Happy New Year Everyone! While 2013 was a rather crazy, stressful year, the last 6 months were pretty great... so here's to keeping that trend going in 2014!
As a Christmas/birthday/New Years present to ourselves, Drew and I decided to get out of Luxor for a few days and head down to Aswan. I think people who have traveled through Egypt will agree with me when I say that Aswan is truly one of the most beautiful places in the country. Clean air, beautiful water swirling around the Nile cataracts and picturesque temples floating on islands. The High Dam is not so picturesque but never mind that part.
As a fitting end to our wedding year, Drew and I decided to splurge and stay at the Old Cataract Hotel. This hotel is legendary in Egypt and the likes of Winston Churchill, Agatha Christie and more government dignitaries than I can count have stayed here. Drew and I spent a large amount of time sitting outside on the terrace of the hotel (especially at sunset) and on the balcony of our room which had a beautiful view overlooking the temple on Elephantine Island.
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| The view from the terrace at the Old Cataract where Agatha Christie would sit and write Death on the Nile. It also makes an appearance as a setting in the novel and parts of the movie were filmed here as well. |
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| Drew was in such a good mood he even had a pomegranate mojito! |
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| The view across to Elephantine Island |
Aside from the awesome hotel, another reason for our trip to Aswan was to see Abu Simbel, the last major Egyptian monument that I had not checked off my list. It's about a 3 hour drive through the desert from Aswan to Abu Simbel but SO worth it. The site contains two temples, one for Ramesses II and one for Nefertari, and they were two of the temples saved by UNESCO in the 1960s from the rising waters of the Nile because of the High Dam. For those of you who have seen the Temple of Dendur at the Metropolitan Museum in NYC, that temple was a gift to the US for their role in assisting with the relocation of several monuments during this time frame, including Abu Simbel. Had it not been gifted and relocated it would now be sitting somewhere at the bottom of Lake Nasser.
I won't bore you with a long Egyptological diatribe about the temples but they were constructed by Ramesses II during his extremely long reign. The temples sit near what would have been the southern border of ancient Egypt with the kingdom of Nubia and were constructed in part as a modern day equivalent of "Hey, look what I can do!" Today they're equally as impressive as both an ancient monument and a testimony to what people from around the world can do when they all decide to cooperate with each other.
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| The temples now overlook Lake Nasser, which is really pretty but also a very sad reminder of all the Nubian monuments that are submerged underneath it |
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| I finally made it! |
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| Ramesses fall down, go boom... |
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| Ramesses' favorite queen, Nefertari |
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| While Nefertari's temple is much smaller than Ramesses' temple, I actually liked it better. The carvings were much better, in my opinion, and it was impressive without being overdone. |
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| This is the best image I could find to give perspective of where the temples were originally located and where they were relocated to. The mountains that the temples now sit in are completely artificial and hollow on the inside. |
Stay tuned for the next installation of this blog post to hear about my birthday in the Agatha Christie suite and our New Years Eve celebration!
