From cold, dark, wet Amsterdam, Alicia, Jackson and I took a break to Egypt for a week. It was a bit of a culture/temperature shock to begin with, but I think we all fell in love with the country and are already making plans to return!
***acknowledgments to Alicia and Jackson for several of the images, in part due to the failures of my camera's batteries, and my own failures in bringing a big enough memory card (nothing that couldn't be solved with a bit of witty bargaining)!
ps - sorry about all these random little squares...
View on the phirst night from our Phunky Pharoh's Hotel, looking eastwards across the Nile.
'Sakara' beer, the local brew - much nicer than the 'Birell' we had the following day (which turned out to be a 'non-alcoholic malt beverage'). In a country where Muslim is the dominant religion and most are forbidden to drink a drop of alcohol, it sure was a lot harder to find a beer after the abundance of alcohol available in Amsterdam.
Our Crew for the week - Me, Alicia, our groovy guide Essam and Jackson (and then 17 dutch people as well).
Day One - the Nile in the morning. The 'pretty haze' is evidence of Cairo's claim as the most polluted city in the world, apparently!
A leisurely stroll across the bridge at breakfast. Quite an inaccurate depiction because of the lack of traffic in this image (the common sound of wood pigeons in Amsterdam was replaced with twittering tooting car horns constantly, at every hour of the day)...
Cairo must also hold testament to being one of the most chaotic and noisy traffic zones in the world. There are No rules here. No lanes. No one way streets. No attention is paid to traffic lights. Cars, buses, taxi's, people, donkeys, bikes and camels all use one and the same highway for traveling on!
So after battling with the traffic we arrived at the beautiful Citadel of Salah al-Din, built in the Islamic times in the 1700's (quite a modern building by Egyptian standards). It boasted more fantastic views of the city.
Inside the aroma's of hundreds of smelly-footed tourists filled the air (we had to cover our shoulders but uncover our feet!?).
The Khan-il-Khalili markets. This was our first taste of the exhaustive egyptian customs of hassling and haggling. There was an amazing array of colourful 'sheesha's' (big smoking pipes), jewelery, carved stone figures and clothes; strong smells of perfume, apple tobacco and spices; and the sound of the prayers blared from the mosques as they stop to pray, five times a day.
Jackson tries his hand at haggling. We eventually got quite good at it (you even had to bargain at the supermarket for bottles of water!). We were proud to come away with bargains such as my 20 Egyptian pound pair of shoes, haggled down from 40 (3 euros, or 4.5 aussie bucks).
The bags of spices in the 'local' section which we strayed into, quite by accident!
I caused a bit of a commotion as I got squashed by this dude wobbling his way through with heavy bags of grain!
We frequently witnessed these huge trays of bread being carted around the city (yes, even down the highways) precariously balanced on their heads.
Frequent stops were needed as Jackson satisfied his caffeine cravings with a modified menu of coke rather than coffee (if you saw the sickly black silty sludge they served as a solution to coffee you'd understand why!)
Day two - we ventured far from the city through the poor and underdeveloped little villages and fields of date and banana palms to the 'Saqqara' pyramid and other tombs of Imhotep's architectural brilliance. This was the first ever pyramid built, and was the inspiration behind the modified 'smooth sided' pyramids that came later.
A sneaky pic in the somewhat cosy tunnels of the queens tombs.
Great excitement at lunch as we realised the Giza pyramids were on the horizon and awaiting our arrival.
Glowing in the 37 degree heat! I have renewed amazement for these mega structures with every new fact I learn... This is the biggest pyramid, of Khufu. It's made of 2.3 million bricks and the average brick weighs 2.5 tons (can you believe they quarried and built all this before the invention of the wheel??).
Jackson's artistic angling.
No comment!
Camel crossing (you can see in the distance the proximity of the city).
camel and rock.
By this stage I was unfortunately fading rapidly in health. I kicked off the tradition of western tourists falling ill by getting a stomach bug that raged through nearly every person in our tour (yes, we're all jealous you didn't get it, Alicia!).
I got a quick glimpse through the window of the bus as I lay sprawled on the back seat.
Thus my memory of the Sphinx will be based more on my appreciation of the port-a-loos rather than the 5 000 year old statue.
Pyramid Poos and Sphinx Squirts Survival pack: toilet paper, which egyptian hotels are reluctant to provide in any great abundance; valuably haggled for water; and arabic antibiotics...
Thank goodness they worked. The next morning we were on a train for 10 hours to Luxor.
Chilling back in Cairo on our last day for lunch at the Hilton food court. (Yes, I'm embarrassed to admit it, but we wanted settled stomachs guaranteed for the flight home!)
