One week ago today, I returned from my epic trip to Egypt. I’m still processing everything about the trip, which explains why I have yet to publish a new blog post on this topic. I tried to start writing it during some of my downtime at the end of the trip, but it just wouldn’t come. I thought about it over the past week, but it still would not flow. Maybe I was trying to hard to summarize everything that I experienced, everything that I saw, everything that I felt over the course of my 17 day trip.

Today, I will try to put a few words down. It will not be an in-depth, detailed tour summary. I just want to summarize the trip high-level(-ish), and talk about how and why the trip was important to me. So here we go.

In my previous blog post, I talked about the fact that my mother and I were about to embark on an epic trip together – a trip to Egypt. This was the first time my mother and I have traveled together since I was a child (apart from one random drive to Montreal and back when I was in my mid-twenties). It was somewhere that both my mother and I had wanted to visit for a very long time, though I never knew about my mother’s desire to do so until a year or two ago when she mentioned that she was looking at the possibility of a tour of Egypt. When she did, it did not take me long to jump up and say, “I’m in. Let’s go!”

I’m going to begin this blog post by first giving major props and praise to our tour organizers’. Celebritours was offering a 15-day Nile Cruise. They are a French tour company based in Quebec. We booked our tour and awaited the departure day. Being my first organized tour, I relied on my mother’s experience to get us started. She had previously done two other tours with this same company, and had good experiences. I cannot say that I had a different experience. Our tour was absolutely phenomenal. Pour mes amis francophones – je recommande fortement les services de Celebritours si vous avez des voyages que vous aimeriez faire. Allez-voir leurs offrandes – vous ne le regretterez pas!

We had a small group of 18 people, flying out of Montreal. Upon our arrival in Montreal, there was a representative there to ensure we were good to check in for our flight. When we landed in Cairo, we had a representative there to greet us and get us organized and on the bus to the hotel. At each airport, we always had someone representing the company awaiting us, making things easy. I never felt lost or worrying about where we needed to go next.

The tour itself was very nicely designed as well. We arrived in Cairo and spent two nights here, visiting the Giza Plateau. Then, off to Luxor to board our cruise ship for the Nile cruise portion of the trip. Our itinerary was packed with visits to sites almost every single day. We would usually head out early, at 7AM to do our visits and return to the ship by 1-1:30PM. This was done so as to avoid being outdoors in the peak of the sun and heat (it was still in the mid-to-high 30’s most days – that’s 95°-102°F for my American friends.) While some of the folks on the tour found the early mornings challenging, I relished with getting up early and finishing midday. That left us lots of downtime to just relax and recharge for tomorrow.

Our guide, Alaa Morsi El Kashat (to make life easier for everyone, he tells francophones to pronounce his first name as Alain), was with us from day 1 in Cairo through to the end of our cruise. I cannot speak more highly of someone that I will of Alaa. In order to be a government-certified tour guide in Egypt, you must take university courses specifically designed for this task. And it shows! Alaa was a veritable fountain of information. Each day was like taking a history course on Ancient Egypt. We learned about the various Pharaohs, the temples, the Gods and Goddesses, the battles and buildings. Although a native of Cairo, Alaa learned French from an early age and speaks fluently. This made our tours so much easier to appreciate as his accent was not very pronounced (which was in stark contrast to other tour guides that I overheard throughout our tour). His passion for his country and its history was evident at all times. He infused each site with knowledge and painted a vibrant tapestry through his words of what we were seeing. It was all the more impressive being physically in the various locations. It’s one thing to learn about ancient Egyptian temples in a book or classroom, but when you’re standing IN the temple and getting the same lesson – so much more impactful.

Rather than spend the next dozen or more paragraphs (this could easily be a dissertation-level blog post) describing each of the locations we visited, I’ll rather give a listing of the sites we visited, and let you look up whatever might be of interest.

• Giza Plateau
  • the Great Pyramid of Giza
  • Pyramid of Khafre
  • Pyramid of Menkaure
  • the Great Sphinx of Giza
• Memphis (ancient capital city)
  • Colossus of Rameses II
• Saqqara
  • Mastaba of Mereruka
  • Pyramid of Teti
• The Egyptian Museum in Cairo
• Valley of the Kings
  • tomb of Rameses IV
  • tomb of Seti II
  • tomb of Rameses I
• Funerary temple of Queen Hatchespout
• Temple of Medinet Habu
• Colossi of Memnon
• Edfu Temple of Horus
• Temple of Kom Ombo
• Aswan High Dam
• Philae Temple Complex
• Abu Simbel Temple
• Aswan Botantial Garden
• Nubian Village
• Luxor Temple
• Karnak Temple Complex

Needless to say, that was quite the tour! Just look at the number of temples and sites we were able to visit. I could never have imagined having the opportunity to see a couple of these locations, let alone all of them. Rather than speak to all of them, I’ll give a few impressions I had of our first location – the Giza Plateau.

