Day 2: Aswan and Philae Temple, Granite Quarry

Seeing the view from the Train was both beautiful and sad. The countryside along the Nile is farmed with flood irrigation. There was lots of sugar cane. 

We got picked up at the station by our favorite guide, Soha. She went out of her way to win Elise over to her favor and she won. She told us many stories. We didn't really feel excited about the first couple of stops, seeing the low and high dam really didn't impress us. 

We took a boat over to Philae Temple. This Temple was relocated when Lake Nasser was created by construction of the High Dam. We learned what the Mammisi or birth house was, we learned a lot about the stories of Isis and Osiris. My kids have a pretty good handle on the basic Egyptian stories but this trip really sunk everything down in.

My kids love this carving, we saw it several places. It is a dwarf. Dwarves were revered in ancient times. They were considered magical and amusing.

Most Temples were turned into churches during the Coptic Era. Christians and Muslims defaced many of the carvings and paintings throughout Egypt. The best preserved Temples were ones who had been covered in sand.

She kinda did her own thing.

Philae Temple from the water.

She loved these kittens and many others we found in Egypt. I am getting old because I really want to get her a pet. I actually look forward to being in a home that allows enough solidarity that she could have a kitten. I hate cats but when I see her with a cat I suddenly don't anymore. 

I hope that we have some better footage of this spot. It's the Aswan Quarry where the obelisks were carved. There's an enormous obelisk that cracked during the process and was left. Elise was really excited about being able to climb around on things for a change. I do think she gave Soha a bit of a heart attack though. 

That heart attack was nothing compared with the heart attack that happened here shortly thereafter. This spot was meant to try out the process of hitting stone on stone to carve out the rock shapes. Well, my kids broke the whole giant stone. Yep, they got to work anxious to chip off some samples of the granite. 

The giant boulder cracked into two pieces and almost rolled on top of Samuel. I screamed, Matt came down ranting and screaming terrified. Soha said she would never forget us.

We were desperately hungry at this point and we got dropped at the boat. They pulled some strings and got them to send some lunch to our rooms even though we had already missed it. They sent some bread and some bananas and other things but nothing exciting. We were all so starved we inhaled it. We were a little shocked at how old the boat was but the view from the deck was rather lovely. We had to wait all the way until 8pm for dinner and we had a 4am collection the next morning to get to Abu Simbel. We were feeling a little discouraged but happy to relax. Elise and Sennia didn't get a very good dinner unfortunately but they did get to bed by 7pm. the rest of us waited for the buffet and then we tucked in.