still very picturesque. We found the Greek breakfasts so satisfying that we started having the next meal at 3 pm and cut out dinner altogether. With all the walking, we feel quite healthy.


SANTORINI

From our Balcony Villa, we could walk the rim of the caldera to reach the local town. The view along the way was quite something. Looking down at the old port where the cruise ships come in, I was glad I did not have to climb the steps. The alternative was to ride the donkeys, which I fear would have been even more vertigo-inducing. The ferry comes in at the new harbor, which has an abundance of taxis for the climb. We went on a fabulous tour, starting off at the ancient Minoan ruins, which are in the process of being covered by a protective roof and tourist-friendly walkways between the mostly intact houses. One eruption of the volcano buried the ancient town totally but they have not found any human remains yet. They think the folks had all evacuated the village and if they did not escape, would have been caught at the harbor. Then we were loaded on a wooden tall ship and cruised out to the active volcano, followed by the opportunity to swim in the hot springs at the next stop and then lunch on a third island. Those who chose, could disembark at Oia to watch the sunset, but we elected to go back to our villa as the view was the same and it did not involve a donkey ride up the cliff.

MILOS

We got very friendly with the cab drivers who took us up various Greek hills to see the sights and then we could walk back at our leisure. The site of the Venus de Milo is marked by a plaque and a few hundred meters farther on is an ancient theatre and city. The archeological museum in the capital, Plaka has some wonderful sculptures and other finds from the area. The early actors must have been particulary good to keep the audience's attention as the view from the theatre over the bay is very distracting. We planned to take a small ferry across to the tiny island of Kimolos, but as we watched it coming in to the harbor with the bow bouncing six foot above the waves in the gale, we concluded that Kimolos was probably not much different from what we could see on the main island.

SIFNOS

The islands were getting progressively smaller and Sifnos is a jewel, with every corner taken on the walks a different perspective. Bella Vista, where we were staying was well-named and the studios built around the 250-year old windmill, charming. The first evening the owner asked us over for an ouzo and three hours later we were still partaking along with cheese made by his mother, capers, picked by his niece and octopus caught on the rocks below by him and his buddies after work. Needless to say we sorted out the world's political problems with great clarity during the deep philosophical conversation. Each day, we set off in a different direction, taking the bus one way and walking the other.


Kastro from Bella Vista, Sifnos

SERIFOS

This was our last stop and the smallest island in our month. The harbor is as quaint as the others, the bread from the local bakery, delicious and the ride on the bus up to the Hora one of the most hair raising I have encountered. We spent a happy morning on the old Kastro which was destroyed by pirates in 1270 and elected to walk down the ancient path to return to our studio. I could not see any bus having efficient enough brakes to tackle that slope. The beaches on Serifos are the attraction and we walked along the headland far enough to see the transition from the family beach, to the topless to the totally nudist. I prefer the non-organic views, I think.

We leave for Athens tomorrow and then on by bus to Sofia in Bulgaria.

LS

We arrived in England on April 6 and spent nearly a week with my brother, Dudley in Swanbourne. It was a treat to get to know my nephew, Andor whom I had not seen since 1987 when he was ten. Andor is the same age as young Bill and a marathon runner like my elder brother. A large part was spent on the internet checking the market and availability of accommodation in East Anglia. After renting a car we set off for Stowmarket in Suffolk and moved into a self-catering cottage in the grounds of the Mill House in the village of Hitcham. It was an idyllic place with our glass doors overlooking the mill pond complete with ducks, geese and moorhens. There were peacocks in the grounds and alpacas and emus across the fence - even a deer in the early morning checking our patio for succulent greens. Suffolk is wonderful for gentle walks - no steep or high hills and as with the whole of England, public footpaths are clearly marked and you have no worries of trespassing. We got a kick out of one stile. It had a section of wood which could be lifted for the dog to get through.


Mill House


Stile on Suffolk footpath

We have discovered that internet cafes are non-existent in Suffolk and the library computers are in heavy demand and inclined to be unstable on the Vanderbilt website when we were checking our e-mails. We ended up driving into Ipswich and using the computers in the local game store surrounded by excited teenagers playing endless loud games with much shouting and hand slapping. It made organizing our flights to the Greek Isles and Malta a challenge.

For the second two weeks we moved to Deben Lodge, a 1,200 acre farm near Felixstowe. We had a view of the sails of the boats on the Deben River across the fields of rape and wheat and more great walks down country lanes and around fascinating villages. Churches in Suffolk are huge and old and so much dates from Saxon times. We shall definitely return after our coach trip to Eastern Europe.


View of Deben River from our cottage

We had lunch with our birdist friends from the Galapagos and also with our two fellow voyagers from around Cape Horn. The Custersons live in Cambridge and we were delighted to visit old haunts from our ten month stay there in 1974. There has been so much construction since then that we were mortified to find we did not feel as familiar with the town as we expected and hope it was because of the new buildings and not thirty years of senility. It was a relief to manage to get to Kings College where Lynne worked in the library and then the Sedgwick Museum where Bill did his research. The Pownalls live in Wharf House in Bure St Mary's and gave us a real taste for village life and the charm of a beautiful home and garden. We hope we can find a humble cottage in a similar village setting when we get back in July.

