I will try to keep this as short as possible, but Egypt was amazing, so get comfy. Also, I must say that Egypt is indescribable, but I will try to do my best to give it due justice.
We got to the Cairo airport on Thursday night and got brought to our hostel. On the van ride into downtown Cairo, it was gridlocked (there was gridlock and constant horns until 2 AM), a boy, 3 years old at most, walked into the middle of the street and started pounding on the door of our van and trying to open the door for money; it was very sad. We finally got to our hostel – so sketchy! It was an old, run down building that looked like it was deserted and falling apart. Our van driver got out and shook hands with someone; we thought we had just been sold...We took the elevator to the 6th floor where the Arabesque “Hotel” was and went to our room…also pretty dirty, but what do you expect when paying 10 euro for 3 nights! (The picture below is the view from our room) It ended up being just fine and the people working there were awesome, we are actually now all friends with one of the guys, Mustafa - he is awesome!
Anyways, we first had to ride down the side roads by some of the shops and slums, got conned into buying Arab headdress things (that is what we are wearing in all of the pictures) but it ended up being a good thing, it kept us cool and kept the sun from burning my pale white skin. We then came to this gate to enter the area of the pyramids. We got off of our camels and winded through the camel/Arabian horse traffic jam – I got caught between a camel and an Arabian horse and almost got ran over (never thought I would ever say that sentence)! We all got through and had to stand off to the side by the police. They opened the gate slightly and everyone started yelling in Arabic and trying to get their horse/camel through. The police/gate control guys were all yelling and trying to shut the gate, they were whipping the animals and people to get them away from the gate. It was complete chaos - by far the craziest thing I have ever seen and kind of frightening (see picture below). That is when it really hit me that we were in a third world country, it was not Bollywood.
We continued into the Sahara desert to the pyramids, the sun was extremely hot! We went to the 3rd largest pyramid (Mycerinus), walked around it, and touched it! It was built of granite that was cut and shipped from 900 km away. Some random facts about the pyramids: they were built as tombs for kings, most are solid (some have tunnels to rooms for tombs) and the kings were buried underneath them, the pyramids used to be encased with limestone (that is the “cap” at the top of the 2nd largest pyramid) and were smooth.
Then we went to the sphinx. It has the face of the king and the body of the lion to symbolize that the king was smart like a human, but strong like a lion; he was perfect. We walked through the temple in front of the sphinx which is where they used to mummify kings; the floor was made of alabaster and the walls of granite (single blocks of granite were about 5-6 ft tall and 8 ft long!). When the temple was in use, all of the granite and alabaster used to be polished – beautiful!
We had a delicious lunch with warm, fresh bread, chicken, beef, and falafel!!! NUMMMM!! On our way home we stopped at a papyrus shop; we got to see how the first paper ever was made; it is waterproof, and actually gets stronger after it has been wet, and it is washable!
We then had a dinner cruise on the Nile with entertainment courtesy of whirling dervishes (picture below) and a belly dancer…it was umm…interesting. The weather though was beautiful!
Saturday = Alexandria! We took a 3 hour car ride to the coastal city that Alexander the Great had conquered in 330ish BC. First, we went to the Kom El Shogafa catacomb built in the 1st century AD; it was amazing how they chiseled this huge tomb so deep into the ground (no pictures, sorry). But when they discovered it in the 1900s there was no bodies in it, only bones from horses. Then we found and ice cream shop, I had to try Egyptian ice cream! It was ok, less creamy and not as flavorful, but it tasted good on the hot day! Then we went to the citadel, a fortress built on the site of the Great Lighthouse of Alexandria (one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world, along with the pyramids, but it was destroyed by an earthquake), the entrance to the castle part of the citadel is built from remaining blocks of granite from the lighthouse. The citadel had a beautiful view of the Mediterranean water and the city of Alexandria. Our last stop was at the Alexandria Library – the biggest library in the world (bottom right picture)! It supposedly has a copy of every book ever published (not sure if I believe that). It was HUGE and very modernized. The outside of the library has parts of the alphabet of every language known in the world! It was awesome!
At night, we took a taxi (first time going anywhere by ourselves!) and ventured into the city of Cairo to the bazaar! It was crazy - sensory overload! We bartered for everything – I did pretty well :). And the men who were working were so funny they said lines like, “I’ll marry you if you buy this!” “I kill my wife for you” “You don’t know what you want, but I have what you need!” Also, when we were with our tour guide we had to say we were from Canada so we didn’t need a police escort (apparently they have some agreement with US, Britain, and Israel that they are accompanied by police, but you have to pay them), so we occasionally said we were from Canada when we were at the bazaar too and every time we got, “ahh Canada Dry!” or “Canada Dry, never die!” What?! Weird. But overall, I really enjoyed the bazaar, especially because everything was so cheap!
