I met my group on Saturday night before we head off on a day tour of Cairo the following day. The group was tiny – 5 plus myself (all Australian bar one Swiss) and our British tour leader Cheryl, which was an ideal number – and we set off the next morning to Giza and the Pyramids.
They were amazing, smaller than I would have expected, but still in such good condition after 4600 years. The Great Pyramid of Khufu is the largest of the Pyramids of anicent Egypt, and with 2.5 million stones, set only 3mins off true north and only 0.06 per cent of a perfect square is to date the biggest, most perfectly constructed and greatest building ever built by mankind.
We couldn’t actually go into the Great Pyramid, they only let a few visitors in each day, but we also saw the other two pyramids at the site, Khafre and the smallest, Menkaure, and while most of the group went into the pyramid of Khafre I walked around, marvelled at the anicent wonders and tried not to get sold into anything dubious by 10-year-old boys (‘you just look, I give you this gift for free, you give me gift in return no problem, where you from?’)
From there we drove down the road, the city skyline in the background, to see the Sphinx – again smaller than I would have expected (‘they take the postcard shots up close,’ our guide joked) but no less tunning at 240 feet long and 66 feet high.
A quick visit to a store to see how they made papyrus paper, then a quick felafel for lunch, and we arrived at the Egyptian museum. I know I had already been once, but it made much more sense with guided explanations, and it happened to be less crowded too so I ended up seeing more anyway. Apparently the dissarray of the artifacts is partly due to the new museum being built out near the pyramids at Giza, which should be finished in another few years (if ever, we are talking Egyptian time here).
Once we were thoroughly exhausted from our day tour of Cairo, we took some time to stock up on snacks at the supermarket, before dinner at an Egyptian restaurant and a quick bus ride to the train station where we caught an overnight train to Aswan.
The seats were comfortable enough – similar to first class aeroplane seats – but I am not one for sleeping in moving vehicles, so it was a long night. Also, being Egypt, the ’12-hour’ journey took 17 hours, so we didn’t end up arriving in Aswan until 3pm the following afternoon. I was so tired I don’t even actually remember getting off the train or checking into the hotel. It was a long night, but at least we arrived. Eventually.
-Sarah
Sarah