We decided after this long trip to stay in a little nicer hotel for the end of our trip so we booked a Marriott on Zamalak Island, which is an "island" in the Nile in the middle of Cairo where a lot of the embassies are located. Luckily we were able to get there. We arrived at the train station around 7am but it wasn't clear where to get a taxi. Also we were told to only pick checkered taxis because they have meters. Otherwise you have to barter with the driver and then they sometimes will quote you a different price once you arrive. It took us probably 20-30 minutes of walking up and down this street with our (okay, my) heavy backpacks trying to get a taxi. Ugh.
Friday is the holy day of the week for Muslims so there were a lot of people up and about going to mosque. We checked into our hotel and had planned today to finally see the pyramids so I was a little worried by how smoggy it seemed. Here's some Cairo housing.
The only thing we'd coordinated ahead of time was our guide Ronda in Cairo, who a friend of Jen's had worked with on his visits to Egypt. Originally we were going to spend our first several days in Cairo and get to see the pyramids but our plans changed and pyramids got shifted to the end of the trip. A confusing part later was how much to pay her. She refused to tell us. Anyhow while we were waiting for Ronda to be ready for us, we went back to the Egyptian Museum for a little while, where we'd started our trip, to see if we could find some of the statues, artifacts, mummies that we'd heard referenced at all these temples and sites that now live at the museum. Then, finally, pyramid time.
Now there are around 140 pyramids in Egypt, the oldest located near the ancient capitol Memphis built around 2615BC. The Step Pyramid of Djoser is supposed to be in good condition (most pyramids are either crumbled rubble or still buried) and it would've been interesting to take a whole historical tour of the various pyramids evolving over time. But... we had to hire a car for the day and had Ronda with us and driving out to Memphis would've taken an hour or more, plus we were just tired by this point. So we stuck to the most famous- the pyramids at Giza on the outskirts of Cairo.
There are about nine total pyramids at Giza but three large ones (left to right): Pyramid of Khufu (the Great Pyramid) (originally 480ft now 455ft), Pyramid of Khafre (Khufu's son) (472ft), and the Pyramid of Menkaure (213ft). The others are in poor shape but the next three larger are Pyramids of the Queens, which you can see to the right of Menkaure. This pointing-pose must be the tourist-pyramid pose cause we kept seeing guides getting tourists to do this. I'm pointing at Khafre, which we went inside. This is my fav new picture.
I'd have taken off my sunglasses but it was REALLY bright out. Hot too, as you'd guess.
I got Jen to agree to do a camel ride. She was reluctant because she'd read the camels are mistreated. Probably so, they didn't look unhealthy but they definitely had whip-scars on their bums. My first time on a camel! They stand up with their back legs first, so it's a little strange to go lurching forward then lurching back. Luckily we had Ronda to bargain the price for us and we only did about a 10-minute ride. This pyramid-lookout has literally tons of camels and their owners hanging out. All around the pyramids everyone's trying to offer you a camel ride or a horse ride, or postcards.
The Pyramid of Khufu was the largest, originally 480ft but it's lost its tip. For 3800 years it was the tallest man-made structure in the world. It is the oldest and only remaining intact wonder of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World (other were Hanging Gardens at Babylon (earthquake), Statue of Zeus at Olympia (fire), Temple of Artemis at Ephesus (arson), Mausoleum of Halicarnassus (flood), Colossus of Rhodes (earthquake), Lighthouse of Alexandria (earthquake)). This pyramid was finished in 2560BC for pharaoh Khufu. There are three chambers within the pyramid and this pyramid is known to be the only with ascending and descending passages.
It consists of an estimated 2.3 million limestone blocks, each block weighing around 2 tons. Each base side is about 755ft long.
As you can see, the blocks are quite large. Apparently when Jen's parents traveled to Egypt when they were our age in the 1970s, they could actually climb the pyramids. I think it's illegal today, we didn't try it but we didn't see anyone else trying it either. There is a "trail" on Khufu's pyramid up to the "robbers' entrance."
