Elsien's Traveblogue
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Egypt
Took plane to Cairo from Athens, which is another continent and it shows. Arrival, wee hours of the morning, coincided with arrival of plane from Jeddah - full of white robed men with white or black-robed women, 1 : 4 ratio. Dad held all the passports. Extremely lively affair.
I could have spent weeks in Cairo as opposed to the few days I had. Saw the Archeological Museum, which is brilliant, lots of stuff higgledy-piggledy on the ground floor, like a stone-cutter's yard, top floor full of Tut's gold and mummies. Cairo has lots of interesting areas, Islamic, Coptic, Diplomatic - heavily guarded, you should see the US and the British Embassy fortresses! - I did a lot of walking around. Saw the Giza pyramids of course, and the Sfinx, who / which is smaller than you'd think from the pictures and had a mini-sandstorm during our visit - I teamed up with an Australian fellow.
Did you realise that in order to get into a pyramid you have to crouch down very low and descend a steeply sloping dark tunnel or several of them and that the pyramids are hot inside, not nice and cool? I should have known, having seen old black and white movies about Howard Carter and grave robbers! I praised myself lucky I had only coughed up 20 Egyptian pounds for the second pyramid, not the 80 for the first! After all, there is nothing much to see in them as all the stuff is either in the Cairo Museum or the British.
I'm not going into any more of those, even though I thought I had been cured of almost all my claustrophobia!!! I read somewhere that each visitor loses a couple of liters of sweat inside them! Tasty!
Next Aswan, right in the south of Egypt, by sleeper train. Fended off Chinese man they wanted me to share compartment with and got nice Yankee woman instead. The Nile is amazing, so is Aswan and the Western Desert. Place full of Nubians in long dresses. Up the Nile to Luxor by short Nile Cruise on M/S Florence. I decided against doing the trip on a felucca (Egyptian sailing boat), having seen the rather primitive crafts, but more importantly having to spend two days in the very close company of 7 strangers decided me against this form of transport. More on Luxor later.
Took plane to Cairo from Athens, which is another continent and it shows. Arrival, wee hours of the morning, coincided with arrival of plane from Jeddah - full of white robed men with white or black-robed women, 1 : 4 ratio. Dad held all the passports. Extremely lively affair.
I could have spent weeks in Cairo as opposed to the few days I had. Saw the Archeological Museum, which is brilliant, lots of stuff higgledy-piggledy on the ground floor, like a stone-cutter's yard, top floor full of Tut's gold and mummies. Cairo has lots of interesting areas, Islamic, Coptic, Diplomatic - heavily guarded, you should see the US and the British Embassy fortresses! - I did a lot of walking around. Saw the Giza pyramids of course, and the Sfinx, who / which is smaller than you'd think from the pictures and had a mini-sandstorm during our visit - I teamed up with an Australian fellow.
Did you realise that in order to get into a pyramid you have to crouch down very low and descend a steeply sloping dark tunnel or several of them and that the pyramids are hot inside, not nice and cool? I should have known, having seen old black and white movies about Howard Carter and grave robbers! I praised myself lucky I had only coughed up 20 Egyptian pounds for the second pyramid, not the 80 for the first! After all, there is nothing much to see in them as all the stuff is either in the Cairo Museum or the British.
I'm not going into any more of those, even though I thought I had been cured of almost all my claustrophobia!!! I read somewhere that each visitor loses a couple of liters of sweat inside them! Tasty!
Next Aswan, right in the south of Egypt, by sleeper train. Fended off Chinese man they wanted me to share compartment with and got nice Yankee woman instead. The Nile is amazing, so is Aswan and the Western Desert. Place full of Nubians in long dresses. Up the Nile to Luxor by short Nile Cruise on M/S Florence. I decided against doing the trip on a felucca (Egyptian sailing boat), having seen the rather primitive crafts, but more importantly having to spend two days in the very close company of 7 strangers decided me against this form of transport. More on Luxor later.
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