April 5th, Spring Break Day 4

We took a school van and driver and picked up Dr. Joyce (our head of school) and her daughter and son (Leticia and Manuel). We will be traveling with them for the next several days. We drove down to Cairo and picked up Joyce’s friend Sherif, who lives and works in Cairo and was to be our tour guide for the day. First stop….THE GREAT PYRAMIDS OF GIZA. Seth and I were excited to finally be showing my parents some of Egypt’s great wealth of ancient history. We were all very disappointed to see that it was such a hazy day and where hoping it would burn off soon for some better pictures. We spent several hours at the great pyramids walking around, going into one of the Queens Pyramids, seeing the new Cheops Boat Museum and of course, the Sphinx.

It was fun to watch the awe inspired faces of my parents and Joyce’s children, since it was their first visit to the pyramids. Seth and I found this visit interesting since last time we came was in November, not during tourist season and were surprised at the lack of tourist and how it was mostly Egyptian school children. Not so this time, there were tons of tourist buses mostly from Europe, not many Americans tour Egypt often.

After we got our fill of the main tourist attraction of Egypt, and the corresponding crowds, we headed over the Sakkara to see the Step Pyramid. It’s unfortunate that people don’t know more about Egypt. Did you know that there are 118 known pyramids in Egypt? Not just the three in Giza. In fact, three other more amazing pyramids in my opinion are just a few kilometers south of Giza, the Step, the Red, and the Bent pyramid. Seth and I went to the Red and Bent Pyramid in February. (see blog for Feb. 5th) These three pyramid sites are barely visited and never crowded. In fact, none of the big tour bus trips ever come here. They are more interesting to me because they show the trial and errors of constructing these great tombs thousands of years ago. At the right spot on Sakkara, you can see the Pyramids of Giza to the north and the Pyramids of Dahshur to the south.

Since we hadn’t quite got out eye’s full of pyramid gazing for the day. We went back to Giza and had a late lunch at a famous fish restaurant latterly across the street from the Great Pyramid. We sat on the balcony to get the full view. Fish is a main staple in Egyptian food and Seth and I enjoy it at least once a week if not more. Egyptians know how to grill up a good fish. However, we forgot to tell mom that they serve the fish whole here, and she was quite surprised when they set her fish down in front of her and it was staring back at her. Dad got to sample his first Egyptian beer. There are only three types of beer in Egypt. They import Heineken and then the two local beers are Stella and Sakkara. If you were reading carefully you know what Sakkara was named after. I had Mom try some lemon juice, one of Seth and mines favorite and one of the most popular drinks here.

After lunch we went our separate ways from Dr. Joyce’s family for the night, they were staying with Sherif’s family and we were staying at a hotel in Maddi. Maddi is an area of Cairo that is known to be very nice and were a lot of the expats live and also a lot of the foreign embassy. On the ceiling of our hotel room is a little sticker with and arrow that points to which way Mecca is so that Muslims can pray.

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