City of Dogs

Venice is a city of dogs, which makes us love it even more. There is no dog shit, because the fines for

inadequate garbage disposal are mindboggling. In fact, garbage disposal in general is quite a challenge. We have to take our trash to the garbage boat -- daily for regular garbage, and on certain days for recyclables of different types. Luckily, our disposal spot is three minutes away, and instead of being available from 6:30 to 8:30 as most are, which if you know us you know would be impossible, it's open till 10:30. After Egypt, the cleanliness is wonderful, though the garbage boat thing is not.

Saturday Phil and I went to the Ca'Doro, which turned out to be closed for renovation, but the two paintings we wanted to see, a spectacular Bellini pieta and Mantegna's St. Sebastian, were on display, what luck! And I bought a very silly sweater. 

On Sunday, the boys went to Trieste. I stayed home, not feeling a hundred percent. They took the train and walked ten miles in the city, visiting a plethora of James Joyce sites, the stone pier, the cathedral, the canal, and the castle. They climbed up the Giant's Stairway for spectacular views. And, of course, drank white wine in the bars where Joyce drank white wine.

While they were gone I ventured out for a stroll, along with all the tourists (mostly Italian) visiting Venice for the holidays. The streets were jam-packed, but it wasn't unpleasant. I had picked a random church as a destination so I wouldn't get too lost, and it turned out to be open. I went inside and found a surprise Bellini painting in a dark back room -- what a thrill!

When the boys returned we went out for pizza, which is hit-and-miss in Venice because they are not allowed to use the wood-burning ovens that create crispy crusts. Still, we found a good place, adding only a mile or so to the total. 

Monday, foggy and cold,  was the day when Klauser and Sue were to arrive. Ben and I went out shopping and he bought a lovely sweater; we stopped for spritzes along the Grand Canal, admiring the passing parade. We watched a very strong, very excited bulldog nearly pull its owner into the water. Then Phil and I took Ben to his new apartment across the Canal, which created some angst because the vaporetto machine wouldn't take our credit cards, so we had to walk and walk and walk to another machine and then we sort of got off at the wrong stop. But the apartment is very nice, right on a canal and across from the Frari Church.

Klauser and Sue arrived on time, though the fog nearly cancelled their water taxi. Phil met them and brought them back to the apartment, and we settled in with prosecco and snacks and then headed out to meet Ben for dinner at the restaurant we went to on our first night. It was just as good the second time. Maybe even better. 

Venice at Last

Oddly, there were no disasters on our Egyptair flight from Cairo to Milan. We arrived on time and picked up our rental car, which turned out to be a behemoth that was so electronic we couldn't figure out, in a 3 hour drive, how to turn down the radio. It did have a workable GPS, though, which got us to the Venice airport in a timely manner. We probably picked up several speeding tickets on the way, but we will deal with not paying those at a future date. We dropped off the car (really this seems complicated, but it was WAY easier than taking a train to the central Milan station and picking up the train to Venice, and no more expensive) and caught the water taxi our rental agency sent for us. And as has apparently become a family tradition, we drank a beer to toast Venice as we motored down the Grand Canal.

View from our balcony

Our rental agent met us at the taxi dropoff and took us to this lovely apartment, tucked away in a very quiet side street though it is in the touristy San Marco district. It has a balcony overlooking a quiet canal -- my one demand -- and everything else one could want (except a second bathroom, but not complaining). I'd made a dinner reservation at a nearby restaurant, so we settled in and walked there and had a wonderful meal served by a delightful waiter who had spent time on Arthur Avenue and eaten at some of our favorite restaurants.

We slept ridiculously long but woke up in time to head out to the Rialto Fish Market in a windy downpour. The market was fabulous, full of fishes we couldn't identify and some we could. Phil of course had a long list of possible dishes he could make for the Feast of the Many Fishes on Christmas Day, and we found what we needed and made our purchases, then slogged happily back in the rain to do many kilos of laundry.

