The following day, we planned to go somewhat early to the Dibeen Reserve, one of the less-developed of RSCN’s nature sanctuaries, hoping to avoid the fees associated with the parks that have more facilities for visitors. I asked the hotel owner where we could get some foul, a question which …
Tag: tourism
Chariots Afire—عربات مشتعل
Getting out of Damascus ended up being rather more complicated than we had expected. The staff at our hotel had given us rather specific times—five of them, in fact—at which busses leave from the Sulmariya station on the outskirts of town to Amman. We were aiming to catch the 3pm …
R&R in Damascus—الإستراحة والإرتياح في الشام
Our day in Damascus was slow, easy and relaxing. We wandered again around the old city, visiting the palace of As`ad Pasha al-Azem, the 18th century governor of Damascus. It was bigger and more elabrate architecturally than its smaller cousin that I wrote about in Hama, but the latter had …
Wrong turns & chance encounters—لفات غلطة ومصادفات
We dawdled a bit on the way out of Lattakia—getting up late, having a leisurely breakfast—mostly because we thought we’d have to take care of some bureaucracy to extend our visas, which meant we would want to leave after the worst of the mid-day heat had passed anyway. It turned …
Links for February 23rd
These are my links for February 23rd from 12:22 to 13:45: Reform in Saudi Arabia | Tiptoeing towards reform | The Economist – The Economist on changes afoot in the kingdom of the two holy shrines, and an Ikea outlet (thanks to Angry Arab for the jab) Faculty shortages leads …
The Violence of the Nubian Museum—بطش المتحف النوبي
How wonderful of Egypt and the International Community to come together to construct this museum to depict the lives of a disappeared culture as a monument in honor of…their own generosity.
Nile Cruise—رحلة النيل
Embarrassing as this fact is, this was my second cruise on the Nile in only a couple months. It’s shockingly easy to live a posh middle-class lifestyle in this country with the right connections and a modest (by US standards) income. But this is not what I wanted to talk …
The Nilometer and Egyptian Museum—المنيل و المتحف المصري
Our trip to the Nilometer and the Egyptian Museum was quite different than the one the previous day to the Egyptian Agricultural Museum. The Egyptian Museum is a stop on pretty much every tourist’s itinerary and is hence tended to by the government with all due care. I had been …
A Christmas stroll through Islamic Cairo—ماشي عيد ميلاد في القاهرة الإسلامية
On December 25th, Adrienne and I decided to go for a stroll through Cairo. It didn’t have anything to do with it being Christmas, really. We just wanted to get out.
Antiquity as a natural resource—آثار كموارد
In the early 19th Century, Muhammed Ali, often credited with bringing Egypt into the modern age, effected that modernizing project in no small part through the use of antiquities, either a) as more-or-less direct payment for the services of foreign experts, b) as bribes or c) to curry favor with …
Veni, Vidi, Vici—أتيتُ، ريتُ، فتحتُ
Imperial nostalgia through the lens of a camera
Conveying the tourist—نقل السياح
A conventional industry, whether based in manufacturing or agriculture, involves organzing people to produce. Mass production relies upon all the well-known methods of recruiting and disciplining a workforce, organizing their use of time, their movement, and their arrangement in physical space, and developing systems of instruction, supervision, and management. Mass …
Pictures from Aswan and Abu Simble—صوّر من أسوان و أبو سمبل
Ths is the last batch of pictures (at the jump). This includes the pre-dawn bus-ride from Aswan to Abu Simble, the temple at Abu Simble, Lake Nasser, the High (Diggety) Dam, Philae Temple and Elephantine Island. Once again, some commentary is included in the photo captions, but more will follow …
Edfu to Aswan—إدفو إلى أسوان
Here we go with yet more pictures (after the jump) from the AUC-organized Nile Cruise. Featured here are the Temple of Horus at Edfu, some more Nile River shots, the Temple of Kom Ombo and a few more shots on-board the cruise ship. In case the reader is browsing here …
Nile Cruise—رحلة النيل
Here are some more pictures (gallery after the jump), this time from the second day of the ALI trip along the Nile, starting with a tour of the Karnak Temple in Luxor and ending at the docks at Esna. Some commentary can be found in the photo captions, but be …