Saqqara

On Monday, the kids had the day off of school for the Prophet Mohammed's birthday. This is not a holiday I ever thought would be relevant to my life, but there you have it. We had planned to go camping during the weekend, but a lovely case of the stomach flu that hit the whole family ruled that out (sorry, Heisses)(also, you're welcome), but we were feeling well enough by Monday to follow through with our plans to go see the Step Pyramid at Saqqara with the Penrods. Feel free to consult that handy link I provided for you, as I am too lazy to recount the history and significance of said pyramid (or the Penrods, for that matter). Or, better yet, my friend's son can do a report on it and get back to you! (No need to thank me, Julie; I'm here to help!) (For all but the two of you who know what I'm talking about, she is saintly and homeschools her 8th grader, and sometimes she has him do research on things we post about. I can't decide if that makes me want to post more, or just post pictures and leave all the information for him to provide :)

Anyway. I am for Egyptian holidays--traffic there was great! On the way we saw a glimpse of the Giza pyramids:
And this awesome lady:
And this awesomer sign:
This was our first glimpse of the pyramid:
Once you get onto the complex, you walk through a corridor of columns, and the kids all had a great time pretending to be statues. I promise we didn't coordinate the matching shirts that both Megan and Mairyn and Emma and Eliza were wearing. I also promise we didn't coordinate their similar names.

The pink-shirted, M-named 6-year olds:
The white-shirted, E-named, 9- (and almost 9-) year olds (and Grant):
Did you know that Rodin stole The Thinker from ancient Egypt? I didn't. But then, I also get told a lot that Sara is an Egyptian name. Apparently everything originated in Egypt.
Jessica tried to be a statue, too, but, well, all the kiddies love them the Jessie. Once she was down at their height, they mauled her.
Along with the statue-ing, there was also much leaping. Eliza's got her some mad hops, yo.
In the courtyard of the pyramid:
The pink girlies:
Something that I love about Mairyn is that if she is aware of the camera, the girl just does not take an un-posed picture--and the pose usually involves jutting her hip out in some way. Clearly this has rubbed off on Meg. Cracks me up.

The pink posers:
Cute friends:
I think the posing must be genetic. From both families.
See?
This posing, however, was forced. Basically, I told her she could stand there nicely and smile, or I could sneak an, er, unflattering picture and post that. Parenting through threats and coercion! I should write a book! And people say teenagers are difficult. Actually, I think I just lucked out with this one. And she's cute, too.
Sam, doing what Sam does everywhere we go--throwing rocks (you can see it up on the second-from-the-top tier of the pyramid).
More use of force to get a good picture of a child (notice that with Sam it requires full-body control):
All of us:
Getting my artsy on:
On the way out of the courtyard, there was more leaping:
This was Sam's version of it. He would sit on the edge of one of the walls, scoot himself off, and then walk to the side, plop down on the ground, and say, "I did it!" Daredevil.
At this point in the post it would be really cool if I were to link you to a post about the visit we made to the pyramids at the Dashur complex in October, but since I never actually wrote that post, you'll have to use your imaginations (and Wikipedia). This shot is from another section of the Saqqara complex, looking south. On the right is the Step Pyramid, and straight ahead in the distance is the Red Pyramid and to the left of that is the Bent Pyramid.
Zoomed in as far as my camera would go:
When I get around to writing about our visit in October (hey! I believe in the power of positive thinking!), I'll show you the corresponding pictures I took of Saqqara from that perspective. I'm sure you can't wait! (Clearly, I can.)

The rest of these pictures are more shots from the road as we were driving home.
Lydia taking a picture of me taking a picture of her. And Spencer? He's just smiling. Smiling's his favorite.

Tunisia Day 5: Nerd Alert

We arrived at the town of Matmata, after what is probably the craziest drive I have ever been on. The rocky road (not the ice cream--Mmmmm) was so rough that without a lot of faith and a little bit of driving skill it would have swallowed our little rental euro-car whole. The town was all closed down and we saw one person on the main road who guided us to a "hotel" and then to a cafe where we ate again our favorite meal in Tunisia: chicken cous-cous. And Sara had for the first time what was to become her second runner-up: brik a l'oeuf. I think that translates roughly into "brick of egg." Apparently it tastes better than its name would imply.

We settled our account with the cafe, which used the rest of our cash, and headed to the hotel. The man in the cafe promised me I could get cash in the morning at the post office. Now, this hotel we went to is famous to Star Wars nerds worldwide, and hey, the price was right. Sara would have something funnier to say about Star Wars, or nerds in general, or just about what a wierd place it was, but I am writing this post, and she can always leave comments.

So in Star Wars, Luke Skywalker lived in an underground desert place (hard to tell if it was a village or just your typical single-family-underground-dwelling) with his uncle and aunt. This "hotel" is that place. The pictures kind of tell the story, but it was a Star Wars-rific stay in a crazy spot on the map in Tunisia.

