First Full Day with Tour Group

Full, tiring day today! We went to the Giza district of Cairo, where we viewed two pyramids and the Sphinx. There were thousands of people everywhere, it was crazy. We paid extra to take a tunnel and walk inside the second pyramid, but it was not very exciting, and a long low walk down and then up into a ‘room’ with an empty stone casket. The Sphinx was amazing, but somehow not as large as we imagined, although it is huge. There were men with camels who would take you for a camel ride but we didn’t do it today. After shawarma for lunch (chicken and peppers in a wrap), we went to the Cairo Museum, the largest in the world. It had so many artifacts from the pyramids, and they were so amazing; we could not take it all in. Cairo is such a huge city, and although some areas have a lot of garbage, other ares have a HUGE amount of garbage, unimaginable, really. There are millions of unpainted high rise buildings, with an equal number of dishes on the roofs, some of the residences didn’t have windows, so I guess that was their air conditioning. We got to the train station and watched as some trains came and went while we waited. One train which was taking workers from Cairo back to their homes in villages outside Cairo, had hundreds of people, mainly men, pushing and shoving to get on....they pushed and pushed until nearly everyone made it inside; it was quite a sight. We boarded our train at 8pm, and we had a sleeper compartment for two that had seats that converted to a bed, with another upper bed that folded down from the wall. They served us a chicken dinner which was so-so, but we had our own snacks to supplement it. The train and beds were decent enough, but the noise, movement of the train, stopping and starting all night meant a very poor sleep.Read more