In the morning I boarded the day bus for the long journey to Cairo. I'm usually not happy wasting a whole day on the bus, but I was ready to move on from Dahab, as it is best for just chilling out at a beach or cafe and I am not particularly good at sitting around doing nothing. The day came and went and the hours went by rather uneventfully. I alternated between reading and sleeping. There wasn't much to be eaten, so I had simple snacks and a mystery hot dog concoction at a road side stop.
By the time I finally arrived in Cairo the sun was setting. I had a hostel picked out from the guide book and was hoping it would work out. The cab dropped me out front and luckily for me, there was room and it seemed ok. The first person I talked to as I walked in to ensure the place was livable turned out to be a Brazilian guy with whom I would end up spending the next 10 days. I settled in and came back out to make small talk and find out where to eat. He mentioned that he and another traveler were going to try and go see a belly dancing show that evening if I was interested, “why not,” I said. I was also directed by some travelers to a restaurant that I would end up eating the majority of my meals in Cairo at, Felfela. It is dirt cheap and serves the Egyptian staple quick foods, Taamia (falafel) and koshary (pasta, rice and lentils with tomato sauce).
I met the guys back at the hostel around 10. I also met another group at the same time who was just arriving and with whom I’d end up visiting the pyramids the following day. The Brazilian, myself and the 3rd guy, an Aussie, who'd also end up traveling with us over the next week headed out in search of the belly dancing listed in the guide book. We would eventually find the place after much searching and find it to be tucked in a sketchy bar street. There was no body there and no belly dancing going on, but there were 2 fat Egyptian prostitutes there to greet us. We threw in the towel on the belly dancing, but I noticed the bar next door was equally sketchy, but at least was full of local people and had sheesha and beer. I convinced the guys that all would be well and we sat down to have a drink.
It was great people watching. Old Egyptian men and large bar women of very suspect repute smoking sheesha, laughing and occasionally breaking out in dance. We managed to avoid too much contact with the girls save for one that had a affinity for my beard and would periodically come yank on it and wink at me. After the beer, we decided to head off and wander back towards our hostel. It was a good taste of Cairo for the first evening.
The other group I had met the night before woke me up and I ended up going with them on an arranged tour of Giza, Sakkara and Memphis. The 4 of us headed out with a guide and a private van first towards the most famous of all Egyptian sites, the
pyramids and sphinx of Giza.
The first thing that strikes you is that the Pyramids are practically in the city. Giza is simply a district/suburb of Cairo and as you drive down the highway, you can see the peaks
of the pyramids jutting above the urban sprawl, hardly the view they show on the Discovery Channel. When we arrived at the entrance we bought our admission tickets as well as a ticket to go inside the second largest pyramid.
My initial impression was very mixed. First of all, it is not the ideal way to see such a historical landmar
k. The entire place is crawling with tour bus tourists and peddlers eager to take their money (this is the case with most famous sites in Egypt) and the site is full of cars, buses at parking lots directly next to them and there is quite a bit of litter all around. The pyramids themselves are certainly impressive, given that they are nearly 4000 years old, by far the oldest monuments I have ever seen. They are one of those things that you just always felt like you needed to see and actually living it brings some satisfaction. However, I will say that they weren't as massive as they were in my imagination. Certainly marvels of human progress a
nd engineering, but standing beside them I found myself thinking that I am not sure exactly how, but it seems feasible that they could have been constructed by men alone with enough numbers. For me, the alien theories and all the rest went out the window immediately.
We first walked around the “Great Pyramid” and then to the “Second Pyramid” which looks just as big because it is on slightly higher ground and the peak still has some of the original limestone casing
. This was the one we would go inside of. I had been warned in advance that there was little to see inside because all of the artifacts were at the museum, but I hadn't come all the way to Egypt not to go in a pyramid! It was true though, there is nothing there. It is just a shaft about 4 and a half ft tall that you must bend to walk through to get to the burial chamber where there is a replica sarcophagus. It is brutally hot and muggy inside. The hot desert air as we emerged felt like opening your refrigerator on a hot summer afternoon.