This place consists of several underground cave dwellings carved around open-air courtyards that sit about 25 feet below ground, and connected by underground corridors. They were carved by a group of people called the Troglodytes. Great name, huh? Anyway, it was interesting, and we picked the perfect season to be there. We were the only people in this whole place.

Here is the room we stayed in.
And here is the courtyard outside our room, which, though it was chilly outside, stayed strangely warm...almost.
In another courtyard, we saw relics from the filming of Star Wars. Obviously, here is Sara in front of what was the creature cantina (the hat was because no way no how was she getting in the shower they had available). It was closed, but the guy who served us breakfast insisted that if we waited, it would be open in a couple hours and we could see more Star Wars relics. We really had had enough by that point and wanted to get on the road.
Another view of the dugout with the Star Wars set in it.
A view of the courtyard from above:
This is the breakfast nook where Luke dined with his aunt and uncle. He complained about not having a future on the farm, and wanting to go fly in outer space. We ate breakfast here too, but did not complain as much as whiny old Luke.
A lovely Tunisian Star Wars-y breakfast of bread and jam and milk, with a little fruit.
Nearby the Star Wars hotel, there was another troglodyte village that was set up as it was historically used, not by the troglodytes, but by subsequent inhabitants. Still, it was old-timey and cool. A nice old man who worked as the custodian of the site took us around. He spoke Arabic, but he was also really old, and he was a little difficult to understand, but he was very nice. Here is Sara working the corn-grinder, essentially two stones set around a stick (she wants you to know it was only out of politeness to the man taking us around who insisted she do it; no manual labor by choice for her). You put the corn or wheat between the stones and turn the top stone to grind. The flour spills out from the stones and collects on the cloth below. Spin the wheel, Sar.
This is the guide. He pointed to the keys and told me they were his car keys. He thought it was really funny. It was.
We left the troglodyte village and found the post office. Cash in hand, we returned to pay the hotel bill and hit the road. ٍSpeaking of the road, here are a few of my favorite signs:

Attention: camel crossing,
Speed = Danger,
And, of course "Dad, don't speed, we'll wait for you."
We followed the advice of the guidebook and several people we talked to and drove across a dry salt lake bed that is apparently an incredible sight when the sun is shining. Unfortunately, the sun, it was not shining. About a quarter of the way across, Sara said, "This would probably be much more impressive if we hadn't grown up right by the Salt Flats," and about half way across, I said, "You know where we're going? Wendover!"

The most interesting thing about the lake was the animals and other structures that people made out of, uh, wood and things (we didn't get close enough to investigate). There were several displays at various intervals all across the lake.



The next town we came to is Tozeur (if you watch Lost, Ben went here, but not really here, just on the show here). Tozeur sits on the edge of the Desert and is famous for the yellow-ish colored bricks you see in all these photos. Tozeur had several monuments and statues and other sculptures. Best I can tell, it is general beautification and city/national pride, but there were some goodies here.

The mosque. Not really out of the ordinary, but in the Tozeur brick.
This one is a gem. A monument to Hannibal, complete with elephants.
This domed gazebo graces a roundabout on the East side of town. It's just unique enough to make Tozeur's "best of" list.
I've seen the real pyramids, and you, sir, are no pyramid. Well, except for geometric shape.
After Tozeur we proceeded up the highway toward Gafsa, where we had heard there were some good Roman ruins, including some pools. More on those later, but on the way there, we passed this interesting minaret. The combination of styles and colors is unique.
When we read the "guide" book, there was a teaser about Gafsa. It said if we were lucky, we might even catch local kids jumping into the famous Roman pools from the high edges. That looked interesting, so we headed toward the Roman part of town. When we got there, we were let down to see that not only were there no local youths diving into the soothing waters of the Roman pools, there wasn't even any water in the Roman pools. Did I mention that Gafsa has Roman pools? Yeah, here's what the pools looked like when we got there. I guess we just went at the wrong time of year. Or the wrong year.
For that and a few other reasons, Gafsa earned slot number two on our list of "The Two Towns We Didn't Really Like in Tunisia." We did see a car collide with a bus in Gafsa which was notable. The car tried to cut around the inside of a turning bus and when the bus hit the car, several pieces of automobile trim and accessories flew from the car at once (incidentally, the same model as our rental car). It was like a low-speed explosion of rubber and plastic. I missed getting a picture, sadly.

We headed towards the coast to a port town called Sfax. We arrived just as it was getting dark, and after checking into our hotel room, we walked around town a little. We came upon this building which was formerly the town hall. Now it is a museum.
Aside from the medina, which lies a few blocks to the north of this building, there was nothing really cool to see near the hotel. We toured the medina the following morning. Check out the next Tunisia post--probably sometime soon (or not; it's anybody's guess!)--to see pictures of the medina, including the kasbah (Sharif, he don't like it...). Oh, and extra points if you know the names of Luke's aunt and uncle.