Yes, here they are. Please excuse the bad quality, I had to make them quite small to be able to upload them via modem and have enough room on the website where I am hosting them. Nicer ones will be available for view upon my return.

Lets begin at the beginning, with the short but eventful 8 hours we spent in the Netherlands. Running and getting on the first train is not the best plan, as we ended up going through beautiful countryside like this

Got off at the Centraal station, walked to the city center, said Gee, Amsterdam sure is small and then noticed that the postcard racks had an awful lots of postcards for Den Haag

and not so many for Amsterdam...and that we were actually at The Hague instead. A short ride back through the countryside brought us to Amsterdam proper, and much busier tourist shopping areas (the place to buy sneakers, apparently)

We had a nice and very European lunch by the canal, and then were off to Cairo. We stayed at the Garden City Hostel, which I was a little worried about because when I told people in California who had been there before they just started laughing alot.

It's that decrepid building behind Jean. In the olden days the place to stay was Shepheards, which had a very famous terrace on which the white people would sit and watch the city go by, while drinking their tea. I personally like the view from the Garden City balconies better,

and I've heard the roof has a good view as well. The large tower is the Nile Tower, and I have no idea what bridge or park those are, but it's a very busy intersection with people hanging out in the park until the early morning. We watched bored policemen, pretzel sellers, cute little girls in poofy dresses, young couples, young men fist fighting, a wedding's flowers being prepared, a crazy homeless lady singing (who refused to come up for tea and food even though the hostel employees called her up)...all sorts of excitement. The first day there I couldn't find the towel the hostel supplied, we needed it on the floor because there was no shower curtain (among many other things), but then I found it hanging here

in a very scenic way.
There will be no photos of the Egyptian Museum except for this one

because they are currently not letting in cameras. They are left with a jovial man in a small building in the courtyard who smiles politely until you tip him when you hand him your chip to get your bag back, and he finds where he leaned it's twin precariously on a shelf. Contrary to popular belief, there were just as many Egyptians at the museum as tourists.
The big night out in Cairo was the boat cruise, on a complete and gilded reproduction of an ancient temple, with the entertainment not only being the other tourists and waiters, but also a belly dancer and a whirling dervish-ish performer.

Their painting of a famous scene of Egyptian musicians could not go unrecorded, so we got some helpers to take our photos...and they got in on the fun too.

The guy next to me, who casually put his arm around me, asked "what's your name?", I replied "Elizabeth", he said "No, what's your name?" I said "Elizabeth", he said "Welcome to Egypt". Knowing people who work on cruise ships like this, I would just like to point out, imagine how crappy it would be if you had to wear a costume.
It was fun, and we were in a good mood, so we decided to chance it and all pile into the most decrepid elevator ever that led to the Garden City. It said it held four people, but the weight was in kilos, but we made it.

By the way, "we" is myself, Jean (on the left), Krystal (middle), and Lenka (right).
The next day we went to the Citadel, which contains early Islamic monuments such as the mosque of Muhammed Ali, which is made of alabaster (well, Egyptian travertine, or calcite, depending on who you talk to and if they are a geologist or not).

There were lots of people about, and this group of young women were kind of funny, they were talking lots and looking at the four of us, and then when Krystal and I walked past them they were all "shhh!", as if we could understand what they were saying about us. There is also a magnificent view of Cairo from the Citadel, and I purposefully left the smoggy brown in the picture in photoshop.

The inside of the mosque was beautiful as well.

And there were some more funny tourists. I guess a big part of the fun of the sights are the people!

We had an arranged driver for the day which was a very good thing, and I got some shots out the window on the way home. Cairo is a generally very interesting mix of old buildings and decaying facades with lots of bright new things mixed in as well.

But that was one of my scared to get too close shots, here are some from the Khan al-Khalili where I tried to get more personal shots, less exoticizing. Here is the shopkeeper who I cracked up by pretending to not have enough money and going into a long story about how my friends would lend me 5 LE but not 10 so I got nice cotton scarves on the cheap. He insisted on wearing the fez.

Here Krystal is trying to bargain down the price of a stuffed camel by pointing out its flaws.

This was actually taken at a later visit, where Maury took us upstairs into a jewelry shop and we all spend lots of cash on Bedouin silver and other nice things.