We then headed to the scenic viewpoint where you can get pictures of all 3 Giza pyramids lined up bef
ore going to the Sphinx. The Sphinx just is, chilling just like all the pictures you see with a pyramid back drop. Getting inside the temple and getting close to it was a challenge because the sheer volume of tourists all attempting to stay with their groups and all attempting to get inside. We made it and got some photos which was the end of our Giza tour.
From there we continued our tour to the Step Pyramid at Sakkara and finally the ancient capital of lower Egypt, Memphis which is basically an open air museum at the former city site. I was amazed throughout the day and would continue to be amazed over the coming weeks h
ow it was possible to have such narrow lush dense green of farms and palms along the edge of the Nile with almost an actual line drawn in the sand where the 
desert begins. It is no wonder the entire ancient Egyptian civilization was based on and around it.
We returned to the hostel in the late afternoon and rested. In the evening, I went out with a bunch of people including my tour group, the guys I went out with the night before and a couple girls I had met previously in Israel and Jordan. We had dinner, drinks and sheesha at a nice open air street with many locals all around. It was nice to spend time out in the city with a nice group of people.
The next day, I would spend again with my Giza tour group, but this time we tackled the Egyptian Museum on our own. It is a massive two story structure, not as big as the Louvre or British Museum, but it really is only 1 genre! It is also not the most well marked place, with the amount of foreigners studying Egyptology, you would think they'd be able to find some interns to slave into writing up some context. We made due with our lonely planet walking tour and the magnificence of the artifacts largely speaks for themselves.
The highlights of the Museum included the artifacts removed from the Second Pyramid at Giza which we entered the day before(nice to put it in context), the royal mummy room which had lots of really old dead people in it (creepy, but interesting) and finally the treasures of King Tut's tomb. The wealth found inside is truly amazing and the elaborateness of the sarcophagus' layers mind blowing. The shimmering gold of the inner funerary mask (the one from all the pictures you've ever seen) is so much more vibrant and stunning in person.
6 hours of museum perusing later, I was dead dog tired. When we told people how long we spent and all we managed to see they were amazed. I went back to the hostel to eat and chill out. Later that evening I went with my 2 future travel buddies to buy the bus ticket for the following night and then followed some people out to an event that ended up not existing and then had a beer on the way back before getting some much needed sleep.
I would take the opportunity my final day in Cairo (our bus wasn't until 6PM) to see the rest of the tourist spots that I had neglected thus far. I headed for the Khan al Khalili. This i
s the famous bazaar in Islamic Cairo, it is also the location of the most beautiful mosques in all of Egypt. I got dropped off at the mosque across from the bazaar and took a look around inside before heading across the street to the more famous mosque and the bazaar. This was the site of the bombing just a week earlier. You couldn't tell at all aside from noticing a large police presence which if you didn't know wouldn't have seemed unusual.
After visiting
the mosque, I headed into the market which is notorious for its persistent hassling shop owners. This is not my scene and before I knew it, there were no more tourists around and I was in an even larger market, except only for Egyptians. It reminded me of the market in Shanghai that is next to the main tourist site, but not at all for tourists. They were selling a range of wholesale daily use items. I walked further into the maze of alleys and found some of the most appetizing street food I’d seen in the middle east and had a nice lunch among cautious smiles and wondering stares.
I walked even farther and ended up in a real neighborhood. I walked and walked and didn't see a tourist for more than an hour. The people seemed perplexed by my presence, but offered smiles in return of my own. I emerged after a while onto a main road and continued my jo
urney through a fresh market and then onto a sewing machine market and then onto a few more themed streets of shops, eventually I ended up in a street market selling shoes. I decided I has walked enough and jumped a cab (I had no idea where I was) back to the hostel I was truly glad that I had set out to see the touristy sites, but instead was able to get away from everything and get a feel for some real people of the city.