LS

Bill has realized a long-held dream and visited Petra in Jordan, center of the Nabateans for hundreds of years, until the Romans took over in the 1st century AD. We landed in Amman to be met by our guide who spoke excellent English and was much appreciated for dropping us off at the various sites to explore at leisure and then answering any questions we had on what we had seen and about life and culture in Jordan while we drove to the next spot.

We stopped at Mt. Nebo, site of Moses' death and had lunch next to the Crusader Castle at Kerak, a visit to which was an unexpected bonus. Lunch was buffet-style but one of the dishes was Mansef, which is lamb cooked with yoghurt and very special as it is served at weddings and other high occasions.



Siq

Our hotel in Petra overlooked the rocks out of which Petra was carved so the view was unbelievable. Next morning we met a local guide who had spent a year in San Antonio and whose English was perfect. After a horse ride to the Siq (passage), we walked 1200 meters through the towering rocks while our guide pointed out the most minute details of the rock carvings and engineering marvels along the way. We then came out of the Siq and were met with the sight of the Treasury - the most famous of all the tombs in Petra. Bill stood at the exact spot we think David Roberts must have sat in the 19th Century when he painted the scene of the Eastern End of the Valley, which Bill has on the wall of his study in Nashville. Our guide was most entertainig and had a dry sense of humor that kept us on our toes. According to the guide, the idols and statues of gods who are missing their heads were damaged by the Byzantine "Taliban". The tombs at the top of the ampitheatre are really "sky boxes" and the tombs below the Nobles' Tombs are "two-camel garages".



Treasury



Tombs

About eight Bedouin families still live in the Valley and their main source of income appears to be providing transport for the tourists who cannot manage the full 12 kilometer hike around. We had a choice of donkey, camel or horse-drawn surrey, with or without the fringe on top but turned it down in favor of absorbing the incredible colors in the rocks and the finest details of the carved structures on foot.



Bedouin Tent

Next morning, we had a two-hour jeep ride into Wadi Rum, a favorite spot of Lawrence of Arabia. The Bedouin still live in goat-hair tents in the desert there. The movie with Peter O'Toole was shot in the Wadi as well as Val Kilmer's Red Planet. The jeep was an experience as it was very old and sounded as if it would die in the sand at any moment. I sat in the back as a good wife should and as the windows were painted black, it was impossible to see without them being open and it was unexpectedly cold in Jordan this week. There was no danger of dying of heatstroke in the desert. The rocky scenery was impressive and we saw T.E. Lawrence's spring where he was alleged to have bathed on occasion.

LS

Our first day in Egypt started at 4:30 am. Our hotel overlooked the mosque in the Luxor Temple. The loudspeakers on the minaret were set so everyone in Luxor could hear them. They were deafening in our room at 50 paces. We were half a block from the Nile and spent that day wandering up and down to orient ourselves. We were due to embark on the Nile Admiral the next day. There are 360 boats on the Nile between Luxor and Aswan so it was a challenge to find ours. Often we had to walk through the lobbies of three other boats to reach it.


Luxor Temple

The temples and sights of Egypt are sensational and we were fascinated in spite of our guide whose own agenda was to take us to as many tourist shops as possible in the hope of receiving a commission from our purchases. She "subtly" called them Papyrus Museums or Perfume Factories or Marble Sculptors but the group eventually mutinied after the bus swept by the Colossi of Memnon without even a photo op to be able to visit a papyrus factory half a kilometer on. There was a Swede in our group who was very knowledgable about ancient Egypt and he could usually translate what Shareen, the guide was trying or ommitted to say. It took us a few days to work out that the "shines" on the temples were scenes. We were lucky enough to see a Discovery program on the Eight Wonders of Ancient Egypt at the end of our trip and it filled in most of the information we needed about the Temples at Karnak, Luxor, Edfu, Kom Ombo, Philae, Queen Hatshepshut's Temple, Valley of the Kings with the details of the main gods, whose temples we visited.


Horus at Edfu

After the boat docked in Aswan, 14 of us from the boat got up at 3:30 am to be driven three hours by minibus to Abu Simbel to see the great temple of Rameses II. Security is still very tight after the massacre of a large group of tourists in the 90's so we had to rendezvous with 100 other buses and drive down in convoy. This meant there were at least 3,000 people trying to go through the temple at once. It was a few days after the equinox so the sun's rays were still reaching into the sanctuary, which made it very special. The temple was moved 400 meters up the cliff when Lake Nassar was formed after the building of the Aswan Dam - a truly amazing feat of engineering. It was an experience driving through the real Sahara Desert to get there.


Abu Simbel


Our hotel in Aswan was on Isis Island. We had to take a ferry or a felucca each time we wanted to visit the town. That alone was fun, along with a ride in the horse carriages that appear to be the favorite form of transport along the banks of the river.


Feluccas

We had a 10 hour layover in Cairo so took the opportunity to go to Giza and see the Sphinx and the Great Pyramids. We were a little taken aback when our driver parked outside a mosque for an hour at Noon while he went to midday prayers. But, as it was on the edge of a market, we had a good time real-people watching instead of being surrounded by tourists and hawkers.

LS