Cairo

After Christmas, David and I decided to escape the cold and spend some time soaking up the sun in Egypt.  I have always wanted to visit Egypt.  I was obsessed with Egyptology, and Cleopatra especially, when I was younger.  I used to dress up like her for Halloween and my favorite book was, and still is, The Memoirs of Cleopatra by Margaret George.  One of the advantages of living in London is that a trip of a lifetime like this was easily achievable.   

We spent Christmas and Boxing Day in London, and then headed out to Heathrow on Sunday night.  The airport was still really crowded due to the chaos the snow caused earlier that week, but our flight left on time.  5 hours later, we landed at Cairo airport.  It was 1:00 AM when we landed, but it was still about 70 degrees outside.  It was glorious!  We quickly found a taxi who swore he was a “safe driver” and headed downtown to our hotel, the Intercontinental Semiramis.  

It turns out being a “safe” driver meant being a slow driver.  We expected the driving in Egypt to be crazy, but we thought Rome-crazy.  No.  We were totally unprepared for the Cairo traffic experience.  There are very few lanes in Cairo, and the ones that do exist are simply for decoration.  Cars are constantly weaving between each other.  Instead of signaling or braking, the Egyptians use their horns to warn other drivers they are coming.  Apparently the government tried to install traffic signals a few years ago, but they were causing even more accidents because some people obeyed them and some didn’t.  So now the ones that are left just blink yellow and mean nothing.  If a pedestrian tries to cross the street, they are putting their life in danger.  People on motorbikes use hard hats instead of helmets.  There is no such thing as car seats, so babies ride in the front seat on their mama’s laps.  On top of it all, drivers share the roads with donkey carts.  It was unreal.  Before our trip, we arranged private tours in Cairo and Luxor with Memphis Tour Company.  As part of our package, we were transported between sites in a car by a professional driver.  It was still dangerous, but at least the car was a modern, air-conditioned vehicle with seatbelts.  Egypt is consistently ranked toward the top of the list for highest vehicle-related fatalities every year.  Unfortunately, without some kind of funding and driver’s education programs, the problem will continue.

One of the other surprising things about Egypt was the security.  We expected some kind of security due to recent terrorist attacks in the country, but it was still unnerving to be searched and scanned upon entering any tourist site or hotel.  For example, before a car can enter the premises of the Intercontinental, its trunk must be searched by armed guards.  A bomb-sniffing dog also circles the vehicle before it’s given the okay to pass through the barrier.  When we arrived, our suitcases were sent through a scanner (just like at the airport).  My bag did not pass the x-ray inspection because apparently my hair curlers too closely resemble pipe bombs.  I tried to explain to the security officer that I just use them in my hair, but he looked even more confused and less convinced.  So I had to take them out of my bag to be better examined.  David and I also had to walk through a metal detector every time we entered the hotel.  And my purse was searched every single time as well.  

Once we got the all clear on Sunday night and finished our check-in, we went straight to bed because our tour started at 9 AM the next morning.

After just a few hours of sleep, we met up with our guide in Cairo, Ahmed.  We managed our way through the morning traffic and arrived at the Giza plateau, home to the pyramids and the Sphinx.  David had a lot of fun with his new Flip on this trip, so we’ll let the videos do the explaining.

Ahmed let us have about 30 minutes to explore the area ourselves, but we didn’t like being left alone because that’s when the vultures descended on us.  I felt like we were back at Chichen Itza in Mexico because there were so many vendors trying to sell us crap around the pyramids.  It took away from the overall experience of being able to just stand there and marvel at something amazing.  One tip when going to Egypt, never give your camera to an Egyptian.  If you give your camera to an Egyptian to take a picture, he won’t give it back to you until you’ve given him a lot of money.  Ahmed warned us of this and we saw plenty of tourists getting scammed.  You can’t even trust the children on fieldtrips.  The boys will try to earn a buck by taking your picture when the teachers aren’t paying attention.  We got sick of this fast, but tried not to let it ruin any of our experiences. We tried to focus on the fact that we were in Egypt.
  
