When in Egypt

Musings on a very dry vacation.

I’ve been offline for quite some time, and while I’m sure you didn’t wonder where I’d gone, I’ll tell you anyway: We took a big vacation to Egypt!

I wasn’t going to say anything here about the vacation, but I haven’t been able to write anything else as I play catch up. And I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. And since so many maybe four of you have asked me how it was, Sure! I’ll spill:

Our itinerary landed us in Cairo about 48 hours before Israel bombed Iran. Nice! We did the pyramids and the Grand Egyptian Museum, then bounced deep (deeeeeeep) into the Black and White Deserts before rounding back to Luxor and finally Hurghada on the Red Sea… all told some 1,800km of driving (over 1,100 miles) before another flight back to a seven-hour layover in the destitute holding pen of the Cairo Airport at the exact moment that Trump decided it would be a good idea to bomb Iran.

The trip was incredible. Culturally and historically rich beyond compare…

Pyramids and temples and tombs, oh my!

Also (heyoooo…): veils and armed guards and no wine anywhere. OH MY.

You read that right. For the majority of the trip, we had machine-gun-armed POLICE ESCORTS and ZERO BOOZE.

This was… (nervous laugh) unexpected. Yes I am ignorant, and no I did not do my research before we left—which is honestly wholly unlike me, but I was busy and also excited by the idea that I’d indulged and, all fancy-pants-like, hired an agency for the first time in my life to coordinate the trip for us. They set up everything! I told them our budget and where we wanted to go and what style of travelers we are (“eco-luxe adventurers, huge foodies and wine professionals, excited by off-the-beaten-path insights into local culture”). Apparently I did not emphasize quite clearly enough the professional alcohol-consumers part.

The agency was wonderful, but they failed to alert me to the fact that 95% of Egyptians identify as Muslim, and that the constitution designates Islam as the state religion. Which means that alcohol is forbidden, which means that it is straight-up NOT available generally outside of hotels. Which is unfortunate when you are a legitimate wine professional but also you are on vacation and you would like a small glass of crisp white wine or cold beer here or there. When it is 120°F. And when you’re a blond woman in colorful clothing (even the scarves I brought to cover my hair, shoulders, chest and arms were scandalously orange and green, hot pink and yellow). And when you have armed guards escorting you literally everywhere you go, waiting patiently outside the bathroom that you had to pay to use seven or eight times daily because you drank too much of their tannic hot tea with mint!!

Welcome to Egypt. When in Rome…

It turns out (as I learned after several days of police escorts), tourists don’t really go to the desert. But because I was so set on seeing the fascinating spires of calcium and Crystal Mountain and the Great Sand Sea, our agency made my dream come true… and that dream comes along with a courtesy Egyptian National Police convoy. Because apparently one time 13 years ago some tourists got kidnapped in the desert, and the last thing anybody needs right now is another American national security fiasco.

So I was pretty thirsty most of the trip.

Mostly, I questioned my desire for a drink. I contemplated what it meant about me that I was so bummed out to be sipping only bottled water with dinner, or an occasional Pepsi through a flourescent twisty straw at lunch. I asked myself why I was so thirsty for a salty Assyrtiko to pair with ta’ameya (it’s Egyptian falafel, and it’s really more of a breakfast food, but breakfast Assyrtiko sounds like a fantastic plan), or a chilled Gamay to wash down lamb hawawshi, or a smoky St. Joseph for mesaka’a and mombar. By day 3 in the desert, I’d also honestly have taken even a skunky beer… anything to cut through the hot dusty haze and assuage the perturbing sticky energy of the armed guards we nicknamed Shadow 1 and Shadow 2. Plus, a beer felt like a basic right of vacation.

Alas, what I perceive as basic rights are, of course, different outside of my comfortable California bubble. Customs and rituals and taken-for-granteds are not customary or automatically granted or even in the realm of consideration in wholly different countries. And no matter how much money we kept saying the Egyptians could make off of millions of thirsty tourists, our guide patiently explained to us that, in Islam, they believe the evils of alcohol are greater than the potential benefits.

There were a lot of things that bent my mind in Egypt.

On one of our last nights, in the tourist town of Hurghada on the Red Sea, we decided an all-you-can-eat buffet of “Intercontinental Cuisine” accompanied by a wine list was, by that point, preferable to another night venturing to a local (dry) restaurant. Besides, at the hotel, I could safely wear a tank top and shorts. I was so sweaty. We reviewed the wine list consisting of 12 total selections. Here are all of the wines available in total in Egypt: https://www.drinkies.net/Products?Id=a0C0Y00000XYRzWUAX&lang=

We turned down the highly recommended Grand Marquis Sweet Red in favor of the Chateau de Granville—with an ice bucket min fadlik!—and it arrived, a cool room temp (right around 85°F)—perfectly cooked as can be. And because there is no way to explain that politely to a server who does not drink and does not understand what you mean, I simply smiled, drank it, enjoyed my buffet treasure of Greek salad, duck a l’orange, spaetzle and honey carrots and tiramisu, and decided I really didn’t need any more wine for a while.

I am really the most privileged princess, I realized, time and time and time again in Egypt. All of my prissy desires for sound, balanced wines or even cold beers are… extra. And, back in the U.S., all of these currently perceived threats to my autonomy and my body and my economy and security and democracy are significant, yes… but perspective is really everything. And the long view of history, told by the ancient hieroglyphics written over and over on all those temples and tombs, promises none of these “unprecedented” occurrences are the first of their kind, nor will they certainly be the last.

When I finally got home and uncorked a cold bottle of Etna Rosato (talk about prissy extra), WOW. It tasted better than ever. And I gave tremendous thanks for all my blessings.

---

This is a bottle of white we were able to enjoy at room temp at dinner in a tent one night. I messed up the “profile” photo setting and accidentally focused not on the bottle but on the man in the back who told me he’d come find me back in my tent later…