Day 3 Pyramids and the sands of Giza

Pyramids and the sands of Giza

The morning started at 6AM with no power in the hotel, so getting ready to go was performed by cell phone light.   This make it interesting in a new hotel because you tend to run into things and trip over things much more than you would at home.  About the time Grace finished and the Kids were ready to go the power came back on.   The breakfast in the hotel was much better than all the previous reports that I have read.  In fact it was pretty good.  The tour guide picked us up right at 9 AM and off we went on a Cairo wild ride to the Pyramids.  The Pyramids just sorts of jump out of the Cairo landscape as you get closer to them.  The area around the pyramid is full of sounds and action. It’s very hard to describe but here it goes.  Try and picture this, every time I place a comma another person is talking. Vendors “ post cards want a post card Sir where are you from, Want to buy this for you, 20 pounds, hey this very good quality; Sir want a to ride a camel; Sir where are you from come and look at my scarf’s; Hello Sir Hello what is your name. “   Then you add the school kids that really just want to take picture with you and talk.  They really are a lot of fun.  School kids “Hello where are you from do you speak English, Hi there can we take your picture with us, I’m learning English in school can we talk”.   Now take all this talking and place some camels and horse in the picture, Police on camels chasing people that are trying to sit on the Pyramid blocks or vendor that have done something wrong never could figure out what and then 10 guides all around you explaining the pyramids to their respective tour groups.    Sensory overload I must add but we loved it.  Picture below is the largest Pyramid as you walk towards it from the parking lot.  You can see the entry about 1/2 way down and below that another opening used for tourists. 

School  kids who want their picture taken.  With the solar boat museum in the background.

 The Family at the Great Pyramids.

The calm and collected camels.   In the picture yes but boy did it get exciting later. Grace and Mom enjoy the relaxing ride as it's not going to last.

So look at the nice calm picture below of  the family on camels, seconds after this picture the camel seen in the previous picture decide that my Camel need a bite in the neck and I'm not talking about a little nible, I'm talking a full on wide open jaw around the neck choke the life out type of bite.   I was looking for a place to dismount in a hurry but these camel are tall.  It not like dropping from a horse it's more like dropping from a house.  The guides were smacking the camel and it even bit one of them.  Now Grace and Mama were on the alfa camel and thought they had taken a rodeo ride instead of a camel ride.  They were screaming louder than the guide who got bit and this scared the camel even more.   Grace want a camel ride at the Pyramids and boy did she get one. I asked her so how was your ride.. she stated," oh yeah baby, Love it but won't do it again"!

Kyle after the Rodeo camel ride.

 

The second most Iconic symbol of Egypt is the Sphinx.  There is a great deal of remodling work going on to restore years of damage but you really can see what an impressive monument it must have been.  It is hard to take a picture of the complete complex that contains the Pyramids and the Sphinx but one can only imagine how grand it would have been during the days of the Pharaoh.

I really wanted to go into a Pyramid and see just what a burial chamber would look like.  The passages are very small but the rooms are suprisingly much bigger than expected. Just think of all the weight that must be supported in the rooms with a complete Pyramid on top.

  After lunch we received a tour of the country side on the way to Sakara one of the capitals of old Egypt.  Here we visited the step Pyramid of Zoser and the Tomb of Ti... Not our Ti but one that died just a few year earlier like 4000, years.

Here is a few pictures from Ti's tomb. He liked his hippo hunting and many other things that he depicted on the wall of his tomb. I was only able to get a few pictures because of time constraints but I could have spent hours in the tomb. The art work was incredible.