The Ancient History Tour

We both woke super early this morning(see my earlier post!), so had a leisurely morning over breakfast and coffee. We then packed our gear, and the hotel stored it for us, then we hit the street. We negotiated a driver, Ibrahim, a toothless wonder, to take us to the Egyptian Museum. The new museum, being built across the road from our hotel, will unfortunately not be ready til next year (at least). It will, however, be worth it. Recommend anyone planning to visit Cairo wait for it to open! The building is massive!

So, the drive was about 30 minutes, and asJill will attest,they are mad, but amazing drivers! We arrived to the Museum at 9.30 am,and Ibrahim went to find a spot to sleep, to come pick us up at 4 pm. All that for 150 EGP (about$12).

The museum is amazing, but everything is jam packed in. There has not been much care of the artefacts, and most of the display labels are so old they’re barely readable. But, the artefacts themselves are mind blowing. There were two royal mummy rooms that we paid extra to see, but photography was not permitted. Ramses, Hatshepsut, all the Thutmoses and Akhenaten were there. Very surreal to see the bodies of these Pharoahs I studied in high school. It almost is sacreligious - I’m sure this is not what they planned their after-life to be. Other mummies still are stacked up on shelves, three and four high!

Tutankhamen had his own room, with artefacts I studied at school, the gold throne, the gold mask. Unfortunately,I did not see the ‘no photography’ sign, and I was made to delete the great photo of the mask I got. Oh well! It is in my head, and was amazing.

We wandered through the museum for about 5 hours. Too early for Ibrahim, we decided to walk to the Nile,and cross a couple of bridges. It was quite warm at this stage, so the walking was hard. We took our life in our hands, and crossed the road a few times. This is no mean feat - there are no traffic lights with pedestrian signals, and certainly no zebra crossings! Somehow it works, and we didn’t die. A great achievement, I think! There are no lanes, so there an be 6 cars across what is essentially a 2 lane street. In between that, pedestrians run across the road. It is chaos,with the beep beep of car horns, motor scooters with three people on ( the rider, his wife in her galabaya side saddle across the back, and at least one child sandwiched between, or perched in front of the rider. They weave in and out of the cars. , who miss them, and each other by centimetres.

The afternoon was very hot, so we went to the Ritz- Carlton for drinks by the pool. It was bliss. We are both a bit jet-lagged today, after a very busy couple of days, so at 3.30, we Called Ibrahim to come get us.

We got back to the hotel, collected our bags, and persuaded Ibrahim to drive us the one hour to the airport. He took us by way of Old Cairo, which was very interesting. We passed the tomb of Anwar Sadat, guarded by soldiers.

So, now here we are, awaiting our flight to Aswan, ready for more adventures tomorrow!Read more