Day 14: Touring Round Cairo

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We arrived into Cairo at about 7am from our overnight bus from Hergada. To say we were a little tired and agro is an understatement. The bus ride was horrible...9 of us crammed into a little mini-bus, the air con was on half the night, and the driver hit every pothole and speed bump from Hergada to Cairo. Rach got an 'ok' sleep and I was on and off for about 4 hours.

We got to our hotel, had a shower to freshen us up and commence our day of tours at 8am. The first stop was the Egyptain Museum. Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take cameras into the museum and we didn't risk sneaking them into my day pack as they were checking everyone's as they came through.

Our guide showed us a replica of this Egyptian stone that was carved back when the Greek's occupied Egypt and translated the Egyptain language into the Greek alphabet. Apparently the discovery of this stone was exactly what historians were after as all of a sudden the mysterious hierogliphics plastered everywhere could be translated and their meaning finally revealed.

He walked us through numerous displays including some amazing statues found within the pyramids, and although being many thousands of years old still held the same colour as the day they were painted. Some of the statues even had crystal eyes to give them a more realistic (yet freaky) look to them. It was amazing to see how they tried to mimic the lives of the ancient Egyptians, and we saw numerous statues of people baking bread, selling goods in a market and even brewing beer. Many of the king's royal scribes were also carved into stone in order to preserve their importance in communicating the Egyptian history.

We saw numerous sarcophagus which used to house the pharoah's mummies. All were beautifully decorated except for one, which was only half finished. On closer inspection, it was found that when they were chiselling out the lid (which is done by cutting it from the base), some poor bugger chipped a little to hard which sent a giant crack all the way across the stone.

One interesting little statue was found in a tomb near Luxor. When I say little, this little guy was only a little bigger than a matchbox. Its interesting because the statue is of the great architect that orchestrated the building of the Great Pyramids in Giza. Why and how this little guy made it to Luxor and sat and the bottom of the king's tomb remains a mystery.

We ventured up to the 2^nd level which is dedicated solely to the treasures that were uncovered from King Tutenkamen's tomb. As I mentioned to you a couple of days ago, King Tut's tomb is the only undisturbed and unraided tomb that has ever been discovered. The sheer volumn of the contents of the tomb is amazing. This little guy only served on the throne for 6 years and died at the age of 20. However the wealth and treasures that were buried with him is unbelievable. We saw these 3 massive gold plated shrines, each one being slightly smaller than the last so they fitted inside each other. Inside the last shrine was a massive golden coffin. This one was only gold plated however when the archeologists opened this coffin, they discovered a 120kg solid gold coffin. Both these coffins were on display and were simply stunning. They were laiden with jewels and symbols in order to protect the king. Inside the coffin was the famous King Tut's golden head dress. This is 12kg of solid gold and studded with heaps of precious stones. It looked very impressive when we got up close and personal to it.

We then spent an extra 100 Egyptians (£10) to go and see the Royal Mummies display. These contain some of the mummies that had been exhumed from the Valley of the Kings we saw a couple of days ago. It was actually quite freaky and a little scary. I kept thinking that one of them was going to suddenly open their eyes and give me a creepy smile. They were all still wrapped up in their white-ish cloths and had their heads uncovered. Some had their arms and feet exposed too. Their faces look strangely life-like, and some still had hair attached to their head! There was about 15 mummies on display, including Queen Hatshupsut who apparently died an obese woman of 60 years. One of the best preserved ones was actually the Great King, King Ramsses II who ruled for 65 years and died at around 90 years of age. His mummy was actually really well preserved and his face just looked like a little old dark man taking a nap!!

We eventually got a little creeped out and wandered around the rest of the museum for 15 mins before heading back to the bus. The next stop was one of the first Christian churches to be built when Egypt converted to Christiaty around the time of Christ. It wasn't the most exciting of churches given the cathedrals we'd seen around Europe but interesting to learn about it all the same. The church was called the Hanging Church as it actually sits about 10 metres off the ground on top of an old Roman Fortress. Our guide told us a story about a miracle involving visions of Mary and a mysterious painting that has appeared on one of the church's pillars, however I was a little skeptical about how it got there.

We stopped for some lunch and were grateful that it wasn't a buffet!! Most of us had koftas, a type of kebab, and it was delicious. So much better than the lunches we'd been having. Rach and I quickly visited a papyrus picture shop that had heaps of cool prints of Egyptain scenes printed up on papyrus paper. We haggled for a bit before decided on a couple of cool prints that we look forward to framing and sticking up in our place when we get back to Australia.

By this point we were unbelievably drained of energy however we had 2 stops to go. The first was to the Citadel, which our guide didn't really tell us much about. It sort of resembled a bit of a fortress with high walls and watch tower so we'll go with that. In the middle of the Citadel sits the Mohammad Ali Mosque. On entrance, we were instructed to take off our shoes (well, thongs) and wander around in bare feet. Our guide told us the mosque was built to resemble a smaller version of the Blue Mosque that we saw in Istanbul last year. We attempted to walk into the mosque however Rach was stopped because she was not 'covered' enough. She was already wearing jeans and a t-shirt however we had to quickly shove my hoodie over her aswell. Don't want to upset Allah with some bare arms!! We wandered through the mosque and the first thing we noticed was the smell...dirty socks! It stunk so bad, I think they need to shampoo the carpet! We were glad once we were done in there, took a couple of happy snaps of Cairo from the lookout and went back to the bus.

The next stop was a visit to the local market. Our guide warned us of the hassling but my god, were we in for a shock. It was utter mayhem trying to walk down the narrow alley ways lined with shops of all kinds – jewellery, souveniers, clothes, scarves...all sorts of crap. We wandered down one alley way and could barely push our way through as the locals were trying to 'persuade' us to look into their shop. It was borderline unbearable and Rach and I just stuck our heads down and pushed our way through. We found a couple of good shops where we didn't get hassled to look and picked up a couple of token souveniers. We made our way back to a coffee shop that was our meeting point and relaxed with a nice cappachino. Even as our tour group sat and drank our coffees, we were hounded by street vendors trying to flog off scarves, blacelets, fake watches and sunglasses.

We made it back to our hotel at around 5pm and had an hour 'relaxation' before being bussed off again to the Pyramids Sound and Light show. It sounded pretty tacky and that is exactly what it was. We got there with around 20 mins before showtime and there was not one person there! There was just rows and rows of empty seats. We at least got front row seats and by the time the show started only about the first 3 rows had anybody in them (there would've been about 50 rows of seats). We got some cool photos of the pyramids again with nobody else in the shots and settled down for the show. The show itself went soooooo slow and told the story of the building of the pyramids with the a silouette of the Sphinx doing the narrating. It was pretty cheesy but the pyramids were lit up in some pretty cool colours. We were glad when the show finished, one because it was so cold and two we were knackered from the full on day and lack of sleep the night before.

We made it back to the hotel, grabbed a quick bite at the hotel restaurant and retired to bed for a well earned rest.

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Photos

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The Cathedral

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Last group lunch

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The Mohammed Ali mosque

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Bens new friends

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Amazing view of Cairo

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Haggling in the Bazaar

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Where all the protests were

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Typical haggler trying to sell blown up toys in traffic

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The sound and light show