Time levels everything..

The previous post in this series is here..

In the middle of writing this post about how time makes sure nothing can survive it intact, it was pointed out the the time and effort spent in writing this blog is an absolute waste! If the great Pharoh's of Egypt and their secret tombs with hidden labryinths, sweet smelling poisons that would emit when tombs were opened, granite stone coffins that would not be easy to move in confined spaces, were still looted successfully.. this blog.. okay, I get it. 

Then again, the intent of this blog was never to survive even 20 years. My first post on this blog was originally done on Jan 1st 2005 after we had come back from a trip to Zion and Bryce canyon.. when the Tsunami hit! After coming back home, my cousin BIL told me about this thing called Blogger started by google. It was just a homepage creator. I wrote a "Hello World!" post but realized "who is going to know about this?". Then blgoroll came along and others started blogging and I jumped on it a good 6 months later. 

In a few days it will be 20 years of blogging! Never thought it would go on for 20 years. Mostly wrote for myself and the kids.. so someday they can go back and read it! Back to Egypt... 

It is true that majority of it is looted. Anything that was pure or gilded gold is just gone! If the local thieves and invaders didn't get to it, the Brits and French took it to their museums in the name of preservation!

We had 2 hours and Walid was not going to join us. He gave us directions to go and and out of the tombs. there was only one way in and out and all of them went down to a chamber at the bottom through narrow channels. 

All this time we were color blind. This tomb visit showed us what all those temples must have been like!

Words are not adequate to describe this. You have to go visit it. Hopefully the pictures and video do it some justice!

the caption for the photo below "what is the point? it still got looted!" 

A bigger, grander coffin.. still looted!

Museum piece now..

The tombs in the valley of the kings are many.. Our ticket gave us access to 3. We also got a special extra ticket to see the Rameses V and VI tombs which are extremely well preserved and the colors are still there on every wall. It was totally worth the extra price!

thank you sand for saving some history for us..

there was a stream of people.. so the one way to get a clean photo was to stand across the whole thing..it was also a rare thing for San to take this group photo.

took this pano shot inside one of the tombs. it was difficult to manouvere and iPhone and get a shot here. not sure how they painted all this in that confined space.. maybe the ceiling was open when they painted it before closing.. maybe kids or dwarfs painted it! who knows!

The rest of the photos are in two slideshow galleries..

Vertical shots..

And a video highlight of the tomb visits..

This is yet again a thing not to be missed. We now understood why folks bypassed the boat ride from Edfu to Luxor and came by bus instead to have more time in Luxor! 2 hours was not enough to see everything here, but we went in and out of the four tombs pretty quickly and we got a decent idea of it.

There was a brief power cut when we were inside the main tomb and everything went pitch dark for a few seconds till Phone flashlights went on everywhere. They restored it in 5 minutes and we got to continue taking pictures. 

Once we exit the place there was a wait for the shuttles. There were two groups fighting over the next shuttle and people had to be physically separated! Things got heated.. we just watched it from a distance, waited a few more minutes and were at the entrance. There was a large shopping area outside. We walked through it and got to our van. The vendors here were very pushy and in our face and blocking our path at instances. Walid helped navigate it expertly. 

We were still racing time as there were 4 more stops to go before hitting the airport..

Visiting friends on a busy sightseeing trip.. a welcome break

Given that I have come back from Asia and had two more sick days (this is starting to sound like a broken record now) the long weekend is a welcome break. Staying at home, trying to do yoga, recovering nicely. 

That means every now and then I get to take a break from work and continue to post about the Europe trip that seems to have happened a long long time ago.. Going down memory lane to retrieve what happened is a good and happy exercise.

The previous post on the series is here..

On day 7 of the trip we went from Interlaken to Paris, but with a 5 hour stop at Basel in Switzerland to meet Boo and family!

Everytime we met she has been saying "if you come to Europe, you better visit!" and we always said "yes" and finally we made it to Europe and to Boo's!

We had a great time. I learned that Arugula can be put in Sambar and given my allergy history and I have never had Arugula before, ate it tentatively. It was tasty and my body did not react to it. So ended up eating a lot of it! 

Then we went on a tour of Basel with Boo doing the tour. She impressed us with her conversational German and we witnessed a lot more of Swiss hospitality while walking on the streets. Swiss seem to be a happy people in general!

Walked across the river to some historic buildings, had ice cream, macaroons and walked back just in time to get packing and to the main train station. Also learned that there was a thing called Bubble waffle! 

I got a great shot while we were on the bridge of the entire group. Placed the 5D on a statue on the bridge and everyone thought it was a bad idea. To top things off, just when we were all about to say "cheese" to the self timer, a tram went behind us at full speed. Was expecting the photo to be a wash.. turned out that the fast moving tram in the background gives us a crisp focus! learnt something that day!

Downtown Basel was quaint and cute.

Saw a beautiful park right next to the parking lot and the kids got to play there for 10-15 minutes.. and we were on our way!

We had a scare just before leaving their house when we saw in the news that all trains to Paris were cancelled because of a strike. Apparently Parisians are famous for striking at the drop of a hat. 

There was a package tour to the Palace of Versailles the next morning and it was imperative we made it to our Paris Air B&B that night. We planned some best and worst case scenarios and decided it was best to go to the train station and take it from there.

We went there to see the big display board flash on time for 19 trains and "cancelled" in red for the one train we were supposed to be on! Mr. Boo told us that we should go and ask the ticket rescheduling folks for options or refunds. There we were told that if we ran to a gate in 5 minutes, there was a trail to Mulhouse ville and from there trains to Paris were still running.. (that place was on the France side of the border). We ran, said bye and were on that train. There was one conductor who spoke English and was very nice. He told us that unfortunately that train was also cancelled.. but if we kept going on the same train to the last stop, there was another train from Stassbaugh (I forget the name) from which a train was still leaving for Paris!

Given we were screwed one way or another and with the tought of having to find accomodation last minute in a place we weren't planning on visiting, we said "okay, it is our turn to have another adventure". So we keep going on the same train.

Finally we got off and found that after 40 minutes there was indeed an almost empty train that was going to Paris. We made it to Paris while watching a glorious sunset across the fields from a high speed train.

We got off at Paris Est station and checked Google maps. The original train was to stop at Gare Du Nord station. Turned out our Air B&B was one street away from this Paris Est station and we kind of made up most of the hour we lost in going through extra trains!

A video that captures Day 7 of the trip!

The Air B&B was nothing like what the website promised. The whole two room place was incredibly small. The restroom including the shower was smaller than the bathroom on an United economy cabin. They must have used some really good fish eye lens to post those pictures of the place for the website. There was a bright side though. There was an amazing balcony as we were in the top floor and you could see up and down Rue de Magenta. 

It took us just an hour to get used to the confines of the apartment. Once we got used to it, the coziness grew on us. We were not exactly tired. We were all excited. It had been a good day.. smiles all around, some excitement, running across train platforms, walking through Parisian pavements in a line dragging our suitcases and finding that the place was alive and kicking at 11PM. 

The next day was going to be interesting.. Driver was supposed to pick us up bright and early outside our Air B&B to take us to Versailles! 

The Christmas gift is here at last...

This years Christmas gift was a printed version of my blog in book form. There were only three or four services that do this, that were recommened on the internet. Used Blogtoprint service and found that they allow a maximum of 1000 pictures in each book.

That meant only the first two years of the blog from 2005 - 2007 and it was 300+ pages. 

It was finally delivered today and we all loved it!

The kids have been flipping through this and laughing and crying at the same time. Given the cost of printing this thing, we have to wait for another year to get book2 printed.. 

Should have done this a long time ago..