We were off to the bus station a short time after and headed to Egypt's most southerly major destination, Aswan.
By the time I finally arrived in Cairo the sun was setting. I had a hostel picked out from the guide book and was hoping it would work out. The cab dropped me out front and luckily for me, there was room and it seemed ok. The first person I talked to as I walked in to ensure the place was livable turned out to be a Brazilian guy with whom I would end up spending the next 10 days. I settled in and came back out to make small talk and find out where to eat. He mentioned that he and another traveler were going to try and go see a belly dancing show that evening if I was interested, “why not,” I said. I was also directed by some travelers to a restaurant that I would end up eating the majority of my meals in Cairo at, Felfela. It is dirt cheap and serves the Egyptian staple quick foods, Taamia (falafel) and koshary (pasta, rice and lentils with tomato sauce).
I met the guys back at the hostel around 10. I also met another group at the same time who was just arriving and with whom I’d end up visiting the pyramids the following day. The Brazilian, myself and the 3rd guy, an Aussie, who'd also end up traveling with us over the next week headed out in search of the belly dancing listed in the guide book. We would eventually find the place after much searching and find it to be tucked in a sketchy bar street. There was no body there and no belly dancing going on, but there were 2 fat Egyptian prostitutes there to greet us. We threw in the towel on the belly dancing, but I noticed the bar next door was equally sketchy, but at least was full of local people and had sheesha and beer. I convinced the guys that all would be well and we sat down to have a drink.
It was great people watching. Old Egyptian men and large bar women of very suspect repute smoking sheesha, laughing and occasionally breaking out in dance. We managed to avoid too much contact with the girls save for one that had a affinity for my beard and would periodically come yank on it and wink at me. After the beer, we decided to head off and wander back towards our hostel. It was a good taste of Cairo for the first evening.
The other group I had met the night before woke me up and I ended up going with them on an arranged tour of Giza, Sakkara and Memphis. The 4 of us headed out with a guide and a private van first towards the most famous of all Egyptian sites, the
pyramids and sphinx of Giza.The first thing that strikes you is that the Pyramids are practically in the city. Giza is simply a district/suburb of Cairo and as you drive down the highway, you can see the peaks
of the pyramids jutting above the urban sprawl, hardly the view they show on the Discovery Channel. When we arrived at the entrance we bought our admission tickets as well as a ticket to go inside the second largest pyramid.My initial impression was very mixed. First of all, it is not the ideal way to see such a historical landmar
k. The entire place is crawling with tour bus tourists and peddlers eager to take their money (this is the case with most famous sites in Egypt) and the site is full of cars, buses at parking lots directly next to them and there is quite a bit of litter all around. The pyramids themselves are certainly impressive, given that they are nearly 4000 years old, by far the oldest monuments I have ever seen. They are one of those things that you just always felt like you needed to see and actually living it brings some satisfaction. However, I will say that they weren't as massive as they were in my imagination. Certainly marvels of human progress a
nd engineering, but standing beside them I found myself thinking that I am not sure exactly how, but it seems feasible that they could have been constructed by men alone with enough numbers. For me, the alien theories and all the rest went out the window immediately.We first walked around the “Great Pyramid” and then to the “Second Pyramid” which looks just as big because it is on slightly higher ground and the peak still has some of the original limestone casing
. This was the one we would go inside of. I had been warned in advance that there was little to see inside because all of the artifacts were at the museum, but I hadn't come all the way to Egypt not to go in a pyramid! It was true though, there is nothing there. It is just a shaft about 4 and a half ft tall that you must bend to walk through to get to the burial chamber where there is a replica sarcophagus. It is brutally hot and muggy inside. The hot desert air as we emerged felt like opening your refrigerator on a hot summer afternoon.