Sunday we went to the Mohammed Ali mosque (AKA the Alabster Mosque or the Mosque of Domes?) - pictures below. It was built to look like the Blue Mosque in Istanbul – beautiful! Then we went to St. Sargius Church and the Holy Crypt (at most 12% of the population is Christian, so churches were not as easy to come across as mosques). The church is the oldest church in Cairo, built in the 4th century AD on the spot of the Holy Crypt – where Jesus, Mary, and Joseph were said to rest/hide at the end of their journey into Egypt! We could only see the entrance, but it was very cool to be there! We then visited the Hanging Church – named that because it was built over a cannel, not as impressive as it sounds though. By this time I was so hungry, so we went to a falafel place and got 2 falafels for only 50 cents!
Then, the Egyptian Museum – unbelievable! It was HUGE and had hundreds of OLD statues and caskets of pharos and kings with very intricate designs, paint, and hieroglyphics from around 3000 BC! The 3 most impressive things: mummified animals – snake, alligator, cat, and my favorite a perch which was literally almost 5 ft long and 2 ft wide!! (It spanned from the tip of my fingers to the wrist on my other hand!), a HUGE statue of a king and his wife/queen – it was 7 meters tall and 4.4 meters wide of solid granite! I still cannot wrap my mind around how they were able to cut, transport, and carve these things! The most impressive thing in the museum was the remains of everything from King Tut’s tomb! We saw lots of smaller things: thrones, jewelry, canes, beds, etc. but then we saw how he was buried – a GIANT wooden box (at least 10 ft tall and 15 ft long) inside of 3 other consecutively smaller boxes (but still big!), inside of a wooden case with gold on the outside, inside of another case (which his mummy was actually in) of solid gold! That case was 127 - 129 KILOGRAMS (about 250 pounds) of solid gold! Finally, on top of his mummy was a gold headdress/helmet thing. All of this was intricately designed, written on in hieroglyphics, painted, and decorated with gold jewelry. And remember, this was just in the corner where he was buried! This does not include the rest of the tomb where all of the other gold, jewelry, and prized possessions were! It was absolutely unbelievable! After lifting my jaw off the ground at the museum, we visited the bazaar one last time and headed to the airport (and it rained! In Egypt, crazy). The Cairo Airport is the weirdest airport ever! We couldn’t get in to get our tickets until 2 hours before our plane left, when we finally could go in, we had to go through security first, and then get our boarding passes, then passport control. But we couldn’t get to our gate until it was boarding time, so we had to go hang out in the airport, and then go through security again before we could enter our gate. Very weird. But we did meet this woman who was very nice! She was part Lebanese and part Syrian, her husband was Egyptian, but born in Canada, and they met in the US, but now live in Egypt – crazy! She told us a little more about Egypt and the culture (some things that we couldn’t experience or understand).
Other notes from Egypt: Cairo never sleeps! Everyone (men, women, and children) was out walking on the streets at midnight and later.
The driving in Cairo is absolutely insane! There are usually 3 lanes painted on the road, but nobody follows it. There will be a row of 4½ cars, then 3½ cars, then 4 cars and everyone honks all of the time – there is actually a system for honking. It is organized chaos, but it works!
Almost all Egyptian women are covered, either in colorful scarves (a lovely change from the ubiquitous black and charcoal gray in Cyprus), or in the all black cloak with only eyes showing. Our tour guide said that this is because when Bush invaded Iraq the Egyptians were terrified because they thought it was the beginning of a crusade and that Egypt was going to be next. They thought that it was speeding up the coming of Jesus, so they began to dress conservatively again – up until a few years ago they dressed like Europeans/Americans. When Obama came into office, they viewed him as a savior.
Egypt is architecturally built up (in some downtown Cairo) with sky scrapers, bill boards, cars, cell phones etc. but is still a third world country. It is very dirty (sand and smog) and has lots of different smells – when we first got off of the plane is when I could smell it the most – a combination of sand, sewage, and smoke.
Basically Egypt was the biggest culture shock! But the longer I stayed there the more I came to like it. It was by far the best experience I have ever had!
No comments:
Post a Comment