Alexandria and Cairo, Egypt Oct. 10 -11, 2008

Typing this, I look out our suite balcony door to see the moon rising over the mountains of Saudi Arabia. With the afternoon sun on the mountains, it gives a pretty reddish hue.

Temperature at 11:30pm at Port Suez – 19C
Gas prices .90 Egyptian Pound per liter

We spent two wonderful days in Egypt. We walked off the ship with luggage in hand. A night in Egypt lay ahead. Alexandria, known for its library and lighthouse is the second largest city in Egypt. Called “the Pearl of the Mediterranean,” Alexandria is a city of 1/4th of the country’s population. We were taken to the Catacombs, first. It’s just amazing that a donkey’s leg falling into the earth could uncover the remains left there 2200 years ago. It seems that most of the city’s ancient history is Roman. The catacombs and theatre are Roman remains. We had lunch at a local fish restaurant, a drive around the city then our 2.75 hour drive to Cairo. Along the way, we saw banana groves, dates, oranges and rice. The terrain was very flat, desert.

When we arrive in Cairo, we were greeted by building upon building, some with windows, many without, but satellite dishes everywhere. Our guide, Magdy, an Egyptologist and college professor, told us that the builders would install the windows once the apartment had been sold. That night our tour of 100 passengers from the ship had a private viewing of the Egyptian Museum. Each group of about 25 has our own guide. We walked around the museum seeing pieces from the time of the Pharaohs. Hard to believe some of these items have been around for over 4000 years. The highlight of the tour was the viewing of King Tut’s treasures. I had had an opportunity to see the exhibit that toured the U.S. in the late 1970s. It was wonderful to see them again, close up and not so rushed. All the gold, lapis, turquoise, and carnelian are just as beautiful as I remember. I could have stayed longer in the Tut Room, but we did see many objects before the Royal Mummy Room. One throne chair of gold leaf with pictures of King Tut and his wife has gold lion heads as hand rests. Some wealthy New Yorker offered the museum $7.5 billion for the chair. No Sale! We did see replicas all over Cairo the next day. There were 15 mummies displayed in the Royal Mummy Rooms dating back to 4000 BC. One queen also had her pet baboon mummified and next to her in the museum.

Our hotel was the Four Seasons Nile Plaza that had a spectacular view of the Nile and an actual glimpse of the pyramids, a 45 minute drive away. In the morning, we visited Old Cairo, with the Coptic Church and Ben Ezra Synagogue. Later we drove by the quarries where the limestone for the pyramids where taken and the Mohamed Ali mosque, patterned after the Blue Mosque in Istanbul. Afterwards we had a Nile River cruise and lunch with beautiful views of what we saw off our balcony from the Four Seasons Hotel.

As we drive around the city, most of the younger people seemed friendly. Children and those in their 20s gave us a smile or wave. I encountered two delightful girls, probably 7-9. Their bus and ours passed a few times in the street. After I waved at them and gave them a big smile, each time our busses pasted, we searched for each other and gave more waves and smiles, like you saw a good friend passing on the street. Those are nice encounters to have in a foreign county.

(Haze has set in, those beautiful red mountains of 45 minutes ago and now begin engulfed by a grey haze. I was lucky to get photos and the visual memory of the gorgeous red glow on the mountains.)

Finally Giza, we’ve waited all day for the best of the best. We thought that getting to Giza so late in the day would bring huge crowds and bad sun. Not true. Most of the people had left the pyramid area by the time we got there. Tourist police, camel owners, annoying hawkers and tour busses were plentiful, but not that many people. It was wonderful to walk between the two largest Giza structures thinking about who had walked before and who had spent amazing time and energy working on the huge tombs for years and years. The Pyramid of Cheops, the largest one, was made from 3 million stone blocks. Of the 12 original pyramids, part of nine still remain… or at least I counted that many.

It’s hard to put Giza in one paragraph. Thirty or more years of wanting to actually be here and see them in person and they were put into just a few hours of my life. Sitting through the hokey Sound and Light show, I mainly enjoyed the view of the Pyramids at dusk, rather than the melodramatic narration, music and stories. It did give us extra time here.

Next Petra and Wadi Rum…..