I'd made a reservation for Christmas Eve as well, as the internet suggested most places would be closed on the eve and also on Christmas Day and on St. Stephen's, the Italian version of Boxing Day. This, it turned out, was not at all true, but our restaurant was excellent and we ate well, though it was a mile away and the rain was raining. Ben somehow directed us there quickly and without getting lost. We decided not to venture out into the deluge for midnight Mass at St. Marks, though, and toasted Christmas with prosecco at home.

We toasted Christmas again in the morning with mimosas, and Phil made pancetta and eggs while we shared the presents we'd watched one another buy in Egypt -- rings for me, a statue of Anubis (Phil's fave god) and an ancient Egypt cookbook for Phil, and a hieroglyphed plaque with Anubis preparing a mummy for Ben. 

We walked  several miles -- the rain had at last stopped -- to prepare for the feasting ahead, and then the chef began. We started with shrimp in a cream sauce with garlic and cherry tomatoes, moved on to white fish wrapped in prosciutto and roasted, fried calamari, scallops on the half shell with pancetta and garlic. Then fresh sardines sauteed and served with lemon zest and shallots and basil. We had to take a break and walk another couple of miles before the main course, gamberetti with angel hair pasta in a garlic/wine/cream sauce with pancetta and cherry tomatoes, but we somehow managed to eat everything. 

St. Stephen's Day brought the sun. Venice in rain is beautiful, but Venice in sunshine is stunning. There were many people out -- most of the tourists seem to be Italians. We split up, all of us looking for Christmas Markets the internet swore were ongoing but had actually all ended. Phil and I went to San Rocco, a church dedicated to the saint who was cured of plague by a blessed dog who licked his buboes. It was full of Tintorettos depicting the saint's life. Then we found St. Stephen's Church entirely by accident -- also full of Tintorettos we had never seen, including a remarkable Last Supper. St. Stephen's Church on St. Stephen's Day!  A very happy accident.

I had made another dinner reservation, the internet having told me that it would be hard to find a place open on St. Stephen's. This of course was not true, but the restaurant was lovely and the food was good. Either it's hard to find bad food in Venice or we are easy to please -- I just make sure not to pick places where the menu is in four languages. It has worked out so far!

Ahoy, Matey!

 

While cold-ridden Squirrel slept, I joined Mohammed for a boat tour of the nearby islands and marshes of the Nile, which revealed Egyptian herons, ducks and geese, as well as a dwelling place of crocodiles. Lots of feluccas with their single, towering sails. We visited the same Nubian village where we stayed, now with time to take in the market, where I bought a Christmas present artwork for the Lad and some incense for yoga Sarah. We drank peppermint tea in a local house and returned, passing the Aga Khan house and mausoleum, the Cataract hotel made famous by Agatha Christie, and an ancient burial site.

After lunch where I finally ate the beloved Egyptian staple kocheri, we set sail and enjoyed a relaxing panorama of the green, pastoral shoreline, with papyrus, palms, cattle, and fishermen.

We arrived at our featured stop around 5, the brilliantly lit double temple of the crocodile god Sobeck and Horas, whose virtues are meant to counterbalance the croc deity’s menace. Once again, Mohammed led us through a throng and showed us hidden gems no one else knew about—a third century BC penis joke and a small bas-relief of the famous Cleopatra and her husband who built this Greco-Roman-Egyptian temple and included a hospital behind the inner sanctum for offerings. Here there were impressive carvings of women in labor among other medical iconography.

Another wonderful excursion in a golden glow, followed by a visit to a small museum devoted

exclusively to mummified crocodiles, several exceedingly long. Had cocktails on the lounge deck with Mohammed (who does not drink), and then dinner.

Most of the next day was spent sailing to Luxor, with a long delay waiting to pass through a lock along with at least ten other ships.  We spent time on the open air upper deck sipping tea and watching brave young villagers in tiny boats move around the passenger ships, tossing up items they’re trying to sell.

We arrived at the pier in Luxor at 6:30, giving us a perfect time to tour the immense Luxor temple, begun in the fourth century BC, lit up in dramatic fashion. The temple we visited is dedicated to Amon-Ra’s wife, Mut, a fertility deity and all around nice gal. Over a thousand sphinxes line a processional avenue leading to the temple, which greets the awe-struck visitor with towering, free-standing statues of the divine husband and wife, along with other gods, and a perfectly preserved obelisk.

