Bāb al Lūq

Today we saw the pyramids! We are still pinching ourselves that we’re in Egypt. Christina had booked a tour for us but then cancelled it a few days beforehand because we wanted to go to a different museum after the pyramids. She ended up getting another guide while we were having coffee yesterday morning, so we jumped in the cars and went off hoping for the best.

We had two separate cars and we were in a car with Sam, and our driver didn’t speak English. Our first stop was Sakkara — we saw the step pyramid and also went inside the best preserved tomb that had a 3D imagine engraved on the wall that you can only see in a certain light.

We then headed to Dahshur to see the red pyramid and the bent pyramid (from a distance). We went inside the red pyramid which was a very long steep tunnel that meant walking down being hunched over. It was very claustrophobic and there wasn’t much down there!

We finally headed back up towards the Giza pyramids. We all did camel rides and Tegan’s camel was a pest, bumping and biting everyone. The ride was bumpy, long and extremely hot (39 degrees) but they took us to a pretty good view of the pyramids where we got a bunch of photos. We then headed to the Sphinx, but by this stage we were all very hot and tired. The size of the pyramids is incredible.

Unfortunately the guide we had wasn’t very good — he took us to two unplanned stops, a carpet making school and a papyrus art shop, both of which gave us short tours and then tried to get us to buy something. He also wasn’t an informative guide, and came up with some pretty ridiculous answers to a few of our questions.

But we had a great day and loved seeing the pyramids and tombs in person. We were supposed to go to the civilisation museum after the pyramids but we ran way over time and so we just got the drivers to drop us home.

We went out for a quick dinner after a rest and then came home and slept very well.En savoir plus