When you think of Egypt, I daresay that the image that comes to mind is of the Giza Plateau – the complex featuring three pyramids, side-by-side, and the Great Sphinx. It is not without reason that this was the first location we visited. Start off with the big guns, and then keep the magic going. When I first caught glimpse of the Great Pyramid peeking through the haze on our way to the plateau, I started to get butterflies in my stomach. I mentioned in my last blog post that I had not really been feeling much excitement leading up to the trip; that changed instantly upon actually seeing the Great Pyramid. When we pulled up to the site in our bus and I stepped off, tears formed in my eyes and I became overwhelmed with emotion. “I’m here…I’m really here!” I took a few deep breaths and walked towards this towering pile of stone blocks. The moment that I laid my hand on the pyramid…I can’t even explain what came over me. I was touching something that has been in existence for millennia. My brain still can’t process the fact that these have been standing for more than 4,500 years…

We spent a good hour at the site. Mom and I slowly walked around the Great Pyramid of Khufu. I would stop and take it in. I touched it. I sat on it. I took a few moments before we left the site to just sit by myself in silence on the base of the pyramid, I closed my eyes and grounded myself there in that spot. This is something that Isabelle and I have taken to do over the years. We always try to stop and ground ourselves when we go to new, special places. I like to think that by grounding myself in that spot, I will always have that connection there available to me if I need it. I linked my energy, my being, to this magical spot that has been used for thousands upon thousands of years. I can only imagine how many other people have tied their energies to this site over the years. Connected through time and energy.

Our visits to many of the other sites were similarly impressive and powerful, but none had quite the same impact as the Great Pyramid for me. It was a lifelong dream that I never thought would actually be realized. The fact that I not only got to do it, but to experience it with my mother was all the more powerful for me. Sharing this trip with my mother, experiencing these locations together, has strengthened our bond. My mother and Egypt are now forever linked in my brain. It was truly special to get to take this adventure with Mom. The other members of our tour group expressed their wonder and their pleasure of seeing mother and son embarking on this trip together.

Once the cruise-portion of the trip ended, we traveled some 5 hours by bus to the seaside town of Hurghada. Nestled along the Red Sea, this resort town was our resting place of sorts. We spent four nights at an “all-inclusive” resort (the Hurghada Swiss Inn Resort). I used quotation marks on all-inclusive as, while we did have three meals per day included and multiple restaurants to choose from, we could only eat during specific windows of time (breakfast was 7-9, lunch from 1-3, supper from 7-9). The resort itself was nice at first look, but as you looked a little closer, it started to show some of it’s cracks.

Maybe it was because I was feeling a bit rundown at time point and ended up getting a cough/cold that I caught from one of the other members of our group (thanks, Romeo). Maybe it was because I was spending 4 days at a resort along the Red Sea with my mother instead of my wife. Maybe it was because I had accomplished all of the things I had wanted to do (read: I did the Ancient Egypt portion of the trip) and I was ready to go home. Maybe it was a bit of all of these things, but I did not really enjoy this part of the trip. I had been used to being go-go-go for the past 10 or so days. Now I’m just sitting here in a resort for 4 days with nothing to do? I walked in the Red Sea. I sat on the beach at 8:30AM. I went back to my room by 9:30 because the sun was too hot. I’m not a beach bum kinda guy; I never have been. I spent more time just sitting in our room, reading, napping, than doing anything else. I apologize to Mom if this was boring for you.

On that note…I will say that while it was a phenomenal experience to do this trip with my mother, it was also 17 days of being with my mother nearly 24/7. We shared rooms in hotels, ate our meals together, did our tours together. I love you to the end of the world and back, Mom, but 17 days was a lot. LOL. I’m sure you feel the same way. We had a lot of really good times, but we also got on each other’s nerves a bit, I’m sure. I don’t know that there’s anyone, outside of Isabelle, that I could be in that close quarters with for that length of time.

We ended our trip with a “bonus” of two free nights in Istanbul. This part of the trip was “free” from a cost-of-tour perspective, but ended up costing us a fair bit. Istanbul, unlike Egypt, was very expensive. Since COVID, they have seen massive inflation in prices. Our bonus days had breakfast included at the hotel, but lunches and suppers were out of pocket. Meals for me and Mom were coming to $65-80 after the exchange. We also chose to do an excursion on one of the days we were there along with 6 others of our group. We got a tour of the old part of the city, seeing the Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque, the Grand Bazaar and a few other spots. This was another added expense, but was well-worth the cost in the end after it ended up being a full day’s tour from 9AM-6:30PM. I’m glad I got to see part of the city as where we were located was not centrally located for easy visiting without knowing the city.

All in all, this was one of if not the most amazing trips I have had the pleasure of taking to date. Having the ability to check off seeing so many amazing locations, while getting a full history lesson of Ancient Egypt, meeting new people, experiencing new things, trying new foods, and doing it all with my mother – I could not have asked for a better trip. This truly was the adventure of a lifetime.

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In an effort to not upload too many pictures to my blog and use up all of my file space, I’ve created a folder on Google Photos with a selection of pics. Here’s the link to the album if you’re interested. Please note, I have not added any descriptions of the photos, so you’ll have to just enjoy them as is.