Last But Not Least ...Egypt

The morning we arrived in Alexandria, Egypt the fog was so thick that Captain Eric had crew members standing at the railing and was asking, "Can you see the dock now?" They responded, "No." "Can you see it now?" "No" "Can you see it now?" "Oh yes!" and it was RIGHT THERE. How he got us through that harbor safely no one knows. The whole boat was up super early as these two days in Egypt werewhat most people came to see....including us. But heavy fog closed the highways causing a 2 hour delay. Chris has long said that he had no desire to visit Cairo, as we get enough of the Middle East as is. However, I have wanted to see the Pyramids all my life. I figured taking a cruise was the perfect way to get him there because it would be for only two days with other desirable destinations along the way. There were one- or two-day shore excursion options into Cairo, but with a family our size going in and staying the night would have almost doubled the cost of our cruise. So, we opted for one extremely long day in Cairo with the option of touring local Alexandria the second day if there was no mutiny from the littles.

Graham immediately fell asleep once we got on our cramped tour bus that had a stinky toilet that shot water up to the ceiling if the lid wasn't closed. About two hours into our 3 hour 45 minute ride, Graham ate a snack, got real cuddly again and then threw up all over himself, and me, and the aisle. After putting as much newspaper down as possible in the aisle and cleaning up what we could, he did it again. I assumed that the cramped hot bus that was inducing the motion sickness we are prone to. I spent the next hour and a half wondering how bad it really stunk to everyone else and what exactly would we wear. I had no extra clothes for myself or Graham and kept envisioning really hideous tourist shirts in our future.

When we arrived, everyone hurried off the bus-- not only because of delays (we had only a short time at the pyramids), but because by this time I'm sure the smell was overwhelming. While Chris helped us clean up and went out to find something for G. to wear, a fellow passenger came back and literally gave me the shirt off his back since he had been wearing two. I was beyond grateful for this kind gesture. Without it we would not have been able to enjoy the rest of the day.

Once we stopped G. perked right up and never had a problem the rest of the day. The Step-Pyramid above and Giza Pyramids below are impressive but the chaos of vendors, thieves, and police were overwhelming. They all want one thing--your money--and will scam you any way they can such as: make you pay one price to ride the camel and then charge you more to get down, offer to take your picture and then refuse to give your camera back until you pay, and if none of that works just take your wallet right from your hands as happened to one man in our tour group. Our tour guide spent the entire bus trip into town warning us of the various ways we could be scammed.

Despite all of that it is amazing to think we stood in the shadows of one of the ancient seven wonders of the world. The largest built by King Cheops around 2650 B.C. is made up of almost 2.5 million bricks. There is nothing left inside except for some graffiti and we were encouraged not to pay to see for ourselves. I think Zach was a bit disappointed that all the treasures would be seen later at the Egyptian Museum and not at the pyramids.

The Museum was a piece of work in itself. It was crowded, a bit dark, and dusty but going on a December evening was manageable since it lacked AC. Cameras are strictly forbidden inside so I can't show you what we saw but we did learn some fascinating things. When the rich had statues made of themselves it wasn't of how they looked but how they hoped to look in the afterlife. Kings' statues had abnormally large eyes (to see all), ears (to hear all), hands (to control all), and usually one foot slightly ahead of the other (I can't remember why). All of the King Tut Treasures we saw were authentic. The boys sure perked up to listen when we saw his underwear. However, our tour guide said if you have ever visited a traveling exhibition of King Tut's things they were replicas, as the museum does not loan them out. Also due to advancements in science it is now known that both King Tut and Queen Nefertiti were not murdered as once thought. Tut fell (Later investigation shows he died in a Chariot accident) and broke his neck and Nefertiti died of breast cancer. We viewed not only a human mummy but also a plethora of mummified animals including: crocodiles, dogs, birds, and a snake just to name a few.

Our last stop took us to a Papyrus factory where we watched a demonstration of how the ancient paper is made. Even though it was interesting, the exhaustion was setting in on us all and we had no desire to buy anything. A hungry and travel-weary group gathered back to the bus for the long journey back. A serious accident along the route home caused some major delays making the journey even longer. We arrived back at the boat around 11 pm, but were fortunate compared to some others who didn't make it back until 2 am.

The next morning we were all exhausted. After sleeping in, we lounged around trying to decide if we really wanted to head into Alexandria and try and see something. What we had seen from our bus ride the previous day looked much like our local cities here in Saudi, and since we were on vacation to get away from all that we just decided to relax on the boat. We also were glad we hadn't taken any of the longer trips into Luxor or the Valley of the Kings as all those expensive trips were cut short due to the fog.