Advertisement
Published: June 16th 2006
I arrived in Cairo yesterday. My first experience in the city was bargaining for a taxi to take me to my hotel. I had to bargain hard for a price of 50 pounds. I first experienc was in the taxi flying down the road and the car had no headlights on it. None of the cars on the road stayed in the lines and people are crossing everywhere and the taxi did not have a working seatbelt. Although this was quite an exciting ride I made it to my hotel okay.
I woke up early in the morning to go on a tour of the Giza pyramids. We had a knowledgable local tour guide show us around. The pyramids lived up to expectations in every way. What you don't usually see is that the city of Cairo almost surrounds it and in fact there is a pizza hut and KFC right across from the spynix. There was no tickets left for the big pyramid but anybody can get a ticket for the smaller pyramid. I entered inside and you crawl up the platform via a small tunnel to the burial chamber. The tunnel is very small and it is one
of the few times I am glad I am short. You can't take cameras inside the pyramid but there is nothing inside to look at. Also all along the outside of the pyramids is people trying to sell you souvenirs and you have to tell them no 10 times before they might leave you alone.
After the pyramids we had a great local egyptian meal of Kosheri. It is a bunch of noddles, chickpeas, and vegetables thrown together in a dish with a bunch of different sauces. It was delicious!!
After lunch we headed over to the Egyptian Antiquities Museum which has an absolutely fantastic collection of Ancient Egypt artifacts. I guide showed us and talked to us about the highlights of the museum but the rest of it was on your own. The museum has lots of artifacts just laid out everywhere and most things are not labeled. The sad part is that when we travel to the temples later in the trip they will be empty because all the artifacts are in the museum.
The traffic in Cairo is crazy with nobody following any rules. The worst thing is you have to cross the street
with no cross walk. Its a scarey learning curve but you just follow the locals a couple of times and you learn how to do it. Anways, I am taking an overnight train ride down to Aswan tonight. So I say Goodnight from Cairo.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.462s; Tpl: 0.03s; cc: 10; qc: 47; dbt: 0.2943s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Anglepie
non-member comment
Crazy first day
I'm not sure I could handle the taxi ride or if it is safe in any way. The pyramid must have been an amazing sight. To bad you couldn't get into the bigger one. Hope the train is a safe and fun ride. Look forward to more adventures. Take care as always , love Mom