Today was our first full day in Cairo. In fact, it was our only day in Cairo, and we spent a good deal of it outside of Cairo – on the opposite side of the Nile, in Giza. But, first things first.
Our hotel, the Cosmopolitan Hotel, is right outside one of Cairo’s busiest streets. We had realized that when we rode in via the unlicensed, extremely sketchy taxi the night before. As that was Saturday, we expected a more sedate day Sunday morning. Instead, Erin was first awoken at 4:30 in the morning from honking cars and a near-traffic jam outside our first-floor window.
(a note on “floors” internationally – instead of the ground floor being the “First” or “Floor 1,” the ground floor is actually “Floor 0” or “Floor Zero.” Our first-floor room is actually on the second floor of the building)
Our tour guide explained the morning issue in greater detail later that day. First, Egypt is a primarily Muslim country - we were told approximately 90%. Second, for Muslim countries, Sunday is essentially a western “Monday.” Thus, we (more precisely, Erin) were hearing Monday morning traffic as Cairo came alive for the week.
The Hotel offered an included breakfast in the lobby, which consisted of a variety of breads, fresh-cut guava, some lamb sausage, cheese, and some Egyptian bean paste called "fuul." Erin enjoyed the fuul, which she compared to refried beans in the US; James was uncomfortable with the idea of any kind of refried beans for breakfast, and graciously declined.
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| Our first Egyptian brakfast - notice the cheese, bread, sausage, fresh guava, egg, and the "fuul" on Erin's plate across the table. |
We met some of our tour group at breakfast, and the remainder in the lobby as we prepared to leave the hotel and visit our first stop: the Cairo Museum. We packed up our tour bus, and ventured into the Cairo streets, risking life and limb (usually pedestrians’ limbs) careening through traffic. While there are traffic symbols and directions, driving in Cairo seems to be much more an art than science. Still, we made it to the museum without incident and passed through the metal detector into the interior courtyard.
Here, we took the pictures we were allowed to take of the museum’s holdings; our cameras were confiscated once we stepped inside the museum. However, once inside, we spent the next three hours viewing ancient Egyptian treasures from all along the Nile River, including the famous Tutankhamen crown jewels, and coffins and crypts from millennia of history. We heard stories about the famous Rosetta Stone, a stone tablet that contained the same text written in three languages: Greek, Egyptian, and Egyptian Hieroglyphics.
The Rosetta Stone tablet was the key to translating Egyptian Hieroglyphics, and according to our guide, the real keys to that understanding centered on the “cartouches” in the text. First, for our younger followers, hieroglyphics is a system of picture language, where the words look like the picture they stand for – the word for cat, for example, would look like a picture of a cat. But, not every hieroglyphic looks like the word it stands for – and some might have dual meanings. Without a guide, Egyptian Hieroglyphics were nearly incomprehensible. Then came the discovery of the Stone. Cartouches are similar to proper names in English – e.g, “Erin Sherer.” Except, in Egyptian, each cartouche stood for a particular Egyptian Pharaoh – and each cartouche is surrounded by an oval, unlike any other hieroglyphics. Researchers used these as keys to unlock the entire language, and just like that, scholars could read the thousands of written records left behind by Egyptians in stone and on papyrus paper.
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| The Egyptian Museum in Cairo - the interior was just as impressive. |
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| One of the monuments at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. |
After we left the Egyptian Museum, we stopped for a quick bite of falafel sandwich on our way to Giza, part of Cairo across the Nile. There, in Giza, we finally saw one of our world tour’s highlights – and the only remaining wonder of the ancient world: the Giza Pyramids and the ancient Sphinx.
We spent a good three-plus hours wandering around the desert, exploring the inside of one of the smaller pyramids, climbing part of the largest pyramid, and taking some silly pictures of the pyramids themselves. We also spent part of that time avoiding Egyptians intent on selling us something – anything – while we were there at the pyramids. We have noticed that the culture is very geared toward aggressive selling practices, and we have had to be quite forceful in telling people we are not interested in purchasing goods and services.
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| Erin and James in front of the pyramids for the picture of a lifetime. |
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| James jumping down from the pyramid - kids, don't try this at home. |
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| Tabitha looms large over the pyramids at Giza. |
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| Erin and James share an embrace in front of the Sphinx. |
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| At the right angle, you can see one of the Giza pyraminds behind the Sphinx. |
The pyramids were wonderful, and definitely worth the trip to see them. The desert stretched on far in the distance away from Cairo, and our tour bus pulled up to take us to our next destination – a Papyrus paper shop that specialized in creating tourist keepsakes. We dutifully watched the demonstration, which showed how papyrus paper is made, and how its nature keeps it waterproof and has allowed examples of Egyptian records to survive for thousands of years. We then made the easy choice not to buy any papyrus “art” – although quite a few of our 13 tour companions did.
Once the papyrus visit was over, we headed to a traditional Egyptian dinner, where food is served family style, and the meats – chicken and lamb sausage – are kept warm over charcoal fires at each table. The food was delicious, and we both ate heartily.
When dinner was finished, we spent some time chatting with our tour group before leaving for the train station, where we would leave for an overnight train to Aswan in the south of Egypt. This will be the furthest south we will go on our tour – after heading north for several days, we will then fly back to Cairo to leave for Dubai. The train station was very busy, and Erin and James snuck away from the tour group to wander down a busy street in Cairo, searching for a grocery store for some soft drinks. We saw an open-air butcher shop, as well as a makeshift copy center. We were also lucky to find some shops, where we bought some very reasonably-priced snacks.
Our train arrived at 9:30 pm, and we boarded our coach. Our cabin was more comfortable than some of the overnight trains we saw in Eastern Europe, but not as nice as the German trains. We were also fed, but as it was primarily “mystery meat,” only James was brave enough to take the plunge. Dinner (number 2!) was finished, our beds were lowered by the steward, and we drifted off to sleep (or tried to) as our train headed south.