Suez to Cairo

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Port Suez to Port Said

We had spent the night anchored outside of Port Suez, awaiting the rest of our caravan. There are no locks in the Suez Canal since the water level in the Red Sea and the Med are the same. In most places, there is only room for one ship but there are a few areas wide enough to pass so this is where the Northbound and Southbound Caravans pass each other. We were suppose to enter the canal @ 6:00 AM but because we had 40 ships heading North and only 18 going South, they called us @ 3:00 AM and of course no one was awake and got to see us enter the Canal. Warships have first priority and Passenger Liners second so we ended up leading the parade North. We were almost into the Bitter Lakes before we got out of bed! As it turned out, we really didn't miss very much. Our room is on the Starboard side so all we saw was the desert of the Sinai Peninsula. The West Bank has fresh water piped over from the Nile River, so it is green and lush. What a contrast. We had our Excursions Director giving us the History of the Canal and how it is operated as well as what's going on today. All in all, it was quite an interesting experience and one of the highlights of our trip.

Alexandria

After leaving Port Said, we sailed through the night and arrived at the Ancient port of Alexandria. This was the most important city in the World behind Rome a couple of thousand years ago. Most of the treasures of that day are still buried below the current city and slowly being found and displayed. The Library had been one of the Wonders of the World before it was burned. A new library has been built and it's quite a sight to see and already has more books than anywhere except the Library of Congress. We boarded our bus @ 7:00 AM and headed South for our visit to the Pyramids at Giza. The most interesting part of the 3 hour trip was everywhere we looked, there were these tall concrete silo looking structures with hundreds of holes. Turned out they were pigeon coops and if you were to be invited to dinner at an Egyptian home, most likely you would be served pigeon.

Cairo, Giza & The Nile

We toured three pyramids one of which was the largest in the world. The stones in the biggest pyramid would circle the globe with a wall three feet high! Amazing engineering job. The pyramids were empty, having been looted years ago, but still very impressive. We rode camels, great picture opportunity, and actually a lot of fun. Toured the Sphinx, cut out of one piece of stone, also very impressive. Too bad the nose was gone! On to a shopping tour in Cairo, and bought some gold Khartoush pieces, very Egyptian, with matching chains. Next was lunch, which we ate sailing down the Nile. Very good local food, excellent live music, and beautiful belly dancing. Bob was asked to participate in the belly dancing, and I got some great pictures. We headed back thru Cairo - which is dirty and very unattractive. Makes New York city look really clean and orderly. Glad we don't live in Egypt.

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