Egypt

We went to Egypt for Easter. I hired a driver named Adel to take us around Cairo.

When we landed, we had just enough time to go for a Dhow trip on the Nile before flying on to Hurghada on the Red Sea. We spent a couple days in Hurghada and then took a bus trip to Luxor.

Then we flew back to Cairo and spent a few days there, seeing the city and going to Giza. We stayed at the Nile Hilton, overlooking the river. The hotel hadn't changed much since it was built in the 1960s. It had a wonderful pool and a casino where Anna won some money one night.

This is a wonderful picture of Jordan's King Hussein, Egypt's President Nasser, then PLO Chairman Arafat and a young Colonel Gaddafi meeting at the hotel on September 27, 1970, amid the Black September crisis between Jordan and the PLO.

Hussein signed an agreement to end the fighting but Nasser died of a sudden heart attack the next day. As a result, Hussein continued his attacks on the PLO and eventually expelled them from Jordan. I remember clearly when Nasser died.

One of the places Adel took us in Cairo was the Qaitbay Mosque in the City of the Dead.

The City of the Dead is a sprawling cemetery on the eastern outskirts of Cairo where as many as half a million people have made their homes among the tombs - sometimes even in the tombs.

The mosque was built by Sultan Qait Bey - or his wife - in the 15th century. He is buried there.

It is depicted on Egypt's one pound note.

The mosque was empty and cool inside, with birds flitting back and forth in the gloom.

The dome is magnificent and the roof affords a view over the City of the Dead.

We went one evening to Khan el-Khalili souk in the old city. I had been there once when I was in my 20s and remembered it as having a lost-in-time feeling. There were stalls cooking sheep brains then - and they were still there serving sheep brains when we went with the boys. Most of the shops had been renovated, though.

I was a little nervous because, three weeks earlier, there had been a suicide attack at the souk in which 21 people died. As it happened, there were two terrorist attacks in Cairo while we were there - one that kept us locked down in the Egyptian museum for a while.

we didn't eat sheep brains, but Adel took us to several interesting restaurants around town.

I particularly liked this place. The food came on big tin platters. It was all delicious.

We didn't smoke shisha, but there were plenty of them for hire.

True and Anna, fooling around.

Sky beside the shisha bar.

Fresh pita - called aysh shami in Egyptian Arabic - being delivered downtown.

We spent an afternoon at the famous museum. Sky had recently studied Egypt in school and so it was particularly interesting for him.

We were in the Royal Mummy Room looking at Ramses II when there was a sound like a heavy door slamming in the distance. I thought it might have been a bomb and when we eventually got down to the ground floor, we found the place milling with people because no one was allowed to leave.

A suicide bomber, being chased by police, had blown himself up at the bus depot behind the museum. The bomber died between the museum and the Ramses Hilton, which you can see in the background behind True.

We went to see the step pyramid at Saqqara, built before the Egyptians had figured out how to make their perfect pyramids.

We also went to Memphis to see the giant statue of Ramses II, among other treasures. The statue was discovered in 1820 during archeological excavations of the ancient temple of Ptah.

It was one of a pair that stood at the eastern entrance to the temple. The other, found in the same year, stood for years in Cairo's Ramses Square. It was moved to Giza in 2006 to be restored and displayed at a new museum there.

The boys rested beside the Sphinx at Memphis. I bought what I was told was an old Greek coin behind one of the stalls in the background.

It is an Athenian tetradrachm with an image of the Owl of Athens. It was one of the most widely minted coins for over 300 years (c. 430 B.C. to c. 99 B.C.) and so is not uncommon. Still, who knows if it is real.

Then we went to Giza to see the Sphinx and the Great Pyramids.

We rode the camels...

... and ran around. The boys and I went into Great Pyramid, a claustrophobic and, for me, exhausting experience.

The camel-mounted police were everywhere.

We hired a private van to get to Luxor from Hurghada. We stopped to see the Colossi of Memnon, Once we got into the hills, we traveled in a convoy of tourist buses escorted by armed guards to protect us from bandits or terrorists.

The two massive stone statues represent Pharaoh Amenhotep III and have stood there for over 3400 years. The one on the left is carved from a solid piece of stone. The one on the right was damaged by an earthquake in 27 BC and rebuilt with blocks of stone by the Romans.

We went to Karnak and roamed around the Great Hypostyle Hall.

It was very hot and we had a very annoying guide...

... so we took a break at the Old Winter Palace Hotel, where wealthy Westerners stayed during their visits to Luxor in the 1800s.