Back to school

Christopher needs a vacation from our vacation.

We had the best time over the break.  Mommy and I and our new friends went just about everywhere in Egypt that there is to go on a week’s vacation.  We’ve all got to come back and do the Luxor/Aswan tour some time in the future.  But that’s for another day.

After our day in Ma’adi, we went to the museum in Cairo and took a tour of Coptic Cairo.  Unfortunately, it was a holiday, so they closed up the sanctuary where it is said that the holy family hid in Egypt from the Romans.  We were very sad about that.  But since our tour ended early, we got to go the the bazaar!  A bazaar is a really big outdoor market with lots of neat stuff for sale. 

The next day we went to see the Pyramids.  I’ll write more about them in another post.  They are huge!  We rode on camels in the desert.  Then we went to see the papyrus museum, where they showed us how ancient Egyptians made paper from the papyrus plant.  Mommy bought some for us to make paintings on.  While I type, Mommy is thinking of ways to put a plant like papyrus into the book she’s writing.   

That very same night, we got on the public bus to go to Dahab.  Dahab is on the Sinai Peninsula and it is a nine hour drive from Cairo, where we live.  We all got squeezed into the last seats at the very back of the bus.  Mommy was still a bit sick so she slept the entire drive.  I looked out the window, but we didn’t leave the station until after midnight so there wasn’t much to see.

When we got to Dahab, it was a sunny new day.  Everyone was really tired, but we were so excited that nobody wanted to go to sleep.  We had breakfast and looked into the shops all day long.  Every morning and every night we would eat at Bedouin-style restaurants, which mainly meant that we sat on the floor on pillows.  It was very relaxing.  One day we went scuba-diving and snorkeling, too.  That was very exciting, though I didn’t get to go since I don’t have a swim suit and they don’t make oxygen tanks in my size.

Then we came back to Cairo and it was time for everybody to pack up.  Mommy and I were all by ourselves again on Saturday.  It was sad not to have six other people in the house anymore, even if it was much less crowded.  We are glad to have met our new friends and we are looking forward to meeting up with them again.