The Pyramid of Khafre (Khufu's son) looks taller, and today actually is taller at 472ft tall. Khafre built his pyramid on ground about 33ft higher and at a steeper angle so that his pyramid appears taller than his father's, without actually dishonoring his dad by building a taller pyramid. The tip still has the limestone casing, which covered all the pyramids so they would've gleamed in the sunlight. The casing rocks were either naturally destroyed or removed by locals for new construction.
Me looking like a silly tourist.
This pyramid we paid extra to enter. Why not, we thought, even though we were told it's a little overrated. True. #1 you can't bring your camera inside so the pictures below I pulled off the internet. #2 the tunnels are quite steep and narrow. We went in Vyse's Entrance (not really sure what this diagram means) and went steeply down, then it flattens out into a very tall hallway, then steeply up.
The tunnels have wood flooring with planks to help you get traction. It must've been challenging to get in/out of this pyramid, especially hauling stuff in or out. Granted the rock probably had its own natural grooves and friction but still. #3 it is very crowded, and this is supposed to be the less crowded of the three. We were face practically in someone's butt with someone on our heels. And this is as wide as it is, so people are trying to go the other way... mmm didn't like that.
#4 it is hot and muggy inside from all the people. Feels like a sweathouse. I thought it would feel cool, even cold, like a cave. No. I was dripping with sweat. #5 once inside the chamber, it's like being in a big stone attic, with tons of other tourists. This is a bad picture but really it's just a like an attic, with a granite sarcophagus carved from one piece of rock which likely came from the quarries near Aswan more than 500 miles south.
So... really awesome to say I've been INSIDE a pyramid but the actual experience was not very pleasurable.Last but not least, the Great Sphinx. There are many sphinxes in Egypt but this is the Great one at around 240ft long, 20ft wide and 66ft high, which seemed much smaller in person than I expected. This sphinx was built by Khafre (2550BCish) and is the largest monolith statue (single piece) in the world. I sported a little note for Matt in this picture.
So we assumed Friday would be a slow day at the sites since it's the holy day of the week. But we didn't take into account that it was the day after Ramadan, which is like Thanksgiving. Ronda told us that this was the day to visit family, but also many Muslim families, after a month of fasting, seem to go on vacation, and why not Egypt. It seemed like there were more local tourists than white tourists like us. In fact there were SO many pre-teen boys just hanging out at the pyramids, especially here at the Sphinx. Ronda said the girls their age are probably home helping cook, and not let out of the family's site, but the boys are out here free-roaming. They were really irritating, kept trying to high-five us and flirt with us or offering to take our picture (for a tip I'm sure).
Anyhow it was a hot day and by the end of this excursion we picked up a falafel (the only one I had there was fast-food, maybe that's all they are, I like falafels though!), and went back to our hotel to sit by the pool. This was the first time we actually walked around in shorts and a bikini and it felt very odd after keeping covered all week. That night we went on a (unintentionally) long walk around Zamalak trying to find an internet cafe so that we could get each other's pictures (my camera kept dying, I went through about 5 packs of batteries, maybe because of the heat) and Jen really wanted to check her email. But we couldn't find the right streets and I was tired and hungry and done with the "not all who wander are lost" (which happens to be one of Jen's favorite quotes) mentality and I just wanted to sit down and relax. After about an hour of walking in the dark, muggy-hot streets with TONS of traffic whizzing by, we found the cafe, which was closed, then a good pizza restaurant.
