Jenyfer Matthews

There is an area of Kentucky only a few hours away from where I am currently staying that apparently has the world’s longest known cave system, with more than 390 miles explored. I’m always up for seeing something interesting so I packed up the children and set off for some weekend fun.

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Our first stop was Mammoth Cave National Park. They have big caves and several tour options, so it seemed like a natural place to start. TIP: if you should decide to visit the park yourself, book your preferred tour online. We arrived just before noon and most of the best tours were already sold out. Since we were there, we did a self led tour which was just the ticket to whet our appetites for seeing more.

I’ve never had any reason to visit Kentucky and have never given it much thought except as a place I need to pass through to get to some place else. It really is a beautiful area.

Mammoth Cave is so called because it has a really large central chamber – the scale of which is hard to appreciate in this picture. As it turns out, it is only the sixth largest chamber of caves in the area. We didn’t see the others but I was pretty impressed by this one so I can only imagine that the other would be more impressive yet.

Apparently the cave was mined for salt peter during the Revolutionary War to use in the production of gun powder. Interesting!

Seeing the cave at the park only whet our appetite to see more so we headed off next to see Diamond Caverns.

It’s hard to appreciate the beauty of the caves in photographs – things looked so much different with and without a flash.

With a flash…

And without.

Each cave has its own beauty and you can appreciate the depth and scale so much more with your own eyes – and also the cold drips from the ceiling!

The guide called this formation “cave bacon”. It reminded me a little of the alabaster pots I have in Egypt, which glow so prettily when you put a candle inside.

See the stalagmite slab cut off in the bottom left of the photo. Apparently people used to believe you could date a stalagmite as you do a tree, by counting rings. A lot of effort to cut it off to be WRONG!

There were many levels to the caves. I think the deepest under ground we went in this one was about 80ft.

There were clear rules when we entered the caves: No purses or bags, No touching the cave formations. Obviously people were not always so observant of preservation of natural wonders – note the stalagtites which are snapped off flat.

By the end of our tour of Diamond Caverns the children and I were so high on cave exploring we decided to try one more: the Lost River Cave. Long time readers might have noticed by now that I’m a bit of a sucker for adventuring, but especially adventures that involve riding animals or interesting vehicles. The Lost River cave tour is in a boat in an underground river – the only such tour in Kentucky according to their brochure. How cool is that? Unfortunately, the tour was not operating that day due to excess rain fall – the water level in the cave was too high. Disappointing, but now we have something to look forward to next time we are in the area.

All in all, a wonderful Saturday.

Wednesday: Stay Tuned for sleeping in a Wigwam.

My daughter has been asking to go bowling since we arrived back in the US, but Saturday was such a lovely day – clear blue skies and nearly 60F – that I wanted to do something outside. My friend had told me about a bicycle trail that starts a few blocks from her house and runs along the Miami River. Since she happens to have enough bicycles in the correct sizes for us, that is what we decided to do.

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I haven’t actually been on anything other than an exercise bike since college so it took me a few minutes to get back in the swing. It was a scary moment when I forgot that the brakes were on the handlebars and not the pedal!!

As you can see by the debris on both sides of the trail, the river was pretty high fairly recently. The city has a series of levees and damns to guard against flooding.

This is pretty much as much as I saw of my son for most of the ride. He was doing his best impression of Elliot from ET, jacket flapping behind him, as I did more of a Mary Poppins thing on my city cruiser bike. He was having a blast riding up ahead and then coming back to tell us what was coming next. I didn’t mind – I am always looking for ways for him to spend some of his excess energy!

As beautiful as the trail was in winter, I can’t wait to see it when the trees leaf out again.

We were enjoying ourselves so much that we rode past the first park we came to and ended up in the next neighboring city. I estimate that we rode about 16 miles round trip – though my son easily added a few miles to his own ride with all the back and forth! Coming back wasn’t quite as much fun as going because we were riding into the wind but I was motivated to get back – I had worked up quite an appetite by then!

When we came inside, I had a tall glass of water and a rest. The children? They stayed outside to play some more and did a few more laps around the block on their bikes. Oh, to be young again…

The children have the entire week off of school for the Eid holiday, the second big feast after the Ramadan season. A week plus two weekends is a significant chunk of time to have off – enough to go away somewhere, which is what most of the population of Cairo seems to have done.

I’ve been planning a trip to the beach with some family friends for a little over a month. Initially I wanted to go from Monday to Thursday both to minimize the amount of time the children would miss their tennis lessons but also to eat up as much of the week as possible. Who wants them bouncing off the walls at home all week? My friend, who was actually organizing our accommodation, arranged for us to go from Saturday to Monday. Initially I was a bit annoyed because it meant we’d return to Cairo and still have the whole week in front of us. As it turned out, it was a blessing in disguise.

Because we went a few days before the official holiday and many people actually had to work on Sunday (poor slobs!), we had the place to ourselves. Isn’t it lovely?

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We rented a two bedroom chalet in a community of holiday homes. Look at it now, serene and peaceful, and then imagine it crawling with people…

Just in case swimming in the Red Sea doesn’t appeal, there are also large pools scattered here and there – and some of the bigger homes had private pools too.

This was the beach midday on Saturday. We had the place to ourselves!

My daughter spent most of her time in the pool but we couldn’t keep our son out of the Red Sea. The beach was rocky, as was the sea floor. He spent a lot of time face down in the water looking at the pretty fish. His reports were so enthusiastic that I actually decided to give it a try in spite of lack of a snorkel.

