The Amazing Race-ish

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Today we checked out of our amazing, lovely, Mena House Hotel in Cairo for a day of sight-seeing around Caro and then journeying on by plane to Aswan.

We all boarded the bus and headed to Saqqara first. The main point here was to visit Zoser's Pyramid which was apparently the oldest known pyramid that has been found. It was apparently once the center of a huge complex with temples and other stuff including a very large courtyard where they had some kind of ceremony to show the strength of the king. I don't really remember what it was, but I'm sure it was quite impressive.

Anywho, our first stop was at the Imhotep Museum. Imhotep was apparently the chief architect of Zoser's pyramid and later became a god of sorts associated with knowledgeable and architecty things. They had quite an impressive assortment of artifacts.

From here I beleive we went on to see a couple of tombs and Titi's pyramid. We actually were able to go inside Titi's pyramid. It was very narrow and dark and the ending room was rather small. It gave you a feel for what going in the pyramids in ancient times must have been like, especially when they were not lighted by electricity.

We also saw the tomb of a rich guy. They ensured that they would take their things and servants with them into the afterlife by carving representations of them on the walls so there was quite a bit of carving, as you can imagine. Me, I would carve Brad Pitt into the wall of my tomb if that sort of thing could work! Helloooo afterlife!

From there we head to Zoser's pyramid complex to look around which was also quite impressive. It was a large pyramid and it was hard to grasp how old it really was.

Soooo there are some rocks overlooking the pyramid from which one can take good pictures. The problem is that vendors are standing there pointing to good picture spots and expecting to be paid for their efforts. Dad goes over and starts getting into conversations with some of them. I step away briefly to look at the pyramids when I see our (armed) security guard running towards Dad's general direction. Greeaaaat. But all ends well. Dad's story is that the (armed) security guard was just trying to prevent the vendors from asking for money. Dad gave the vendors money, but not the (armed) security guard when he asked for a tip (did I mention he was armed?) I think I might have tipped the guy with the gun. . . .

From there we went to an authentic Egyptian restaurant. Musicians harkened our arrival (looking for tips). We also got to see the Egyptian women baking their Egyptian bread in their Egyptian ovens. The bread was actually quite good and we had some fresh. We ate lunch with Bill and Bonnie from the tour group and shared a beer as well. Bill thought that "they" should go and watch the bread bakers some more so that "they" could learn to bake Egyptian bread. I got the impression that Bonnie knew exactly which part of "they" would end up baking the bread and wasn't so keen on the idea!!!!

I must confess, I tipped the musicians on the way out because I thought it was neat having somebody play music every time you walked by. Kind of made me feel like being in a Monty Python movie.

Then on to Memphis where we saw a really large statue of Ramses and some other artifacts. As I remember, two British soldiers found the statues but couldn't ever do anything with them as they were too big to move.

From there, on to the airport for our flight to Aswan. We flew first to Luxor and then took off again and landed in Aswan. It was already quite late at night and then we boarded a bus to take us to our hotel. The bus drove for quite a while and then we boarded a boat - which finally took us to our hotel. The process was so complicated we commented we felt like we were on the Amazing Race by the end of the day. Fortunately, we were not the "last to arrive" or if so, it was a non-elimination round!

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Photos

Imhotep Museum
The inside of Imhotep Museum

Zoser's Pyramid
Zoser's Pyramid is the oldest pyramid found to date in Egypt.

Ramses Statue
Good news - two soldier's stumble upon an invaluable ancient artifact. Bad news - it's too big to move. Doh!