Day 10: final day in Egypt... Cairo
Sure, it's our last day. We probably should've had a whole list of things still to see. In fact we did. We hadn't gotten around to seeing Coptic Cairo or Islamic Cairo and some mosques. But we just didn't feel like it at that point. We decided to sleep in, eat breakfast at this French-style bakery in the hotel, try to just take a taxi to one of the large markets, buy any remaining souveniurs and call it good. Ronda had written down in Arabic what to tell the taxi driver about where to take us, but where he dropped us off, we didn't see any large market. We were expecting to see buses dropping off loads of tourists and it took us a bit of wandering to find that, and it was still smaller than we expected, though it definitely picked up after the noon-time prayer.Now if you've ever seen the Disney movie "Aladdin" when Jasmine goes to the market for the first time, you'll understand our experience. There were some pretty humorous lines we heard while walking around, our favorites included You have magical eyes!,
You are late, I have been waiting here for you all my life and you only just arrive!,
Are you looking for something special? (Jen: I guess) I HAVE that! Right here, right in my shop!
Free to look! (as if it ever was not free to look)
Despite some things being cheap by American standards, it still wasn't as cheap as we'd hope. We found some awesome cheap crap but a lot of it was just that, cheap tourist junk, which frankly I'm not much of a fan of. Still, an interesting experience. I do not like having to barter though, it ends up making me feel like 1- I was being quoted an overpriced charge at first, 2- I want things cheaper than maybe they really are, 3- I feel frustrated while bartering, 4- the guy ends up agreeing but then acts all pissy like you've screwed him over. Boo. I just like paying the printed price like you do at home.
What was interesting about the market is that on one street every building is full of stalls of vendors, then the next street over is deserted.
We made our way back to our hotel and Jen wanted again to find this internet cafe, ugh. We walk all the way down there again, probably a few miles, and it's again closed but this time we can actually read the sign that says it's closed for the whole month of Ramadan. As we stood in this sorta deserted alley next to this internet cafe debating about what to do, a kind shopowner next door stepped out and offered to help us with directions. When we told her our objective, she offered to let us come inside her shop and use her own personal computer. Her shop ended up being a non-profit selling crafts by different groups (from local peasant women to orphans), which was ironic because Jen had been talking about wanting to go to just such an artshop that was listed in her guidebook but then had ended up being closed when we walked by. So we were able to do our computer business, I paid double-price for a bracelet as a thank you to the woman (I'd found a LE50 bill I still had, and since this was our last day and we didn't want to pay the conversation fee to get it back into US dollars we were trying to spend our money, and I'd picked out a bracelet I liked that didn't look too expensive and told myself that however much the woman told me the bracelet cost, if it was less than LE50 I'd give her the whole bill. It was only LE20. I should've gotten two! Oh well.)
Then we returned to the good pizza place, had some dinner and went back to our hotel to freshen up and hang out til our early AM flight. We actually had to leave our hotel around 1am to get to the airport and shockingly it was PACKED. There were people everywhere! Granted it was a Saturday night, and just after Ramadan, but it was insane how many people there were driving, walking, shooting off fireworks, all over the place at 1am. Then the airport was pretty frustrating. We were on a Delta flight but operated by some Dutch airline and there are two terminals. First we said the correct terminal (though it wasn't listed on any of our paperwork), then didn't see either airline listed on the board, then said the wrong terminal, got dropped off there, couldn't figure out where to go, were finally directed to take a tram to the correct terminal, got there and couldn't figure out how to get in. There were all these lines of people for different airlines, as if you're going through security just to get in the building. Then over the next 18hrs or so flying home we went through security about five times. Annoying.
We awoke in Amsterdam and had a brief layover there where we got breakfast. I love having spent almost two weeks using Egyptian pounds, then getting to the Netherlands and everything is in the Euro and I have no idea what the exchange rate is but it didn't matter cause they took MasterCard. Sure, I'll buy this pastry for breakfast, might end up costing me $10 but I really have no idea. Then we had to part ways, her flights took her to the East Coast, mine took me to the West Coast :(
And just as suddenly as it all seemed to begin, it ended, and I was back in Bend Oregon with the Cascades being picked up at the airport by mom. Now a world traveler.
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