Road Trippin' Egypt/Israel Style

This pretty much sums up the bus ride until the whole bag of Nycole's pretzels flipped over and were all spilled over the bus floor. Oh and we stopped like every half hour at dumb checkpoints randomly spaced throughout the desert. 

This is the wilderness of Sin. Can you imagine wandering in this for 40 years? Reading the scriptures I definitely didn't picture wilderness like this!

Our awesome bus driver came up with the idea to stop at this camel sign so we could all jump out for five minutes and take a pic! He rocked!

Before we crossed the border we stopped and did an overnight at a kibbutz. It was really cool to see how things worked in this communal living system. The kibbutz was very clean and nice. At the edge of the property we also saw the Israel/Jordan border, which is the other pic below. Notice the dove as a sign of peace. 

We went to Valley of the Kings and saw the actual tomb and mummy of Tut! Holla! His tomb wasn't the most exciting though. For the tomb of one of the Thutmoses' we had to climb up with steep stair case only to go down a steep, teeny staircase far and deep down into the mountain with no fresh air, but it was totally worth it. The inside was amazingly decorated and colorful. It amazes me how much detail was on every wall. Oh and some Chinese tourist turned around while we were in line to tell me I looked like Angelina Jolie. hahaha. 

When in Egypt do like the Egyptians, even hold hands like them!

This is one the many temples built during ancient Egyptian days. Look at the size of those pillars! How did they get those up there? It's unbelievable!

I have seen the pyramids in real life! Check that off the bucket list. Cha-ching, cha-ching. When at the pyramids you have to be creative when taking pictures. Here is how creative I got. Same goes for the sphinx. The sphinx was actually smaller than I would've thought. The pyramids are huge though! All of that for one person? I want one of those when I die. You guys better start building.

This is our bright pink/orange/coral Sheraton Hotel that we stayed at in Luxor right on the Nile River. It was so beautiful! I didn't know BYU was so deluxe when it came to hotels. It was a nice hotel! One afternoon we had free time and I took the most satisfying nap beside the pool that looked out to the Nile with a nice cool breeze blowing. Confession, I drooled on the mat on top of the pool chair thing :) At our Egypt orientation it sounded like we were really going to be roughing it. I never saw a hole in the ground toilet, I didn't get one bed bug bite, and I didn't go hungry. 

In Luxor we went to the bazaar for the best shopping deals ever, but the deals depend on how well you can barter. Basically you have to be in the right mood too. I went down the first time and it was way too overwhelming because I'm not used to being harassed about buying things while I'm looking. I like my space. But the next day we went again and I was totally in the mood and got some good deals. It was actually really fun. I got this awesome bag down to $6 from $15, plus a picture. 

So we went on this night train back to Cairo.....sketch. This was our dinner. We had some sketchy chicken and beef options and so the safest things to eat ended up being the bread and rice. My genius idea you can't tell from these pictures is to cut the roll and make a rice sandwich. It wasn't that bad.... Breakfast was even better. Basically 5 different options of breaded surprise of which I ate the one plain roll. haha. It's all about the experience though right? And it was worth it.

So all in all Egypt was amazing. I lived for 8 days off of what I fit in my teeny carry on I brought on the way over here and whatever I fit in my little JC backpack. I don't think I've ever pulled that off and ever will again. Egypt actually surprised me. Cairo was pretty dirty and it's sad when most of the large sums of money from tourism goes to corruption and not the people in the country. I guess I was just stuck in how I pictured it in the prosperous ancient days, but now I will forever have the modern picture of Egypt in my head.