Notice the clock says 11pm, this was after about an hour of shopping, and we were there until about 1am. This was a very small room, packed completely with amazing shiny things. I'm amazed I got out of there with any money left at all.
The next day after the shopping trip we went on a whirlwind tour of Sakkara, Memphis, and Giza. Here is the annoying young boy who insisted that I should take a photo and he wanted no money (baksheesh), and then asked me for 1 Euro.

He got 1 Egyptian Pound out of me and that was it, the little brat, but I did have to admit he had a pretty sucky job of just collecting dung and garbage all day in the desert.
This is the entrance collonade to the Step Pyramid complex of Djoser, the first king who decided, hey, lets make a really big pile of stones in a pyramid shape.

I've had to write essays about this lots (including when I took NES 18, Intro to Egyptology as a highschool student, with the Prof. who I'm digging for now), so it was very exciting to actually walk through it for real.

Here is the Pyramid complex in its full glory. We were the first tourists there, which was creepy after being in busy and noisy Cairo for several days. It was deadly silent and just getting hot, and big rays of sunlight were coming down out of the clouds in a nice pyramid shape. This was great timing, because in class everyone always says that the shape of the pyramid may have been inspired by the rays of the sun, and one says, ok sure. But seeing a huge pyramid perfectly framed by rays of light makes it seem a bit more probable. Note also that this is not a true pyramid, it's a step pyramid. You can just make out that the lowest step has sort of disintegrated towards the right end, this is because the whole thing started out as a mastaba or bench tomb that was then enlarged, and then the architect (the infamous Imhotep whose name may be familiar to you from the Mummy movies) and king decided to just add mastabas to mastabas and get the sucession of steps. This also is familiar from class and was exciting to be able to easily see the progression while standing there.

Here Krystal is not climbing the pyramid. This sign was in the way back corner of the whole complex, completely facing away from anyone even looking at the pyramid, let alone climbing it. most of the fencing at the site had a funny step pyramid pattern in it.
Sakkara also has several famous tombs and other true pyramids. We were not allowed to take cameras, but we went into the mastaba tomb of Mereruka, a noble who had married the princess Meri, and who has really beautiful and also famous reliefs of fishing and other daily life activities in his tomb. This was one of my favorite things to see here so far, everywall had gorgeously carved scenes that popped out at me from books and articles, while there were also amazing details that I hadn't seen before, like dogs hunting gazelles, dancing, children playing tag, a whole wall full of offering bearers who looked like they were doing the macarena (Krystal and I demonstrated as well). He basically wanted to record all the things and activities that he had enjoyed in life so that he could enjoy them in the afterlife as well. These include being out on his boat spearing everykind of fish, his employees making jewelry (even melting the gold for it), cows being slaughtered, and feasts and dancing being enjoyed.
After we left it an old man in a galabeeyah (the robe-type thing which is traditional Egyptian male dress) told us he could show us the inside of a pyramid. I didn't believe him, but luckily Krystal went and we followed, right into the entrance to Teti's pyramid. The steep slope down of the entrance is covered now with wooden planks with metal bands to step on, and you have to go down in a crouch because it is only about 3 feet high. Claustrophobia is not too bad because you can see the first room from the top of the shaft. Then another flat crouch-walk and you stand up in a room completely covered in vertical lines of texts that are known as the Pyramid texts. They are basically the arcane religious knowledge reserved for kings to get sucessfully through to the afterlife. I have to admit I did touch one sun disc in the inscription when no one was looking just so I could have physical contact with one of the most important texts from ancient Egypt. Two short halls, also inscribed come off this main chamber, one of which has his now empty black granite sarchophagus. Actually, it's not empty, it had lots of cigarette butts in it. Most things like that that you read are empty in books often really have cigarette butts and sometimes lettuce in them, I've discovered on my travels. The upper blocks of the chamber are dark and have rows of stars, the grid to lay them out can still be seen. They also seem to have slipped and match up unevenly, and several big beams of wood can be seen in the walls. Outside, the pyramid is partially destroyed and the blocks are all in a pile. Glad I didn't see that before I went in.
Very happy with Sakkara, we reluctanly left, not having the chance to see the tomb of the two royal hairdressers, who have been rumoured to be a gay couple, but were most likely brothers or something like that instead. Next stop was Memphis, the capital of Egypt for portions of pharonic history, but is now a really muddy village with an internet cafe and an open air museum.