We then headed to the scenic viewpoint where you can get pictures of all 3 Giza pyramids lined up bef
ore going to the Sphinx. The Sphinx just is, chilling just like all the pictures you see with a pyramid back drop. Getting inside the temple and getting close to it was a challenge because the sheer volume of tourists all attempting to stay with their groups and all attempting to get inside. We made it and got some photos which was the end of our Giza tour.
From there we continued our tour to the Step Pyramid at Sakkara and finally the ancient capital of lower Egypt, Memphis which is basically an open air museum at the former city site. I was amazed throughout the day and would continue to be amazed over the coming weeks h
ow it was possible to have such narrow lush dense green of farms and palms along the edge of the Nile with almost an actual line drawn in the sand where the 
desert begins. It is no wonder the entire ancient Egyptian civilization was based on and around it.We returned to the hostel in the late afternoon and rested. In the evening, I went out with a bunch of people including my tour group, the guys I went out with the night before and a couple girls I had met previously in Israel and Jordan. We had dinner, drinks and sheesha at a nice open air street with many locals all around. It was nice to spend time out in the city with a nice group of people.
The next day, I would spend again with my Giza tour group, but this time we tackled the Egyptian Museum on our own. It is a massive two story structure, not as big as the Louvre or British Museum, but it really is only 1 genre! It is also not the most well marked place, with the amount of foreigners studying Egyptology, you would think they'd be able to find some interns to slave into writing up some context. We made due with our lonely planet walking tour and the magnificence of the artifacts largely speaks for themselves.
The highlights of the Museum included the artifacts removed from the Second Pyramid at Giza which we entered the day before(nice to put it in context), the royal mummy room which had lots of really old dead people in it (creepy, but interesting) and finally the treasures of King Tut's tomb. The wealth found inside is truly amazing and the elaborateness of the sarcophagus' layers mind blowing. The shimmering gold of the inner funerary mask (the one from all the pictures you've ever seen) is so much more vibrant and stunning in person.
6 hours of museum perusing later, I was dead dog tired. When we told people how long we spent and all we managed to see they were amazed. I went back to the hostel to eat and chill out. Later that evening I went with my 2 future travel buddies to buy the bus ticket for the following night and then followed some people out to an event that ended up not existing and then had a beer on the way back before getting some much needed sleep.
I would take the opportunity my final day in Cairo (our bus wasn't until 6PM) to see the rest of the tourist spots that I had neglected thus far. I headed for the Khan al Khalili. This i
s the famous bazaar in Islamic Cairo, it is also the location of the most beautiful mosques in all of Egypt. I got dropped off at the mosque across from the bazaar and took a look around inside before heading across the street to the more famous mosque and the bazaar. This was the site of the bombing just a week earlier. You couldn't tell at all aside from noticing a large police presence which if you didn't know wouldn't have seemed unusual.After visiting
the mosque, I headed into the market which is notorious for its persistent hassling shop owners. This is not my scene and before I knew it, there were no more tourists around and I was in an even larger market, except only for Egyptians. It reminded me of the market in Shanghai that is next to the main tourist site, but not at all for tourists. They were selling a range of wholesale daily use items. I walked further into the maze of alleys and found some of the most appetizing street food I’d seen in the middle east and had a nice lunch among cautious smiles and wondering stares.I walked even farther and ended up in a real neighborhood. I walked and walked and didn't see a tourist for more than an hour. The people seemed perplexed by my presence, but offered smiles in return of my own. I emerged after a while onto a main road and continued my jo
urney through a fresh market and then onto a sewing machine market and then onto a few more themed streets of shops, eventually I ended up in a street market selling shoes. I decided I has walked enough and jumped a cab (I had no idea where I was) back to the hostel I was truly glad that I had set out to see the touristy sites, but instead was able to get away from everything and get a feel for some real people of the city.We were off to the bus station a short time after and headed to Egypt's most southerly major destination, Aswan.
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