Our favorite detail, however, is a small one most visitors miss: a painting on stone of the hyper-fertility god Amun-Mit, who is depicted standing on one leg, the other amputated by jealous husbands, with a monumental erection that never fails. The god’s member is blackened because women hoping to become pregnant touched it for good luck for millennia. What fun!

Our late dinner, following margaritas (oddly), featured an ice cream cake in the shape of the pyramids. This was followed by a belly dancer and an astonishing young whirling dervish whose spinning skirts defy gravity and belief.

The next day began early when Mohammed took us to the last and largest of the great temples we would visit under his guidance, Karnak, dedicated to 

Amun-Ra, the mightiest of all Egyptian gods, combining the sun, life, and rebirth. The temple covers over sixty acres with a long colonnade of lions, dozens of towering pillars with hieroglyphic carvings and still vivid colored images, and a spring fed purification pool. Each year Amur-Ra would travel to Mut’s temple for a five day erotic assignation called The Honeymoon Festival, which is still celebrated in Luxor.

Then came a special surprise courtesy of Mohammed, who seems to be widely respected and gets special perks. He took us to a tiny nearby shrine that is a holy of holies, dedicated to the goddess Sekmeht, associated with healing. The dark inner sanctum contains a statue of her with a female lion’s head, carved from a single block of black basalt. It is now part of a cult that believes touching the statue will promote miraculous cures.

Mohammed said he feels spiritual emanations here and at other sites. For example, he enjoined us to walk three times around a statue of a scarab beetle and make a wish, which we did. We shall see.

The divine temples are on the green east side of the Nile, while the barren Sahara of the west side is the place of death—the Valley of Kings, 62 royal gravesites tunneled hundreds of yards deep in the rock and sand, including Tut’s, discovered by Howard Carter in 1927. Under a brutal sun, Mohammed took us to four tombs, starting with Ramses  IV, vividly adorned with painted text and illustrations from the Book of the Dead detailing the

deceased’s ordeal of passage involving a boat journey from west to east.

Our next stop was the crypt of Merenpath, thought to be the pharaoh during the time of Moses and the Jewish captivity. Less decorative , but notable because the sarcophagus was too large to pass the sanctuary.

The most colorful tomb came next, the burial site of Ramses I, with exceptionally well preserved frescos, many depicting green skinned Osiris and Anubis in the underworld and the god Khephi with the head of a scarab beetle, symbol of resurrection. Quite stunning, and just 4,000 years old. Egypt truly alters your sense of time. 

Finally, we visited the iconic tomb of Hatshepsut, the only female pharaoh in the Valley, a woman who displaced a legitimate male heir to the throne by concocting a claim that she was the daughter of Amun-Ra, who impregnated her mother through her nose. An image in her tomb shows her arrayed as a male king receiving her authority from Amun-Ra, fully testifying to her grandiosity. Unusual hieroglyphs there include an owl and the spoons used to hold open the mouth of the deceased. 

Our last stop was to marvel at the Colossus of Memnon, carved from quartz over 4,000 years ago and unveiled just a few days before our arrival. Centuries later the clever Greeks claimed one of the statues was actually a representation of Agamemnon.

where Mohammed found
the mummies

On our way to the airport we saw the place where, as a boy, Mohammed found seven mummies on his family property. His destiny was clear!

Two close calls this day: first, our driver fell asleep in his van and left us stranded for a while in the Valley; second, Cairo Air "lost" Tycho’s suitcase when it became lodged in the bin of a transport vehicle. 

We settled into a luxury hotel near the airport that reminded us of what you might find in Boca Raton, all decorated for Christmas and with a pianist playing show tunes. We ate our last Egyptian food and got ready to rise obscenely early for our flight to Milan.

So a Lot of Stuff Happened

 

[Mostly composed by Phil as I attempt to recover from the nasty cold I probably caught on the first Egyptair flight]

In the morning we took an Uber to the Montazah Gardens, thirteen miles along the coast. Well, actually we took two Ubers. The first one broke. We strolled along the wide paths, admired the late 19th century palace, visited the beautiful conservatory, and walked by the sea. Tranquility and quiet that we needed…but then the chaotic return! 

