In all the excitement over the last few days, we forgot to mention that we left June 26th for Egypt and Jordan, where we will be spending the next two weeks.
We are traveling with my mother and brother on a trip organized by our good friends Scott and Laura. Laura and her daughter Aubrey are here along with another 15 people or so. I generally hate “group tours,” but Scott and Laura have consistently arranged good trips in the past (Galapagos, Cayman Brac, Australia) so we decided to come along.
Since we weren’t able to get online to post yesterday, here are two days in a row:
Egypt – Day 1 – Cairo
Our flight here was fairly smooth and took 10 hours, though there was a screaming baby nearby. Upon landing in Cairo, we were greeted by +100ºF heat and a painfully long wait for our luggage.
Our guide for the next few days, Manal, greeted us at the airport and she immediately whisked us away to the Citadel of Salah al-Din, a landmark mosque in honor of Muhammad Ali (not the boxer). The mosque itself was beautiful, with high, circular ceilings and intricate decoration.
After about an hour, we were brought to the Egyptian Museum, home of many of the famous mummies and artifacts from the tombs of the pharaohs. We spent about two hours walking through the overcrowded, under-climate-controlled building, which was at once awe inspiring and discouraging. The artifacts housed there are often over 4,000 years old, but they show many signs of mistreatment and poor storage conditions, including some sarcophaguses completely exposed to the public in high-traffic areas where they can be and are touched, defaced and destroyed.
Though the museum was stunning, everyone in our group was hot and exhausted, so we went to our hotel, the Marriott Cairo Hotel & Omar Khayyam Casino, around 5:30 p.m. and had a group dinner before checking into our rooms. I generally am not impressed by lentil soup, but we had some at the hotel that was incredibly good. Now that we have a chance to relax and prepare for an early bedtime, here are some first impressions of Cairo:
- It’s really hot.
- Most of this city is a slum.
- Many of the relics and ancient monuments in this historic city have been mistreated in one way or another and are covered in garbage.
- Tourists have no respect for other cultures – particularly regarding conservative dress for women.
- Egyptians are always in a hurry and will shove you around to get where they want to go.
- Every tourist attraction has dozens of people shoving cheap garbage in your face when you try to leave.
- Group tours are pretty much the exact opposite of what I enjoy in a vacation.
Tomorrow, we are going to wake up early and take the obligatory tour of the Pyramids at Giza and the Sphinx along with some other sightseeing. It will be hot and “orchestrated,” but I’m sure we’ll have a great time.
Egypt – Day 2 – Cairo
We woke up around 7 a.m. feeling remarkably rested after a solid 10 hours of sleep. After a large breakfast buffet, we piled into our bus at 8:30 a.m. and began our day with a trip to the ancient city of Memphis, the first capital of a unified Egypt. There were more booths filled with trinkets sold by pushy men than there were artifacts of the ancient civilization, but the standout pieces of sculpture were quite impressive.
Our next stop was Saqqara, home of some of the oldest pyramids in the world. We were able to examine the intricate wall detailing in one of the tombs and go beneath a pyramid so old it resembled little more than a pile of sand and rock.
From there, we were taken to a rug-making school, where young students assembled intricate rugs that, when finished, would be sold on the next floor up for a LOT of money. One rug that Julia liked (and was maybe 2′x3′) was $1,300 – after haggling.
Since we had a very busy schedule (are group tours ever any other way?), we grabbed lunch from a restaurant in Giza before visiting the famous pyramids nearby. We spent some time exporing them from the outside to gain a sense of perspective (they are huge) before some of the group went into one of the pyramids while others relaxed in the bus. I went for a walk to find a better angle for a photo and quickly found myself approached by numerous men on camels and horses offering to give me a good price on a ride. After our group explored the pyramids, we went to a spot overlooking the pyramids where we took some photos and most of us rode camels. The kid leading my camel around couldn’t have been more than 10 years old and kept asking me if I wanted him to take my picture. “Sentimental.”
We visited the nearby Great Sphinx afterward, which was unfortunately entirely backlit, making photography miserable. By the time we left, everyone was extremely hot and tired, so we went to a restaurant housed on a boat on the Nile before returning to the hotel. Theoretically, we should have been able to go to sleep relatively early, but I insist (sometimes to my own detriment) on adjusting photos and (when possible) posting on the same day, so I am still awake at after 2 a.m. trying to finish this stuff. Julia went to bed a while ago, which is good.
Here are a few more thoughts on Cairo:
- Julia is tall and blond. Needless to say, she gets borderline harassed. A lot.
- Let me elaborate on why I say this place is a slum.
- There is raw sewage being pumped directly into the Nile and its tributaries.
- There are landfill-caliber piles of garbage, including dead animals, all over the place – the street, the riverbanks, empty lots and even at landmarks like Memphis and the pyramids.
- Many buildings either are or appear to be unfinished, giving large swaths of Cairo the appearance of a housing project.
- It’s really hot and it’s not a “dry heat”. It’s just humid enough to make the dust that hangs in the air stick to my skin.
- It’s unbelievable to me that people are allowed to do some of the things they do in and around sites like the pyramids. If you ask me, it should be illegal to even touch them at this point, but people are constantly climbing all over them, writing on them, etching things into them, taking souvenirs, and so on.
Tomorrow, the group is headed for Alexandria. My mom and I are considering staying behind and doing our own thing (Julia may join us as well), but we won’t know for sure until breakfast.
Here are photos from the last two days. Click “there’s more to…” to see them all or visit my SmugMug.
Julia at the pyramids.