It was surprising how buoyant the salty water makes you – floating on the top was nearly effortless. Holding my breath wasn’t nearly so easy, but hey – salt water is a great nasal rinse, right? At first all I saw were rocks, but then suddenly there were fish everywhere. I didn’t see so many colorful ones as my son – he told me there were more closer to the dock. I was reluctant to go there at that time because there were some fishermen there and I did not wish to be their catch of the day. My plan was to go back the following day and launch myself off the end of the dock. The bottom was so rocky that it was incredibly hard to just walk in from the shore.

My plans for swimming on our last day were thwarted by wind. Not only was the water a bit too rough for snorkeling, but the wind was cold! (To me!) It had been difficult enough to get out of the water the day before – I knew I’d have turned into a popsicle getting out into that strong wind.

It didn’t put my children off however – we found a sandier bit of beach and they rode the waves in their inner-tubes!

More people started arriving on our last day at the chalet. Soon, we saw lots more scenes like this.

The beach was huge and we still had lots of space to ourselves, but it’s amazing how quickly you become spoiled. I was very happy to be packing up to leave because even those few people were disturbing “my” peace and more and more cars kept arriving.

We left in the evening on Monday, just after dark. Next post: the dangers of night driving in Egypt.

I’m going on a group tour this weekend to a place called Wissa Wassef Art Center and I’m pretty excited. Pottery and tapestry, two crafts so close to my heart, in one place?? I don’t think my husband truly appreciates how dangerous a trip like this might be to our bank account! I have several embroidered pieces already and the only reason I have as many as I do is because he wasn’t with me when I bought them (sshh!!)

Last weekend a friend of mine invited me along on a trip she had planned to go and see a Lego exhibit she’d heard about at the Egyptian Museum. Lego at the Museum? I joked that what were they going to do, build a pyramid out of Lego? The sphinx?

We first went into the main museum building, thinking that perhaps this would be a temporary display set up in a gallery somewhere. Much to my surprise, the museum was absolutely packed. The last time I visited, it was December 2003 when I was visiting Egypt as a tourist. I don’t know if it was because it was a weekday, it was raining, or because it was Ramadan, but the place was a whole lot calmer the last time I was there. Much more museum like. Yesterday it was more like Walmart two days before Christmas. (nightmare!) I had to pick my seven year old son up so that he could see some of King Tut’s treasure because the crowd was so thick that short people had no chance. When we didn’t see any Lego, we quickly made our way back to the entrance and the information desk.

Turns out that there is a new Children’s Museum around the backside of the main museum. At least I surmise it is new because it was empty – we had the whole place to ourselves. Such a treat after having escaped the crowd! And would you believe the first thing we saw as we walked in was a sphinx made out of Lego??

I didn’t have my camera with me but fortunately my friend was able to take a few shots with her Blackberry. It was truly amazing what they were able to do with Lego.

There was King Tut’s mask, mummies, seated statues, mosaic pictures – even a model of the workers building the pyramids all done in Lego! All these things were mixed in with other actual antiquities, plus there was a Lego play area so the children could construct their own exhibits. The children spent a happy hour there. The only thing that would have made it a happier place for the parents was a couch and a coffee bar

I’m really glad that we found it when we did because I imagine that when word gets out, it’s going to be just as crowded at the main museum is – no place like that will remain undiscovered for long!

I’m not sure what it is about mother-daughter relationships that can be so difficult at times. Maybe it’s all the hormones flying around. Maybe it’s understanding each other a little too well. Maybe it’s that my daughter is a nut.

First of all, she’s seven going on thirty. You know the kid at school who teaches all the other kids the rude gestures and words? The one that tells anyone who will listen all she knows about sex (which isn’t much) That’s my girl!

And believe it or not, she didn’t get it from me. Well, not all of it.

That stuff I can roll my eyes and live with. The thing about my daughter that drives me batty is her gender identity crisis. She does her level best to act and dress like a boy at all times.

Outside of school (god bless uniforms!) she lives in nylon soccer shorts or sweats and loose tshirts. She won’t wear anything that’s the least bit fitted, nothing with a v-neck, nothing with glitter or sparkles or anything in any shade of pink or purple. I can’t tell you how many perfectly good clothes I’ve ended up giving away because she flat out rejects them. I recently put a moratorium on anyone buying her new clothes because it’s a waste of time and money.

I can’t reason with her. I’ve tried pointing out that I’m not a girly-girly either. I prefer jeans to skirts and red to pink myself. And yet, no one has ever mistaken me for a boy. She’s even complimented me on my clothes from time to time but does she follow my lead? Nope.

She has lovely chestnut hair that she refuses to let me style. She barely tolerates my brushing it. I took her to the barber and cut it in a short boy style once, in a fit of frustration. I loved it because I could finally see her lovely cheeks and beautiful smile. But everyone thought she was a boy so now we’re growing it out again. The irony is that many boys we know are also growing their hair out so she blends right in.

You know, I could live with her dressing like a boy if that was the extent of it. The ironic thing is, whether she realizes it or not, she’s excruciatingly girly in other ways. She agonizes over what to wear days in advance of an event. She rejects everything in her closet and weeps because she has “nothing” to wear. She loves shopping for shoes.

Hmmm…maybe there is hope for her yet…