Egypt - Day 3: Day at the Museum + Night on the Train

Egyptian Museum in Cairo - most of the stuff found in the tombs are in here.

Various statues outside. Chock full of tourists.
LE 50 to get in.


Candid shot of the inside. Like most of the sites - no photo.
Lots of statues, coffins, etc. from the various dynasties. It's pretty cool to see how things, especially the designs and material evolved throughout the years.
There were even some Roman inspired ones!

Royal Mummies Exhibit

LE 100 extra to see the mummies. We ran out of cash and had to go to the ATM at the Hilton near the museum to get money. There are about 10 mummies of various Pharaohs in glass cases in a dimly lit room. Most of them had only their heads to shoulders exposed. The rest of the body was wrapped. A few was totally wrapped.
The one I really wanted to see was the pharaoh that was mummified on the battlefield - with a gash on the head and a broken wrist (last in the video)

Sleeping train to Luxor

Train leaves from the Giza station at 8:10PM. After a crazy but fun taxi ride through the city of Giza (which is a lot more modern than Cairo), we arrived at the station. The train was 30 minutes late. A couple of second class train passed by, it looked horrible to be in it: no light, windows open.


The dinner they served us was horrible. Dried, over cooked, etc. They had a notice telling us that there's belly dancing at the Club Cart after dinner. We went after dinner - no dancer. Big surprise. Got myself a Johnny Black. The guy poured me 3 cap full. LE 50 for 3 caps. When I ordered a second one, the same guy insisted on pouring for me again, telling the bartender who came later to step aside. I think he made a mistake pouring so little the first time and had to continue the charade.

The steward woke us up around 4:30AM for a breakfast of bread, bread and bread (3 different kinds) with jam, butter and cheese.
The train arrived at Luxor at around 6:30AM.


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Egypt - Day 2: Part 2: Saqqara, Dashur, Memphis

These 3 cities illustrate the progression of pyramid building.

We ate at a place called Saqqara Nest before arriving at the Saqqara site. This place was extra special and a tourist / tour guide favorite because it is clean. There's a government health inspector in the kitchen (Maghdi kept telling us that.) More about it here:
Food In Egypt - Part 2: Standard Fare et al
Food In Egypt - Part 1: Bread and Salad

Saqqara - Large city of tombs. It's cool to see that they're still excavating.

Highlight: Step Pyramid

Dashur - Black Pyramid, Bent Pyramid and Red Pyramid

Black Pyramid - we can only see this from a distance, not quite a pyramid yet.


Bent Pyramid - they deemed this unsafe and closed it to tourists a couple of years ago. they were still playing with the angles and decided they had to make it less steep half way.


Red Pyramid - the one that was built before the pyramids at giza. this is the one we went inside of. check out the path of stairs leading up to the tiny entrance in the middle.


Climbing the outside of the pyramid. I fast forwarded the first part because it's pretty boring, the 2nd half shows you how tiny the entrance to the inside is. Yes, that IS me running out of breath after climbing those stairs. Of course, the 'guardian' disregards the giant "No Photo" sign for some 'bakesh'


On the way down the long, dark and narrow pathway and the chambers inside the pyramid. Not much inside as I had expected due to grave robbers back in ancient times. Even if there were stuff in there, it'd probably be sitting in the museum.
Now we know why the locals gave us that reaction when we said we want to go in. Your knees AND back need to be bent the whole way down. I'm sure glad we didn't go in Giza, where there's a lot more people and you can't go at your own speed. We blazed down that hatch. Coming back up, not so much... my knees started to hurt and buckle.
It disgusted me to find garbage inside the pyramid. How hard is it to bring the empty water bottles back up with you!?

Memphis - bunch of statues. We had about 10 minutes to look at everything because they close at 4PM and we got there at 3:45PM.

The other Sphinx


Statue of Ramsis II and a 'guardian' looking for bakesh.

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Egypt - Day 2: Part 1: Giza

Our driver Maghdi picked us up promptly at 8AM. He actually got to the hotel earlier but waited for us to eat breakfast. Breakfast wasn't bad: coffee, cereal, eggs, sausages, yogurt, bread, croissants, juices...


Maghdi says "I'm going to take you four places - Giza, Saqqara, Dashur and Memphis".
We told him we want to ride camels. He said "No problem!" and drive us to the area of staples near the pyramids (about 1 hour). There were a lot of staples there but Maghdi had his contacts. We also told him that we want to go into the great pyramid. He replied "Why? you bend and walk down a long passage and there's nothing there! - we'll go to the one on Dashur, it's part of the ticket, no pay extra".


After some slight haggling, we were on camels with a guide name Hassan and a camel boy name Ali. Hassan is more like a tour guide. Ali leads the camels on foot.
Note: What we should have done with haggling is to do it BEFORE we got on the camels. Also, we should have told them that we'll pay 1/3 of the price he offered, not 1/2.


Riding camel is an experience! They tell you to lean back while it gets on it's legs or sits. That didn't really sink in until my camel first got up and I felt like I was going to fall off. The front legs extends first, then the back legs. So when only two legs are extended, you are sitting on a slant, way off balance. On top of that, camels are pretty tall.


Hassan asked us to give him LE 50 each for admission tickets. While we waited for the tickets, Gim's camel kept trying to wipe its head on my leg. It was pretty gross. It took many attempts before he actually got me... but he got me.


After riding in the desert for a bit, we came to the pyramids. Surprisingly, there weren't that many people in this part of the site. It was fenced off and can only be accessible via camels or horses. A lot of the time, it felt like we were the only ones there. There are also views that you can't get from the other side (where the tour buses would drop people off). I highly recommend doing the camel tour (but of course, haggle and pay less). We told Hassan we want to go into the pyramid. He pretty much gave us the same reply as Maghdi and told us to go to Dashur. There must be a reason why the locals say this...


"You happy? I'm happy." and "High Ho Silver!" are the memorable quotes from Mr. Hassan. He took us to good spots for photos and made us pose. The spots were nice but the poses were mostly corny (above).


The guide books did say that you can't climb the pyramids. There was also a reason why Hassan kept giving all the tourist police around "hand shakes". We both got to climb the Pyramid of Khefre (the 2nd biggest one, with dome on top). These things are MASSIVE! I'm still in awe of how these were built so long ago and are still standing.


To see the Sphinx, we had to cross over to the tourist area. It's not as close to the pyramids as I thought. Hassan's story / description of it was way off. I learned from the audio lectures that this was NOT the "face of man, body of lion, head of woman" that Hassan described it as.
I'm glad I didn't get to see the Pizza Hut and McDonald's near the sphinx I heard so much about. Sad note: dropped my nice Ray Bans in front of the Sphinx (the pair of sunglasses I picked up in Amsterdam 5 years ago).


Mr. Hassan and I in front of the staples after the pyramids. He loves America, especially the money and super especially the tip he shook us down for.


Us in the desert to the pyramids

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