After we found Ahmed and begged him not to leave us alone ever again, we bought tickets to enter the third pyramid.  All three pyramids are still open, but very few visitors are allowed inside the first two.  All of the pyramids were plundered, so nothing remains inside them, but it was still neat to actually go inside and see the pharoah’s ancient burial chambers.  It was not for the faint of heart, though.  The passageway is pretty steep and enclosed.  They also allow a lot of people inside at once, so it can get claustrophobic and hot!  Unfortunately cameras are not allowed inside.   

After seeing the inside of the pyramid of Menkaure, we headed further out into the Sahara desert to take a camel ride.  We were expecting the camels to be smelly and gross and spit, but they weren’t that smelly and I didn’t see any of them spit.  They were kind of mangy though, and very temperamental.  Casanova and Charlie Brown kept fighting when we were trying to take a picture.  

After our camel ride, we drove back around the pyramids to end our morning at the Sphinx.  The Nile used to flow right up to the temple in front of the Sphinx where the bodies were actually mummified.  It’s amazing how much the course of this river has changed over time.  The Nile flows nowhere near the Sphinx these days.

We were supposed to have lunch at the Hard Rock Café because the food there is safe to eat and I was trying my hardest not to get Tutankhamen’s Revenge (also known as Montezuma’s Revenge in Mexico).  However, Ahmed knew of a good local seafood place overlooking the pyramids so we ate there instead.  Usually I like to try new things and eat at great local restaurants when travelling, but we were boring on this trip for a number of different reasons:  Middle Eastern food is not my favorite, we didn’t feel comfortable walking around Cairo playing Frogger with the cars, English wasn’t as common as we thought it’d be so we may not have known what we were eating, and getting either food poisoning or worse because of unclean water was a real concern.  David did order lots of falafel at the hotel though.  He had it almost every morning for breakfast.

After lunch we drove back into Cairo to the Egyptian Museum.  We were also very lucky to have Ahmed with us here.  There are no audio guides in the museum and very little descriptions around the artifacts, so most tourists had guides leading them through each area.  There are about 120,000 different pieces of history inside the museum.  The crazy part is that in the basement, there are supposedly another 150,000 artifacts that are either too valuable to put on display or have yet to be identified.  Some of these items are lying around the courtyard and parking area.  These are priceless relics that any other museum would kill for, but here they are ignored and discarded because Egypt is full of so many treasures.  One of the most popular areas of the museum is the King Tut exhibit.  King Tutankhamen was not a famous or great ruler, but he’s famous today because his tomb was uncovered completely intact with thousands of treasures still inside.  We saw his death mask, thrones, canes, beds, and many other things inside this section of the museum.  The other section we liked a lot was the animal mummy area.  The Egyptians mummified everything from cats and dogs to monkeys and crocodiles, even baby crocodiles.  No cameras were allowed here either. :(

After a full day of site-seeing, we headed back to Giza for a sound and light show.  This was super-cheesy, but it was worth it to see the Sphinx and pyramids at night. 

Ahmed knew we would be exhausted from our flight, lack of sleep, and lots of site-seeing, so he scheduled our pickup on Tuesday morning at 10:30.  So we enjoyed a leisurely breakfast on our balcony.

We headed to the Citadel then, built in the 1100s by Egyptian ruler Saladin to protect the Muslim capital from Crusaders (but Cairo was never targeted during the Crusades so this was kind of unnecessary).  Mohammed Ali, considered the founder of modern Egypt, built a mosque inside the Citadel modeled on the Blue Mosque in Istanbul just a couple of hundred years ago.  Almost all of its decoration is Turkish, not Egyptian.

