This was shot at New Qianmen Street.

By the cornet of a dean end in a nameless alley.

A bar in the open air, you will enjoy very nice view in the street.

A hutong that is almost gone, only few people stay here.

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By the way, the daily commuters in Beijing’s subway network are…more than 5 million.

Check here for more detail.

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First step: Login into your Gmail.

Second step: Go to settings – labs – and check these 2 options – click save, then back to your Gmail.

Third step: Now at your Gmail page, you can find this icon at the left bar:

Click at the “phone number”, input your number then “Return”, it pops up something like this way:

Choose from the country list, input the name of the recipient, then here you go:

As Google says, initially, you’re granted a quota of fifty messages, with each message you sent, it decreases by one, but when they reply you (you can get their message from here as well!), your quota will increase by five, for detail please check here.

Enjoy it for now!

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Last week, I visited a kindergarten. The children in this kindergarten are a little different, they all have problem in hearing. The kindergarten is actually a pre-school teaching them how to properly pronounce and speak.

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From July 2nd, a ferocious heat clamped down Beijing. That was the 1st hot day in 2010, I was out in the street for a whole day, by 7:00 PM, the sky came to be like this.

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The Red Sea was very nice place of diving, if you swim some minutes away from the beach, just dive for 2 meters, you can see groups of big fishes. What a pity, I cannot take underwater pictures…

After lunch, about 4 Pm, we were on the way back to Cairo, another long distance driving about 6 hours. Next morning, we were on the way to Alexandria. The photo below was taken at the morning rush hour in a street close to our hotel.

Alexandria is a beautiful City, and it is much cooler than any of the cities we had visited in Egypt.

This is a local lunch in Alexandria.

Some street sight of Alexandria.

That is the Women Street, on the right side of the street is a cemetery, and not far from here is the Pompey’s Pillar. Both the Pillar and the Sphinx were moved here many year later after the original temple was total destroyed.  Underground the ruin, there is still a sanctuary opened for public visit.

Memphis was the old Capital of Lower Egypt, but before century, it was total destroyed by invaders, there are not much to see, as I have already put them in the first part of this Egypt tour, I just skip them here.

After the dinner, we headed directly to Cairo Airport, and after another 10 hours flying, we were back in Beijing again.

I had twice trip in Egypt just in one month, they were exactly the same route, and they were all very impressive. I bought 2 pictorial books about Egypt History, I am reading at them at the moment, as a history even longer than China, I need some more time to grasp some of their glorious past, hopefully by my next visit there, I could be more confident. For sure, I will have more chance to visit this Sun Empire in the future, but I don’t think I will make it this year anymore.

Good luck to our local guides!

View Egypt in a larger map

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Luxor or Thebes, the “world’s greatest open air museum”, was the ancient capital of Egypt. If there is a counterpart of a city in China, I would say Xi’an. Our local guide told me, any dig into the ground, you will find some antiques, private archaeological evacuation is totally forbidden!

Personally I would say Luxor is the most pretty city in Egypt, but it is also the hottest city, not only in the sense of tourists attraction, but in temperature as well, the last rain was 6 years ago.

West bank of the river Nile, A panorama view of Luxor at dawn with the King’s Valley in the background. (click for large)

Colossi of Memnon (see Wiki), they were at the entrance of Amenhotep’s Memorial Temple.  Local records indicated that singing from the twin statues could be heard in many cases, especially in the early morning. The temple behind them is nowhere to find, but as we passed by, I saw workers are digging at the ground, and many pieces of stone with carvings are unearthed.

Nor far from here, maybe just another 10 minutes by bus, we found ourselves at the entrance of the King’s Valley. Same as in the Cairo Museum, tourists are not allowed to take pictures in the valley. The valley reminds me the Ming Tombs in Beijing, in 1827 archeologist numbered them from KV1 to KV15 (KV for King’s Valley), actually all of them were robbed for many times even thousands years ago, there were no breakthrough till the KV62, the tomb of Tutan Khamun, and that was in 1922, many people related died in the next 2 years…, the latest confirmed finding was KV63 in March of 2005.

Too much of the history, under the sun, we just rushed into 3 of the tombs, if you don’t mind to pay another 100 egp, you can visit the famous Tutan Khamun, as everyone in our group heard of the story, we just headed to our next stop, the Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsu.

By the way, here you can find a panoramic photo of the King’s Valley.

At the entrance of Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut, the only one female pharaoh in the history of Egypt. The easy way of remembering her name is “Hot Chicken Soup”, thanks again to our local guide.

If you don’ t have much like us, there are two temples that you must to visit, the Luxor Temple and the Karnak Temple. The former one is smaller, huge columns are just spectacular and marvelous, interesting enough, you can find a mosque inside the temple, and by the end of the temple, traces of an early Christian church can be found at the small chambers by the end of the temple.

Karnak Temple is a very large place to visit, to see how large it is, please check my the map below. My first visit here was in the afternoon, and there were no where to hide from the sunshine, nice place to go for taking photos, but just too hot in the afternoon. My 2nd time of visiting here, was in the early morning, almost the first group to arrive, and it was much better.

The statue of Ramesses II, and his daughter and wife standing between his legs. The smaller temple at Abu Simbel were built just for her.

That is all for our trip in the upper Egypt, we are heading to the Hurghada, the summer resort city, a 30 years old city. The sun were just too much for us, we need some fresh moment in the water…

The highway leading to Hurghada, a city neighboring the Red Sea. Buses have to stop at these checking points time to time.

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Horus, the protector, was one of the oldest and most significant deities in the Ancient Egyptian religion.

To better illustrate the structure of the temple, I just made this 3D map, click for large picture. Commonly a temple was built for a single god, but the Temple of Kom Ombo is an exception. The temple can be divided into two sections, left (the eagle god) and right (the crocodile god). So far as I know, their relation is something like nephew and uncle.

For more information about here, please check Wiki.

Kom Ombo is just about 3 hours away from Aswan by cruise. The Temple is so close to the Nile river, that it was largely submerged and damaged during the flooding seasons over the years, the front yard near the bank of the Nile was totally lost.

Sandstorm is very frequent here I think, as you can see, it is just approaching when I shot the picture. As for my second time here, a terrible sandstorm even effected our schedule.

The double entrance at the Temple of Kom Ombo.

Our next stop was Edfu, a 60,000 populated town next Kom Ombo. The temple of Edfu was our destination, it is about 3-4 km away from our ship, we didn’t have bus transfer, instead we took this type of cart. A 10 minutes driving through the alleys was very interesting.

The main court inside the Temple of Edfu.

The ruins of the temple.

A shop by the bank of the river Nile.

After Edfu, we past this Esna canal lock.

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