Drifting Down The Nile

Flung open the curtains this morning to see the Pyramids and the Sphinx staring back at us. Now there's a sight I don't see every day. However, today isn't the day to visit the Pyramids, which is technically in Giza. Today is the tour of all things to be found in Cairo, but first it was an Egyptian breakfast of chick pea balls, curry, pita bread, soft cheese, juice and coffee on the rooftop, whilst watching the locals marshall the donkeys, horses, camels and trinkets to entice or harass the day's tourists with, depending on your point of view.

Our guide, Dahlia, and the driver arrived promptly at 9, and we headed off to the Coptic quarter of the city. Dahlia is very knowledgeable, but sets a cracking pace, striding off to the next thing as soon as she finishes one explanation, so we learned to tarry if we wanted to look at something more closely. We started with the Citadel of Babylon, followed by several Coptic churches, and lastly the Jewish Synagogue, which was originally a church, but sold to the Jewish community to pay back taxes owed to the state.

Then it was off to the Egyptian Museum. Thousands of exhibits, so we only picked the eyes out of it all in the two hours we were there. It's just plain hard to fathom that most of the exhibits are between three and five thousand years old as they are generally in such good condition. The highlight, of course, was the Tutankhamun room, with the famous burial mask and mummy found inside the 3 shrines that fit together 'russian doll' style, the gilded bier (bed), thrones and lots more. Sorry, but you weren't allowed to take photos so I can't really show you, but it was just as good as the pictures make out.

Needing a break, our guide bought us lunch of our choosing, falafel for Greg and koshari for Mandy, and drove us own to the Nile (as you do) and hired us a private felucca to sail down the river while we had lunch. Felucca's are sailing boats with distinctive triangular sails, which have one big drawback when tourists want to hire them on windless days, so the poor crewman had to pole us up river against the current for three quarters of an hour, before allowing us to drift all the way back down. It's obviously not the Nile that the Pharaoh's knew, but a really relaxing way to see some of the city.

After lunch it was off to the Islamic quarter where we walked through one of the old city gates in the protective wall, visited a large mosque, and wandered through the streets and markets looking at the variety of buildings, shops and stalls. Lots of gold and jewelry shops, and a lot of disconsolate guys looking in windows. Seems that it's the tradition for the groom to take the bride shopping for her wedding gold, accompanied by the bride's mother, sisters and female attendants to ensure that he spends far more than he has.

After a time of exploration of the maze of market laneways, it was back to the hotel for a dinner of kebabs, salad, bread, and rice pudding on the rooftop while we watched the nightly sound and light show on the pyramids, before blogging and heading to bed to catch up on the few hours sleep we had last night.