The nicest thing there was this colossal statue of Ramses II (much like the one that Byron wrote Ozymandias about, but not the same), and the funnest thing was this king's statue with a broken off face which we used to take pictures of us as pharaohs.

It would work better without pigtails.
Then it was off to the Giza plateau, now that it was nice and hot. We also stopped briefly at a carpet factory where small children were being taught to make absolutely gorgeous silk carpets with ancient Egyptian patterns. I got to try my hand at knotting the silk into the carpet loom, and I did it right on the first try, the tour guide offered me a job, but I think I was too old. The kids were very cute, but we were reluctant to take photos cuz then we'd have to give them all money or we'd feel bad. One little girl kept winking at me, but the girl whose loom we looked at was very shy and afraid to look up, and kept adjusting her headscarf further over her head, but did give us a smile after I thanked her for showing it to us.
Here are the pyramids. They are very large.

The middle one looks the biggest, but it's not, it's just built on a rise of the ground so it looks like it (yet another thing that makes more sense now). This is the pyramid of Mycerinus, the smallest of the three, with a horse in the foreground for scale.

Actually, it's not as small as that looks, but it is the smallest of the king's pyramids.
This photo was taken from the boat museum, the building that houses the full size boat (one of several, but the only one excavated) that was buried right there for the king's use in the afterlife.

Here is the boat.

Here, once again is the Great Pyramid, the pyramid of Khufu.

It's amazingly huge, but amazingly hard to get an interesting photo of. There are only just so many ways to take a photo of a pyramid. By this point the day was way way hot, probably about 110 if not 120, and we were in the full sunlight on blaring white limestone. We had to walk all the way around to get back to our driver, the wonderful Mr. Izzak, and Krystal remarked that this was probably the one and only time in her life she'd wish the Great Pyramid wasn't quite so big. Also, there were not that many tourists out, so we got the full attention of the souvenir sellers. They all, now I know, tell you they don't want any money and give you something, but then make you feel bad and ask for baksheesh. One man wouldn't listen to my refusal of a fake scarab and balanced it on my thumb as I took a photo of Krystal. One little boy gave us all postcards and then bothered us for like half an hour, insisting that my 50 piaster (cent) note wasn't real money (there are bills instead of coins here). Krystal finally remembered the word "Imshee!", which means "Go away" and my guide book says is especially for use on the boys at the pyramids, and he vanished.
Extremeley hot, we spent a very short time at the Sphinx. I took pictures, but didn't really take the time to commune with the enigmatic face and all that.

The temple next to the Sphinx is very beautiful, made of stark, clean blocks of red granite, but there was actually one small shrub growing high up in one corner between the blocks.

This is the only photo I have with a guard prominent in it, but man, they sure wanted me to take a photo with them. One very large guard said "hello, hello" to me as I walked by, and I knew it was because he wanted a photo, but I was also inside of the cordoned off area accidentally, so I pretended I thought that was why he was talking to me and ran away. My family wanted me to leave a piece of granite from Yosemite there on the pyramid to confuse future geologists, but there was no moment in which a guard was not watching me, not so much for security but out of boredom and hope of a photo.
After a very long day we took it easy the next, packed up a bit and went to the Museum again. The next day we drove down to el-Fashn through the countryside.

I didn't take that many photos because I was the center of attention at every little town we went through, even without getting out of the car. The egyptian highways have speed bumps at every main road in each town that you pass, so you have to basically stop. Me, a strangely dressed white woman, was a big attraction as we slowly passed the cafes, markets and bus stops. I think I was stared at more that day than all my life put together. But people would also yell out "Welcome to Egypt!" and wave.
The next day we got a tour of the site for the first time. There is a huge tell, or mound built up by years of habitation, made of mudbrick, as you can see here.

The bright red in this photo means that the brick was fired as opposed to the more usual sundried dark brick, probably because this was a large kiln. This is the type of structure that we are excavating, except that ours is underground. There is also a temple at the site, right next to the border between desert and cultivation.

Past the green is the Nile, which we have to cross every day there and back again. Here is the typical view from the ferry.

We are standing on the medium car ferry, while that's a shot of the person-only felucca (sailboat) ferry. you can see the line of villas behind it. That's where I am now, at the end of a long trip and only the beginning of the rest of my travels.