The Great Pyramids

This trip was expected to be a very big and full day…..here’s the plan: plane to Cairo, private tour of the pyramids, sphinx, lunch on the Nile, Museum of antiquities and finally the famous bazaar of Cairo…oh don’t forget fly back and drive to the hotel; see I told you it was full. Cairo is a city like none that we’ve ever seen. There are 20 million people in this city…..wow! Do you realize that's over two New York Cities combined! The outskirts of the city looked extremely poor, yet there were some very NICE cars rolling along next to our little tour bus. It was hard to imagine what life was like for the average person…..
Our first glimpses of the great pyramids of Giza were amazing; it was weird to see these structures as a “normal” part of the skyline and because of the size of Cairo, the city is built right up to these structures. By the time we reached the pyramids they didn’t seem real and then when you’re standing in front of them you can’t believe what you are seeing; you really can’t appreciate the enormity, the engineering and the complexity of the pyramids until you see them in person. Our tour guide hooked us up with a camel tour down and around the pyramids and gave us our first experience with the Egyptian culture of “haggling”, in this case it was certainly just for show and I think we got taken advantage of (at least a little, but it wasn’t more than we were willing to spend).

A very very bumpy ride!

The unfortunate part of this excursion is we had a lot of area to cover in a very short amount of time so there wasn’t time to just sit and take in the sights and the feeling of what we just looked at and it couldn’t sink in. The same was true for each stop, but we managed to take in as much as we could.  Even Chaplain and Bun (Ellie's bear and Ry's bunnie) missed their photo shoot in front of the pyramids and had to settle for a picture from the window of the tour bus as we zoomed by the pyrmaids.

The museum was by far the next favorite stop; we only had two hours and trust me that is only enough time to scratch the surface of this place. It’s filled with artifacts from King Tutankhamen tomb, statues….we’re talking BIG stone statues of Ramses, Anubis to just name a few of them. Actual sarcophaguses of the many mummies (we could touch these), toys, the first ever portable camping bed (it actually had hinges and could fold up). Some weird/eerie things we saw was the embalming table; it was made of stone, sloped and shaped just right to “catch” all the fluids; when you’re standing in front of it (being able to touch it) and thinking what actually took place on these (these aren’t replicas) it just felt a little creepy. Oh, and the alabaster jars that held the organs of the dead with the blood still present on the lips and running down the side of the jars and then of course there are the mummies. I don’t know, there is something just not right about how these things look, although very, very, very fascinating it was just “weird”. Looking at the artifacts, you really wouldn’t have believed the ingenuity, artistry and skill of the people of this time. These people were truly an advanced civilization that surpasses a lot of places in the world today. The experience left us with many more questions than we were able to find answers.

The shopping was, well, interesting…..there is no easy way to explain this processes, if you know the opening scene of Disney's Aladin it really was just like that at times (we were just waiting for them to try and sell us sand).  In the end the girls each bought a gold Egyptian kartoosh with their names written in hieroglyphics. We bought a papyrus painting of something (I can’t remember what….but it’s cool), authentic Egyptian scarves and a blouse as well as few alabaster vases, bowls and candle lights.
The trip was overwhelming with sights, sounds and adventure and it ended way before we were ready. We hope to return someday and if we do, we will spend a minimum of two days, but hopefully closer to four in order to capture all the amazing things we saw.