Day 25 - Tuesday, 12/03/24 - Cairo

 On this or second day in Cairo, I'm going to depart for my normal style of just talking about what we did and talk more about observations of the culture and what I see around us.  But first, I will give a description of what we did for the day. 

Our day started with awakening to a smoggy sky with the glow of the now rising sun, overlooking the Nile river with couple groups of rollers doing their early morning practice down the still and calm waters of the river. The buffet breakfast in the hotel was the most lavish we have ever experienced. One whole wing of the buffet was pastries and the lake and the other section was devoted to cooked items and one could order an omelette or fried eggs cooked to order. We met our guide Ahmed at 7:25 AM and boarded our little minivan and drove to the first set of pyramids at Saqqara. This site is according to our guide the first recorded location where stone was used for construction of buildings. The pyramid here is of a step nature with seven steps and there is a walled area that was uncovered in the 1800s and preserved by a French archaeologist. We wandered the grounds and Ahmed explained a lot of the history behind the pyramid.

We then returned to the van and we're driven to a Turkish rug school. I would put School in quotes as it really was a factory where young ladies sat in front of looms and weaved the rugs and tapestries for 6 to 8 hours a day. To me, it would be very boring and tedious work, but these ladies are artists and the workmanship and craftsmanship is simply stunning. We were then taking up to the main floor and a fairly hard sell was made by the personnel up there. In the end, Angela elected to purchase a silk tapestry of hieroglyphics that's quite pretty and was $140 US.

From here we drove about 45 minutes to the pyramids of Giza, which was the main attraction for the day. There are three pyramids here and it's absolutely stunning to see these pyramids in person. They are very close to the GEM museum and the hustle and bustle of the city is quite nearby. There were many many tour buses and tourists along with mini camels and horse drawn carts, all filled with tourists. We were able to take a number of pictures and selfies, and once again to explain some of the history of the pyramids, and it was quite engaging. The giant sphinx was located nearby and we drove there and were allowed to go into a special area that general tourist could not go to, and it gave us great views of the sphinx where more pictures were taken. 

Leaving this area we passed through a what I would call a commercial area that was filled with all measure of shops and super crowded, but our driver skillfully guided us through the maze and out to the highway. Just before the toll plaza, we stopped at a restaurant for a local dish that our guide said would be quite nice.

The the local dish koshary was composed of a couple types of noodles, chickpeas, garbanzo, and crushed lentils with local spices. A tomato sauce was poured on top of it and one could embellish it with a spicy sauce. It was amazingly good. We also enjoyed a dessert of some rice pudding, which was really good also. We then hopped on the toll road, which is comprised of five lanes and we headed back to the port, which was about 2 1/2 hours away. As we reached Alexandria, the traffic intensity increased after the toll exit and our driver skillfully got us to the port area where with the assistance of some local currency, we were allowed to drive to the drop off point closer to the terminal building. If that greasing of the palms had not worked, we would've had to walk approximately a mile from the port gate to the ship. We were scanned through security in the port building, and then walked to the ship where we rescanned back onto the ship and went through another security scan of our baggage. We were on board the ship approximately 5 PM with a on board time of 5:30PM. The captain gave his normal departure announcement but noted that we had a medical situation that they were dealing with, and that might affect our departure. We went out to the railing on deck three portside and watched as an ambulance pulled up and a lady was wheeled out on a gurney along with what was probably her husband and they were taken for medical care and unfortunately, their trip was over. We then adjourned up to the Crows Nest for a Coke Zero and watching the departure of the ship. In the background, the evening trivia was starting and we left so that we didn't have to endure the noise of that, but the sail away was quite pretty in the darkness and out of the port into the open sea. 

Since our lunch was so big, we skipped dinner and went right to the main stage for the evening entertainment, which was Ruben Villagran.  Afterwards we watched a movie, Being Rose before returning to our stateroom  early plus we get an hour back tonight as we begin our westward journey to Fort Lauderdale.

Now I will digress for some thoughts on visiting Egypt.  This may be a little long, so if you're not interested in my opinions or facts, you may want to skip it, but otherwise continue reading. When we first told our friends that we were planning to travel to Egypt, we were met with great concerns about our safety and whether it was wise to travel there. We're very seasoned travelers and generally pretty aware of our surroundings and we assessed that there were no real greater risks in traveling there at this time and the cruise line would definitely not travel there if there's any significant risk or any sort of other issue. 

And this leads me to sort of the first paradox that I find in visiting Egypt. That paradox is that Egypt is the one fully Arab  country that has a peace treaty with Israel. This of course makes Egypt at odds with many of their more conservative Muslim neighbors, but that many many Jewish travelers visit Egypt as tourist. In fact, our guide Ahmed recounted that he has guided a number of Jewish groups to see the historical scenery found in and around Cairo in the Nile. 

The second paradox that we observed was that Egypt is a country, richly steep and historical significance throughout the ages. It's mentioned in the Bible that children of Israel spent time here they were pharaohs ruled the country for many hundreds of years and the country is exhibited great influence throughout the Middle East. Now it really has a political power seems to be a shade of its former self. In terms of economy, the biggest hit to the economy is the actions of the Houthie in Yemen, which is restricting the amount of shipping passing through the Suez Canal. Revenues from that activity on an annual basis have dropped 60% from normally about $1 billion a year to only around $400,000 a year. This puts a giant crimp on the economy. The land is also a rich agricultural land and the role of tourism is also very important to them. With the building of the GEM museum, they rapidly learned that there was a need for another airport to service the number of people who would be visiting that new new museum. So another airport was built called Sphinx. Alexandria and Cairo are both cities that are marked by very sharply contrasting lifestyles of the rich and the poor.   Furthermore, the amount of traffic that is on the local streets is absolutely stunning in terms of the sheer quantity. For us as Americans traveling there, it is a quite nerve-racking experience to see cars darting in and out, motorcycles or three wheel tuk tuks darting in and out and people crossing the street without hardly any regard for the traffic; they don't even look at the drivers, they simply step out and walk and expect that they won't get hit. We also observed that that lanes and lane markers are really only a suggestion. It was not uncommon for a driver to position our vehicle over a line on the main highway, and therefore protecting his potential use of either lane as he saw fit. The drivers have signals that they make by using the horn. There's the constant beep beep of horns going off and also by our driver, and people tend to give away and allow cars in and not get totally upset if somebody wants to get ahead of you. However, they can also be quite firm in holding their lane position if they do not want somebody to get in and feel that they have the priority. and this occurs on all streets and not just in roundabouts in the like.

We also observe great hospitality by the Egyptian people from our guide our driver, the hotel, staff personnel in the museums. At the sphinx, we were wanting to take a group picture and our guide approached a couple that was arriving at our location and asked if they would take a picture turned out they were Algerian. After they took our picture , I approached them and offered to take their picture so they could both be in it with the sphinx, and that was my first encounter with an Algerian and we shook hands and all was good with the world at that moment. And that's what travel is like. It's the little simple things of a handshake, a smile, taking in all of scenery that is totally mind-boggling how it was created. We are truly blessed to be able to travel like this and hope to continue as long as we have our health. I don't think the desire will wane, but our bodies will probably wear out.

So in conclusion for this entry, I would encourage you if you have any interest in seeing the pyramids or the Sphinx and the like of Egypt, please make plans to go there and see it for yourself and if you have any questions about the guide we used or those kinds of details feel free to contact me and I'll pass on whatever information I can. And if you made it this far, thanks for reading. It really helps me to document my thoughts and feelings as I will frequently go back and read my comments to refresh my memory about places we've visited things we've seen and the people we've met.