Little Stars

Sarah Shepherd just gave me a heads-up about a Luxor-based charity that looks like it's worth our support:

http://www.littlestars-luxor.org/index.html

Check it out!

To the West and Back Again...

A friend and I headed over to the West Bank after work today for an art show "opening" (great work, Fay!), good conversation and lovely dinner at the Marsam Hotel/Sheikh Ali's. On the ferry headed west:

And on the ferry headed east:

I will miss these magical vistas when I leave Egypt for the summer (Saturday).

Spring "Rainy Season"!

It rained several times today, but I missed every one! Last library day of the season had me tied to my desk. But there were some lovely thunderheads over CH just before 6 p.m.

Belated Happy Easter!

Sorry for the delay, but now I have two great photos taken by Tina with which to pass on my greetings. Buttons was obviously working very hard to get the decorations ready!!

The "New" Corniche: Water, Water Everywhere

I wanted to share some photos of the "new" Corniche (between the Conference Center and Labib Habachi Street), both upper and lower (mostly lower). You may remember a mysterious photo I included in a post early this season--what looked like artificial rocks constructed around paths and ramps. Well, all shall be revealed here!

Many empty storefronts that will probably stay empty for some time!

Interesting mosaic work

 Here it comes: two, yes two, water features!

Southern water feature 

Southern water feature

Northern water feature

Northern water feature

A view across the Nile from the upper Corniche:

A couple enjoying the shade and the view:

Spicy!

Last night, one of our stops on the way to dinner at Sofra (miam-miam!) was a spice shop in the souq--Mutawkil, my preferred source. Here are a few photos:

Happy St. Paddy's Day!

From Luxor, where there was much wearing--and eating--of the green!! And where a new St.Pat's Day tradition was born--the drinking of mint juleps!!!

Up, Up and Away…

…in my beautiful rainbow balloon! Sorry for the delay in posting about my fabulous first hot air balloon ride, a 60^th birthday present to myself.

Balloon over CH

I’ve always been eager to photograph the balloons that drift over CH from time to time (as you can see from previous posts), but not so much any more, now that I’ve flown in one that was expertly piloted and never left the West Bank. I now know that balloons can be controlled, despite prevailing breezes. And I wanted to see the sites over there, and not cross the Nile.

I chose Hod-Hod Soliman because they are one of the oldest, if not the oldest, balloon company operating out of Luxor. Their reviews on Trip Advisor are generally glowing. And, after my excellent adventure with them, I have added mine to the reviews praising them.

I was picked up by mini-van at 5:30 the morning of the 21^st and taken to the boat landing opposite Luxor Temple. I boarded the launch that was to take us across the Nile, joinng several other people. While we waited for the rest of the passengers, we could have tea or coffee while we reviewed the instruction sheet, which mostly dealt with how to prepare for landing.

Captain Ali then proceeded to review the instructions, complete with an amusing explanation of three different landing styles--American, British and Egyptian--with Egyptian being the smoothest, wherein the basket stays upright! As far as I can recall I have never traveled across the Nile to the west in darkness. It was quite magical!

Once we arrived on the other side, we went by van to the launching area, which is below Deir el Bahri. Many balloons were preparing to lift off, and I was delighted to see that I would be riding in a rainbow balloon:

Our pilot Amer was highly skilled, having at least 950 hours of experience, and it showed in his handling of our balloon. We floated over Deir el Bahri, the mortuary temple of Seti I, the Tombs of the Nobles, the hilltop ruins above those tombs, the Valley of the Kings and north from there to finally land on the Western Desert Road (Amer used the "Egyptian landing" and put us down exactly where he said he would). We could see the Ramesseum and Medinet Habu to the south but did not fly over them. The silence, apart from the occasional whooshing of the burners, was astonishing! Amer did a great job of explaining the terrain. And to view sunrise over the Nile from a balloon was truly breathtaking! With that said, I will let the photos speak for themselves.

Deir el Bahri

Ramesseum (middle) and Medinet Habu (upper right)

Thoth Mountain with balloon shadow

Western Desert Road

End of the line...

This was the maiden voyage for a neat little mini-video camera I had recently acquired. This explains why the three following videos may be a little less than Academy Award material! The first shows the ruins on the hilltop above the Tombs of the Nobles:

With these next two, I attempt to do a 360° tour. I'm not so sure how well I succeeded, but here they are:

And finally, here's a shot of Pilot Amer and me, followed by my official certificate:

A Spring Bouquet

One of our Egyptian staff is a wizard with floral arrangements. He created this bouquet to brighten the tea room. It certainly did!

Old Luxor

Saturday Seshat

Seshat-Sefkhet‛abu in Luxor Temple (south wall on the eastern side of  the court of Ramesses II):

"Networking"...or Not!

Communications and internet access have been problematic for over a week now for many of us at the north end of Luxor. While we now have landline connections back, who knows when we can expect internet access. Some shady guys took advantage of work that was being done on phone and data lines on 2nd Street to steal what they thought was copper wiring! It's not copper but an alloy--surprise! surprise! In any case, the phone company is still trying to restore all service. CH photographer Yarko took this amusing photo of the work site last week:

Some "conspiracy theorists" ;] have suggested that the phone and data service providers such as Vodafone arranged for the theft so they could boost sales of mobile broadband USB sticks and service plans. Well, I did rush down to Vodafone on Tuesday to do that very thing!

Back to its roots?

This article appeared in this week's English-language Al-Ahram Weekly. If you look closely at the proposed design  below you will see that the new dock is NOT in front of Luxor Temple, but in front of the convention center (the building with circular drive on the left) and Chicago House (to the right of the convention center)!