Our Uber cancelled on us, so Phil and Ben insisted we take one of the hundreds of Russian Lada taxicabs, a car from the 1950s. Very cramped, very wild driver. We got lost in the maze of a colorful, trash-filled souk full of caged fowl and weird vegetables. Tycho had to direct the driver with his gps, which took a full hour.

After a short rest, we took another Uber to the 15th century Quitbay Citadel to watch the sunset over the sea and explore the interior, which contained the second oldest mosque in the city. Sadly, the aquarium closed before we could visit the fish, but we ate some nicely roasted sea bass and red snapper at White and Blue, a Greek place, after walking the seaside promenade.  

Greek food, including, the grilled octopus, seems right since the Greek conquerer Alexander founded the city.

We Ubered back to Cairo easily, except for the absurd ticket our driver got for being from Alexandria. Our flight to Aswan, 525 miles to the south, was a freaking nightmare, with another flight to the same place scheduled 15 minutes later and a third flight folded into that. We were rescheduled four times, moved from gate to gate to gate. A large group of furious Chinese tourists got rather physical, shouting and pushing and nearly resorting to fisticuffs with the hapless attendants. 

We left 2.5 hours late (seems to be standard for Egyptair) and arrived long after dark at the Dolty Kato House in the Aswan Nubian village. It turned out to be a gorgeous little guesthouse where they served us (and the other delayed people) a superb dinner long after their closing time. A benign end to a brutal day.

The next day we rose early and had a bountiful Nubian breakfast, savory vegetable dishes of eggplant, spiced mashed potatoes, etc.  We were met by a rep from the Sonesta Moon boat who led us to a adolescent driving a glorified motorcycle (tuk-tuk) with a flatbed attached, which held our luggage and us as we held on for dear life, bouncing over rutted roads through the village as camels passed us and merchants opened their shops.

Deposited at the agent’s car, we drove to meet our vivacious, enthusiastic guide Mohammed, an Egyptologist professor in his sixties who runs his private tours like a college seminar, packed with information and questions. [DZ: I found that I tuned out after about 20 minutes, Phil asked dozens of questions, and Ben took it all in silently and remembered everything — a total reflection of the way we performed during our own times at university).

He took us first to the massive Aswan dam that separates the Nile from Lake Nasser, then to an ancient granite mine where we saw the Obelisk that was supposed to be the largest ever to honor Cleopatra V but cracked and was never completed. Then we stopped in a souk specializing in spices (bought some) and then a fascinating presentation at a perfumery on the creation of essences and medical elixirs (bought a mint oil for Squirrel to inhale).

We took a short boat ride with glorious views of the temple and received a very detailed commentary from Mohammed, who knows everything and everyone, has worked on all the boats, knows shortcuts everywhere, and has some provocative theories of his own (which he shared with Bill Clinton when they had coffee and with John Behner when he guided him. He was for several decades the guide for the American ambassador to Egypt. He did not like Hillary). He likes to refer to himself in the third person, grip the arms of his interlocutors, and illustrate complex chronologies with pen and paper. We now know how to read some hieroglyphs and learned the entire story of Osiris and Isis, including the missing penis of Osiris that Alexander claimed he found, thus inspiring the temple to Osiris’s sister, wife, and savior. 

Next stop was the boat, one of 185 now sailing out of Aswan --very cushy, decked out for the Christmas  holidays, with comfortable cabins and plentiful if undistinguished food that is not ethnically Egyptian. [DZ: My plan of losing 5 pounds in Egypt so I could regain it in Venice is shot to hell.]

After lunch Mohammed took us a backroad route (necessitated by a roadway flood caused by a broken pipe) to the Temple of Isis, built under in third century BC and moved to an island when the dam threatened to submerge it.

We spent almost two hours there before retuning to the boat for cocktails (margaritas) and dinner, preceded by festive Nubian entertainment in which Squirrel and I were inveigled to join in as dancers. Fun. More drinks after dinner on the upper deck.  

 

Tomorrow we sail!