Travel with Gretchen
 
I wanted to talk a little about how Egypt looks, and how it feels to be here. Egypt, in spite of how movies portray it, is very grey, and all the buildings are made of concrete. The gray is some how beautiful, and the cracks and lack of up keep somehow lend to its beauty. It somehow feel familiar yet its different in flavor. I expected colorful buildings with ornate decorations like those found in movies or in old photographs. However, The colorful ornate buildings are a thing of the past. Although every once in a while you catch a glimpse of some old villa along the road shyly hiding behind twisting vines. They whisper of a time when the egyptian pound was worth more then the dollar, and Egypt still had the taste of the exotic. Now, Egypt is much like every other city in the world, Bustling people, loud cars, and the latest fashions blur along the streets. The stands that used to sell exotic wares to tourist now sell cheap statues made in china. As I walked through the valley of the kings I tried to imagine what it would have been like to have relics and exotic wares shoved in my face, instead of the plastic goods I was seeing. I longed to see something handmade and worth the haggle. Even the places that seemed to hold treasures, and made you believe that you had found something of the old opened into large tourist buildings. I remember sitting outside a decaying building listening to a merchant talk of how they made Alabaster jars. So excited was I when we went to go inside. I pictured dust and cracked boards holding handmade jars of Alabaster just waiting to be haggled for. Instead, I was met with clean linoleum floors and metal shelves. I wish egypt was still the thing of myths and mystery where people like Howard Carter roamed the desert looking for adventure. It is not. That is long gone. Instead you have a bustling modern country with a long history fighting for a place in the modern world. A place Full of grey concrete buildings and supermarkets.




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