Dear Friends,
We finally reached Minya (by the way, for most of the town/city/area names, there are several spellings. That's because when the names were translated into the Roman alphabet there were various ways to represent the translation. So, for example, you'll see Minya and Minia. Plus, there are the Arabic names which are different than the western names.
Anyway, on our drive, we had a wonderful time seeing the middle of Egypt. We went through towns and villages. Because the tourist police were leading us (as fast as they could drive, by the way) we didn't get to have photo stops or even go slow enough that it was easy to take photos. When we got into towns and there was a slow down in traffic, the police put on their sirens, pull around the traffic jam and we'd speed along. Again, it made us feel conspicuous and like the tourists we were.
We got into Minya in the middle of the afternoon. The town is a city and quite large. It has one of the largest universities in Egypt, therefore, a lot of students.
AND, because of that, a lot of protests. We were asked not to leave the very pretty hotel grounds unless we had our guide with us.
This was early in January and the New Year's Day had just passed a little while ago. I'll put a couple photos of the decorations we saw. Also, we found out that even the non-
Christian Egyptians celebrate Christmas. They have Santa Claus figures (there was an 8-10 ft tall Santa at our Cairo hotel), decorated trees and the whole secular thing. Basam and Manal told us that it is a time of celebration and gift giving (not of celebrating the birth of Jesus). For the Christmas part of the celebrations, they use cotton balls and cotton batting to create "snow." You'll see some of that in one of the photos.
The hotel was right along the Nile. The rooms were in separate grouping of two or more rooms. This was the best hotel in the city and the rooms were basic (really basic) and the heat wasn't great. It was getting into the low 40s at night. I slept in long-johns.
I'll post below some photos of the Nile, the next day's sunrise, some fishermen and some of the non-human life along the river.
Frank
No comments:
Post a Comment