Egypt Part I : Dec. 12 - 20

Cairo: Wednesday Dec. 14, 2005

It was to be a second civilized start to our time in Egypt. Yesterday we decided with Sami and Ibrahim to do a tour of old Cairo, including the Citadel with its Palace and the famous Blue Mosque in Egypt. After a quick breakfast we met up with our guides and we were off wading into the Cairo traffic. The smog this morning was exceptionally bad as we could only see a couple of blocks. Nobody was sure what the source was but we were all suffering in our throats and eyes.

Our first stop of the day was the old Citadel. En route we drove by the old necropolis where Ibrahim explained that some of the poorer members of the community took up residence here, as they couldn’t be readily evicted or charged for rent. The Citadel is the old fortress located at the highest point in the city. It also contains the Mohammed Ali Mosque commissioned by the famous king. This site is still recovering form the damage done to it by the earthquake that hit Cairo back in 1992. The age and construction materials used to build the fort were particularly susceptible to damage.

On disembarking the van, the kids were immediately swarmed by dozens and dozens of school age children that were on field trips to the site. As Ibrahim explained most of these children were from smaller villages outside Cairo and Sierra being a small, obviously foreign little girl was the center of attention. While Brennan had to put up with stares from the older girls (he’s quite tall and big now), Sierra had to put up with girls of all ages touching her, tagging along behind her, asking her name and other questions. This went on for an hour and a half, the whole time we were at the site and left poor Sierra very uncomfortable. No sooner would Ibrahim manage to chase off one group than another would swoop in. Despite the distractions, we all thoroughly enjoyed the Mosque. The kids took great pleasure in comparing it to the original Blue Mosque in Istanbul that they had visited several months before and still remembered quite well.

After our tour of the site and several more pictures with school children, Sierra was quite happy to climb back into the van and head to our next destination of the Coptic district in Cairo. Based in the center of town, this district is heavily guarded and houses some of the oldest Christian churches and Jewish Synagogues in the country. Ibrahim was able to describe the unique elements of the different buildings and how their architecture was built to resemble a huge upside down ark (after Noah). After the Synagogue, it was a short walk down the street to the “ Hanging Church” that had been built back in the Roman times. Back then the Nile River flowed right up to the edge of the Church which was built up on two very large towers several meters above the water.

After a couple of hours of touring the district it was time to move on. We stopped en route at a small grocery store to purchase some lunch materials outside a small bazaar in the back streets of Cairo. While Ibrahim escorted Debbie and Sierra into the store, Brian and Brennan waited outside with Sami and enjoyed watching the activity in the streets. As Brennan pointed out, only in Cairo could you see in the span of 5 minutes a donkey towing a cart carrying a refrigerator on it, drop it off to have 4 men pound it to smithereens with sledge hammers to remove the inner liner. Then they used the liner and the box as storage, one for bread and one for bricks, then load up the donkey and send him on his way again. On another corner one man was accused of stealing a banana from a vendor who proceeded to thump him and push him onto a moving car denting it, only to have the car owner jump out stop traffic and thump the banana sales man, and a butcher on another corner chopping up a cow in front of his shop and having the skull roll across the sidewalk into the street. All this happened in less than 5 minutes. Brennan was in shock and was speechless for the second time in two days!

Lunch materials now in hand, Brennan tried to explain the happenings on the street to his sister and mother. We were off back towards the Pyramids to tour a gold shop, where to the disappointment of the shop owner we ended up only purchasing a small charm of King Tut’s mask for Sierra’s bracelet. As we still had an hour to kill before the Pyramids sound and light show starting at 6:30, we stopped off at a small coffee shop for some Egyptian Tea. The sound and light show takes place just outside the pyramid complex in front of the Sphinx and was very well done. As we were still off season the crowds were down and the kids thoroughly enjoyed watching the stories play out on the monuments with a combination of lasers and stage lighting. Brian and Debbie also used the time to get the camera ready for night photos and managed to get in a few shots of the pyramids lit up at night.

Departing the show we found our ever present Sami and we were back off to the hotel. As it was late by this time we opted for some pasta and pizza served up by room service as the kids managed to luck out and find an old Austin Powers movie on TV. Brian managed to finally get a wireless internet connection going and get our emails done and the England web site posted. Tomorrow was to be a long day as well as we were to see Memphis and Saqqara. Off to Bed.

