Smoke gets in your eyes

The odyssey continues...we made it from Cairo to Luxor, then to Aswan and Abu Simbel, back through Cairo and onto Alexandria last week. We went from the far south of the country to the far north in about 17 hours of train riding, which ended up being too much for both of us. S caught the flu and I am in the midst of an allergic reaction - we think - due to either the Japanese tourists smoking all night next to us on the train, or simply to the dust. We covered a lot of territory though so it could also just be plain old fatigue getting to us.

Abu Simbel was the highlight for me, with a massive temple that has 20m high statues at its entrance. You can imagine what an impressive place it was when it was first built, sitting at a wide part of the Nile to welcome anyone arriving by ship. The great thing about this country is the almost unfettered access to all the sites...the bad thing being that the unfettered access means we've seen people smoking in the middle of an outdoor temple and touching all the walls of hieroglyphics in the tombs. It's shocking how littered with garbage they are, how poorly-labelled, and how horribly unprotected these ancient pieces are. It's frustrating when you think that photos aren't allowed (presumably to prevent flash photography, but practically to encourage souvenir buying) but meanwhile sweaty Europeans grope 3,000 year-old walls every day. Our guide book says within a generation some of the walls will be completely deteriorated.

Alexandria's Citadel was another great site to visit - standing on the site of a former lighthouse that keeled over after 1700 years, it was built in the 11th century using some of the lighthouse's original stone. It was much cleaner than some of the other sites, although there was graffiti carved onto the walls. It sits right on the Mediterranean so you could also imagine Roman ships approaching it in stormy weather.

We're back in Cairo now and still recovering a bit. We tried to walk to Islamic Cairo today but the lack of English-language signs totally defeated us. We'll attempt it again tomorrow, this time with a driver.