Fresh Off the Boat

There is something about a big, crowded city that just makes me so happy. We are finally off the boat and back in Cairo. It's a dirty, overwhelming place (camels were running down the street tonight and I swear we came close to hitting another car/person/animal every 5 minutes on the road) but it is much more comforting to me than a cruise ship. Cairo reminds me of Taipei when I was a kid--before it became rich and modernized, before the Japanese department stores (I heart Takashimaya), and before there was an American fast food joint every block (not that I wasn't a grateful 9 year old ex-pat when that first McDonald's opened...) Of course, they have their fast food here too--our guide joked that KFC here is Kentucky Fried Camel.

Today was Day 7 of the trip and we have finally seen the pyramids at Giza! I'm a pretty jaded traveler, but I was still impressed. It's strange that the only remaining of the Seven Wonders of the World is stuck smack in the middle of a crowded suburb. The pyramids are massive and the Sphinx is smaller (and in much worse shape) than expected. The best part of Giza was climbing down one of the smaller tombs through a very narrow, steep shaft, into the small burial chamber. Unlike the tombs in the Valley of the Kings in Luxor, there were no paintings or carvings inside--just plain ol' unadorned stone.


We also visited Old Cairo where we went to Ben Ezra Synagogue, the oldest in Egypt, the Hanging Church (Coptic), and the Church of St. Sergus, where it is said to be built over a cave that Joseph, Mary and baby Jesus were sheltered after fleeing to Egypt. By the way, Coptic Christians follow the Orthodox calendar, so they celebrate Christmas on my birthday, not on December 25th. We stopped by Islamic Cairo to the famous Khan Al-Khalili market and had some refreshment at Fishawi's Coffeehouse.















The afternoon was spent in the Egyptian Museum, which houses over 120,000 relics and many of them not organized very well. I focused my remaining energy on the booty from King Tut's tomb and the mummies. Ah, mummies. I paid a cool US$20 to go see the husks of a dozen dead kings. I particularly liked the information card on Queen Hatshepsut (who you'll remember from previous posts dressed like a man and ruled Egypt for many years): Now known to be Hatshepsut, great female pharoah of the 18th Dynasty, this mummy is of an obese female with bad teeth who died between the ages of 45 and 60. Ouch.


Crocodile mummy. The largest one at the Egyptian museum must have been around 10-12 feet long.