Thursday Dec. 15, 2005: Cairo

Morning broke with a frantic last push to get things packed up and do some last minute banking on the home accounts. We are managing pretty well to track and do our banking on-line but every now and then we need some help from the people back home and as we were entering tax season again, Brian had to get some stuff arranged in some of our various accounts. Our fear was that we would find ourselves in central Africa with little or no means of communication so Brian was busy trying to put things on autopilot for a few months.

The destinations for our third day in Cairo were the ancient town of Memphis and the Pyramid site at Saqqara. The smog from the previous day had cleared and we had bright blue skies for our 1 hour drive out to Memphis. Memphis was one of the ancient capitals of Egypt and is located approximately 30 Km South of present day Cairo. The crowds were light and we got some great views of the ancient monuments and statues for which the site was famous. Ibrahim was again very useful in pointing out the little things that really made the trip enjoyable. We learned all about the story written in hieroglyphics on the large statue of Rameses II and the various stories of the infighting between the gods and the different ceremonies that took place in the temples outside the city.

From Memphis it was only a very short drive to the site of Saqqara, home to some of the oldest pyramids in Egypt. This site is famous for its stepped pyramid thought to be one of the first pyramids constructed in Egypt using sandstone and designed by the famous architect and mathematician Ihmotepth. The adjoining mortuary temple was designed to emulate in stone the king’s palace and the kids spent a great deal of time trying to interpret the various stone shapes and relate them to palace fixtures.

The site also provides a great viewpoint. From the Saqqara site you can see the great pyramids to the north some 30km as well as the famous Bent Pyramid several kilometers to the south. The first two thirds of this pyramid was constructed at too steep an angle. The pyramid would have been several hundreds of meters tall and unable to support itself. The problem was caught midway through building and the angle was radically changed resulting in a bent shape. As Sierra said, I would have hated to have been that architect back then.

Earlier in our tours, Ibrahim had mentioned that often times the guards watching the monuments would attempt to intimidate the tourists from time to time and ask for Baksheesh (small $ gifts) for showing them a place to take a picture from etc. He encouraged us just to walk away in this event and it never happened while he was with us. In Saqqara however as we were wandering around on our own, a guard did approach Brian quite brazenly and openly. He was very insistent and Brian was very pleased. He had been waiting for this moment and was quite well prepared. Upon leaving Romania Brian had squirreled away several bills of 50,000 denominations. Total value would have been around 10 cents Cdn. but they looked impressive. The guard was very impressed when Brian handed over a bill will so many zeros on it, never realizing how impossible it would be cash. Brian left pleased with himself convinced that the guard was only getting what he deserved especially since he had done nothing to merit the payment in the first place.

Our last visit on the site was to a newer pyramid that had been damaged by the removal of its sand and limestone outer casing and revealing the weathered mud brick core. The inside of the pyramid however was immaculate and had the first hieroglyphics we had seen inside of a tomb so far. (The pyramids in Giza were built before writing was done on the walls.) Next to the pyramid was a very extensive and well restored ruin of a noble man, the pharaoh’s son-in-law. The glyphs on the walls were spectacular and the colors even after thousands of years were bright and vivid.

Soon it was time to leave Saqqara and start working our way back towards Cairo. We managed a late lunch at a terrific road side stop where Sierra got to help the cooks make the flat bread and eat her own cooking. It was a big hit, and it was soon onto our next stop which was the local carpet making academy. You would have thought that with all our carpet purchases in Turkey we would have had enough, but the thrill of the bargaining was just too much to refuse. Actually we had wanted to pick up a low cost woven style of Egyptian carpet to be used in the kitchen. Well we did indeed get a kilim but let’s just say that Debbie has high end tastes. At least Brian did a masterful job of negotiating.

After the carpets it was back to the hotel to pick up our luggage and to hang out for an hour or so before heading out to the train station to catch our overnighter to Aswan. As Friday is the start of the weekend in Egypt, Thursday evenings typically see much heavier traffic. We weren’t sure exactly what this meant until we experienced it first hand. We were convinced we were not going to make the train but through the expeditious driving on sidewalks and cutting of corners by Sami, we managed to make the train with a few minutes to spare.

The train ride to Aswan was excellent and we managed two side by side rooms with two beds in each. It was a 12 hour train ride to Aswan but we were very comfortable. Goodbye to our friends Sami and Ibrahim. You made our trip in Cairo a spectacular one. Thank you.( NEXT PAGE )