 

Ahmed is Muslim (along with over 85% of the people in Egypt) so while inside the mosque, we sat and listened to him explain some of the foundations of Islam to us.  It was really interesting and we learned a lot.  For example, Muslims have some of the same prophets as Christians and much of the Koran contains stories from the Bible.  After our short lesson on Islam, we walked around the Citadel and enjoyed the views of the city.  Then we headed to Coptic Cairo, the Christian area of the city.

After Jesus was born, Mary and Joseph fled with the baby to Egypt to escape King Herod’s wrath.  The area where they sought shelter in Cairo is now the oldest part of Cairo, known as Coptic Cairo.  The exact place where they lived is known as the crypt because it’s now buried underground beneath the Roman fortress of Babylon.  Because of recent tensions in Egypt between the Christians and Muslims, the area is completely sealed off with very strict security.  After getting through the barricade, we had to walk down a flight of stairs to the Coptic streets.  The crypt is buried underneath a church called Church of St. Sergius and St. Bacchus.  To get to the church, we had to descend even further, and then there is another flight of stairs down into the cave where the holy family stayed.  Just like in Vienna, we were amazed at how far down we had to go to get to this room because buildings become neglected and forgotten and cities are built over them.

Roman Babylon wall above Coptic crypt

Mosaic of Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus walking along

the Nile with the pyramids in the background

The second church we visited was the Greek Orthodox church of St. George, where Ahmed explained that Coptics have their own pope separate from the pope at the Vatican.  The Coptic pope is Shenouda III, who lives in the Egyptian desert near Alexandria.  Here, David and I explained to Ahmed that we’re technically Protestant, so we don’t have a holy leader of our church like a pope.  Ahmed had never met any Protestants before, as far as he knew, so he asked us a lot of questions.  He was amazed that we didn’t pray to saints or use rosary beads or go to confession.  He assumed all Christians did these things.  I was happy to teach Ahmed something new after everything he’d taught us over the past couple of days!

The last church we visited was the Hanging Church, aptly named because it was literally built on top of the Roman fortress, so it has no foundation.  It was beautiful, and my favorite church in Coptic Cairo.  It was so clean and quiet inside the courtyard and church, which made it really peaceful.

Courtyard of the Hanging Church

Before we left Coptic Cairo, we stopped at the Ben Ezra synagogue.  There are very few Jews left in Egypt as most of them moved to Israel 60 years ago, so this synagogue is no longer in use.  We did rest inside for about half an hour, though, and talk about the stories of Moses and Joseph, the Old Testament prophets whose stories focus around Egypt.

After we left Coptic Cairo we had lunch at another local restaurant and then headed to the Khan al-Khalili bazaar to go shopping.  David and I aren’t the biggest fans of bargaining, though, so we told Ahmed we wanted to see the market, but we only wanted to spend about half an hour there.  It actually wasn’t that bad and we weren’t hassled as much as we thought we’d be, though Ahmed did tell me I needed to cover my shoulders before I entered the bazaar to avoid being chastised by the men.  We only made one purchase and that was at a spice shop.  We bought some dried hibiscus leaves to make hibiscus tea.  We also bought some saffron threads and vanilla beans, which are really, really expensive in both the states and the UK.  But of course they were really cheap in Egypt!  And they smelled delicious!

We ended our time in Cairo on a Nile dinner cruise.  There was a buffet of Egyptian food, and then entertainment.  We were expecting a belly dancer, so when navel-bearing male dancers showed up, David wondered just what kind of cruise I’d signed us up for.  

It felt like we were at Chippendales for a second there.  But the guys were just the backup dancers for the belly dancer.  David was a little uncomfortable because he wasn’t sure where he was supposed to look during the belly dancing, but then came the Whirling Dervish.

He spun and spun and spun.

And spun some more.

We got dizzy just watching him.    

It was a fun cruise with good food and great entertainment.  The party animals we are, we headed back to the hotel after the cruise and turned in early because the next day, we headed down the Nile to Luxor, the ancient capital city of Thebes.