OUR FAMILY HOLIDAYS
9175 Egypt Cruise -- 1990
For our holiday in
1990, we went to Egypt. Many people are horrified by the poverty there but,
having been to
Ethiopia, I was able to understand the situation and put it into context the
poverty. Our holiday was to be a cruise down the Nile, followed by a week based
in
Luxor. Accordingly, we flew to Luxor and boarded our cruise ship there. It
was quite luxurious. Our cabin had ensuite facilities; and the lounges and
dining room were excellent.
Cruise ships queuing at Edfu
Best of all,
sheltered from the sun, I was able to sit at a table on the upper deck and watch
the world, or at least the banks of the Nile, go by. I was fascinated by the
farming and the village life that we passed, and found this a superb way of
taking a holiday. To hand I had binoculars
to watch what was happening on the banks, with still and movie
cameras to film what I found there. Most important of all, I had my writing --
as usual I was doing a final revision of one of my books. All of this, and
service with a coffee or cold drink whenever I wanted, was the best way to
travel.
The comfort of the upper deck
On the other hand,
Pat was bored and spent most of the time in our cabin.
Of course this was, in reality, just a luxurious means of transporting us between the various temples that we visited.
Temple of Khnum
These were superb,
but ultimately proved rather forgettable as individual entities. The Egyptian
dynasties lasted for several thousand years -- but over that time they barely
changed at all; and, being cynical about it, the temples soon came to look
to us just like each other
.
Even so, by repeated exposure to the millennia-long culture, we gradually learned -- largely by this repetition -- the various facts about the Egyptian deities and the cycle of life.
Temple of Edfu
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