But if all of these dreams might find their way into my day-to-day scene

[ohgeezlouise]

This is our cruise ship.  I've never been on one before and was pretty excited.  It was really nice.  The inside:





In case you wanted to hang out by the pool or just watch the scenery.


What followed the next day were my two favorite temples, but before that we had an awesome afternoon sailing in a felucca boat.



All along the shores of the Nile are these green farms and palm trees.  It was such an awesome contrast with the miles of sand behind:



This dahabiya is the sort of boat Cleopatra rode around in:



The Nile waters in Aswan are very clear, it only looks dark because of the rock below.  To prove this, Sherif got a cup and dipped it in to show the clarity of the water:



We stopped at the Aswan Botanical Gardens, which was so beautiful and peaceful:



Apparently we arrived during prayer time.



Before walking around, I decided to dip my feet in the Nile, just to say I did.  Pictures of the garden:







Graffiti, maybe?  I don't know, but it looks so much fancier in Arabic than it does in English and didn't even look bad in these gardens.  I suppose that's all relative though.





There actually weren't that many flowers, mostly trees here.  Also, I apparently haven't figured out how to use the different settings on my camera, but oh well:













This is the tomb--I'm pretty sure--of Aga Khan IV, who along with his fourth wife fell in love with Aswan and built their summer home there.  (Sherif said this was some time in the 50s?)



Over to the right, you can see the house they built:



Sherif said when the Aga Khan died, the wife would visit his tomb every day to put a flower on his grave and that she did this for like thirty years until she died.

While we were sailing around, these kids in a tiny boat without much of a paddle pulled up to us and hooked on:



They started singing.  It was pretty cute, though I'm sure they do that for all the tourists that come by:

Click to view

After that, Sherif then said we were going to climb this giant sand dune and run down it.



I said, umm, what?  We didn't have to and I wasn't too enthusiastic about this because I was wearing contacts at the time and my eyes were already freaking out about how dry it was (I'd lost my glasses while packing for the trip, because of course that's just the sort of thing I'd do).  I can imagine myself tripping and getting sand in my eye, never mind the clouds of dust that arose from everyone else's feet.  I said I'd go just to take a picture of those going down.  I didn't realize that once we started hiking, the only way back was down the sand dune.  I was halfway up and debated turning around, but then I see the boat pulling away to the front to get a better view of those who were running.  So what the hell, I went up anyway, but when I got there I chose not to run down.  I was wearing a long dress and I'm not exactly graceful, despite what I'd have you think, and the incline was pretty steep.  This other girl and I walked down, which was still sorta awesome.  The texture of the sand was so fine, I've never seen anything like it.  As we made our way down, it rippled below us like water.  We sunk in about knee deep and pushed our way through.  You can see the trail we left.



I really couldn't get enough of how green the banks were.  This is the last picture I took this afternoon.  I was going to include the temples of Abu Simbel and Kom Ombo on this post, but I feel like there was so much going on there that it needs its own post.