Day 24 - Monday, 12/02/24 - Alexandria
Despite doing a partial run to a vessel in distress the ship docked around 6 AM this morning. We were up at five as we needed to do eat some breakfast and then meet our group at 6:25am. Down at the gangway on deck A we were greeted by an Egyptian authority who wanted to examine our passports for the immigration stamp, and with that accomplished, we scanned off the ship, walked through the terminal and then down a long parking lot looking for our guide. We didn't initially find him and then our group leader had a local use his phone to call the guide and we learned that he was meeting outside the gate, but we didn't know where the gate was, but we learned where it was and began a walk of at least a half a mile up and over a bridge and then met with some officials and signed out and one of those official officials called our guide and it turned out he was across the street.
We decided we wanted to have some dinner so we went down to the concierge and asked for recommendations and learned that there was a Lebanese restaurant on level four of the hotel called Aura. We were warmly greeted by the staff there and seated with a view of the very large swimming pool and next to the pool was a young lady singing, which was quite lovely. The menu was really attractive and we ended up choosing a Lebanese soup and Arabic salad and a grilled meat dish prepared Lebanese style featuring Grilled lamb, beef and chicken. Dessert was a baklava stuffed with pistachios and topped with a luscious pickled pear.
We greeted one another with introductions and encouraged him to be more descriptive for future guests as to where he would meet them. We then boarded a very nice white van and met our driver, Arafa. It was then time to wind our way through the streets of Alexandria turned out to be quite the experience with the new traffic patterns that we weren't used to. Lanes are really only a suggestion and often times five lanes were made out of four and scooters particularly would dash in and out and around and there's constant beeping of horns and but nobody got upset. They just went with the flow and traffic moved.
It was about a 2 1/2 hour drive from Alexandria to Giza. We did make a rest stop about halfway there at the Omar oasis. Along the way, it was very interesting to note the existence of pigeon houses, as they are reasonably tall structures like in the shape of a bullet and have holes for the pigeons to get out, but they raise the young pigeons for food and they harvested it about 50 days or so. Another thing we noticed was the existence of a number of empty buildings. At one point, we even passed by a prison that looked like a shopping mall, and it was pretty impressive. Not that I would want to be imprisoned there. I'm it also commented that Egypt is a very common destination for Israeli tourist, and that Egypt and Israel have remained at peace with one another since the peace treaties of the Carter Sadat era.
At the end of this 5 Lane Highway we entered Giza and the grand Egyptian museum was on our right. We hopped out of the van and went through security and obtained our tickets and stopped in front of the museum for some initial guidance by Ahmed. He then took us on a tour through the museum . This brand new museum, which is partially open features a giant statue of Ramses II, and it has been under construction since 2005. Museum is a magnificent structure and inside we use moving elevated walkways to go up to what was probably the third or fourth floor to begin our tour.
We walked around various galleries with Ahmed, explaining of the significance and importance of the various artifacts, and it was pretty cool that we had earpieces so that he could talk and we could hear, even though we didn't have to be right in his presence. Initially, I was apprehensive about visiting the museum since it was only partially open, but I'm glad I changed my mind as there are a great deal of artifacts there. In all we spent about two hours in the museum before heading out to go to visit the old museum. Along the way we asked Ahmed to get us a snack or something so in Cairo, which is just across the Nile river from Giza we pulled over to the side of the road and double parked while Ahmmed dashed across four lanes of traffic to a fast food place and purchased some wonderful chicken sandwiches and french fries, which was a perfect meal that we could eat on the go.
Arriving at the old museum, we were let out of the van and went through security once more and entered this vintage British style museum. It was constructed beginning in the 1905 and housed much of Egypt archaeological treasures until the GEM museum was opened last year. Eventually, all of the archaeological treasures will be moved to the new museum, which has a large amount of space available for displaying the artifacts. In the old museum, the major display item was related to King Tut. In one part of the museum there was a special King Tut room, which had his sarcophagus which we had seen in Seattle back in the 1980s when it was on tour. With the completion of the new museum, I doubt that it'll ever leave Egypt again. We spent another couple hours at this museum and at the end of the tour Angela and I did some shopping and found some interesting gifts.
After visiting the old museum, Ahmed had our driver take us to do some shopping. It turned out that the places were much like a Turkish rug sales store, which all of us had previously experienced. At the first shop, we were all particularly not pleased with the overly pushy sales person, and politely excused ourselves. At the papyra museum, we listen to a presentation on how papayra is processed, which was sort of interesting, but that type of item didn't appeal to any of us. We then asked if there was a spice shop nearby that we could visit and there was one a few doors up the street. Like the other shops you greeted at the door and then you go downstairs and it opens up into actually a really nice looking area with all kinds of spices. The owner greeted us offering tea and coffee and some snack treats. He then presented and described the various spices that he had available. We all ended up buying something as the prices were reasonable, and the products were something that we could use.
We then piled back into the van and headed for our hotel, The Four Seasons Residences, in heavy, probably rush-hour, traffic that was standing still. Arriving at the hotel, we experienced for us at least the first time of having our luggage scanned before entering the hotel. We were quickly processed by the front desk personnel and given an upgrade in our room. This new room number 1902 overlooks the Nile river and it's a wonderful view. We can also get a peekaboo view of the pyramids which we also had seen earlier from the museum. The room is wonderful, spacious, and features both a tub and a shower. The hotel also features high-speed Internet and we used some time to catch up on that as we didn't have internet for most part of the day as our T-Mobile service did not operate in Egypt.
Given that we had a long day already, we adjourned back to the room (we skipped visiting the mall which was part of the hotel complex and will try and get some sleep as we have to be up around 6:15 or so tomorrow morning to have breakfast and meet up with our group for a 7:25 AM departure to visit the Sphinx and the pyramids before returning to the ship.
When we told our friends that we were going to Egypt, there was great apprehension about coming here because of the conflicts in the general area but we really haven't experience any fear concerns about being here and really would I think like to come back and do some work traveling. Perhaps we would go deeper into Egypt like to the valley of the Kings. Maybe down the Nile what doesn't. What I really would like to do would be go through the Suez Canal and visit Petra, but that is probably off the books for a while because of the conflicts in the area. Our guide also commented that tourism is really been hurt here because of the conflicts in the area. Also, the conflicts, particularly with the Houthi, have reduced the amount of revenue from ships coming through the Suez Canal by 60% normally they have a roughly $1 billion a year coming through as revenue and it's now only running around $400,000.
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