Memphis, Saqqara & Aswan Egypt For my last afternoon in Cairo I decided to squeeze in a visit to the ancient sites of Memphis and Saqqara located about 30 miles south of the city. Memphis was one of the great cities of the ancient world but has now all but disappeared from centuries of pillaging and floods. It’s a fairly unimpressive site with only a few significant monuments and statues of Ramses II. Nearby at Saqqara is the Step pyramid built for Zoser. The step pyramid is significant because it is Egypt’s (and the worlds) first stone monument. At most of [View Full Entry]

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On my second day in Cairo, I awoke early to check off the Egyptian Museum (sorry, no cameras allowed) from my tourist “list de-jour”. . I arrived promptly at 8:30am, just ahead of the tour bus masses that descended on the museum grounds right behind me. An “official” museum guide named Mohammed was nice enough to separate me from two-hundred Egyptian Dollars (about $40 U.S.) and provided me with an informative if robotic like tour of the major highlights. Touristy sites are not really my gig, but the Egyptian Museum did not disappoint and was well worth the time and [View Full Entry]

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After a long and tiring journey, I've arrived in Cairo, Egypt. This is a city alive and bustling with sights, smells and noises which cannot be adequately captured in pictures. Arriving at the airport I was greeted with the chaotic scene of local guides, taxi drivers and other miscellaneous vultures looking to draw first tourist blood. Luckily, my hotel arranged to send me a driver who I somehow spotted in the masses, holding my personalized greeter sign….sweet, I had arrived! En-route to the hotel, one quickly learns that the traffic lanes are mere suggestions; driving in Cairo can [View Full Entry]

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