Cairo

While all of this trip has been a “highlight” for Norm, Barb (especially Barb!) and Mitchell, today was THE highlight, Cairo and the Pyramids! It was also our second “private tour” experience, this one booked through a company named, appropriately enough, Ramses Tours. After the usual post-breakfast bathroom delays, we rolled out at 8:00AM to find our guide waiting for us and off we went. Our guide this morning (and for tomorrow in Alexandria as well, was a personable young man named Islam (as in the religion) and while we didn’t actually learn too much about his background, he certainly knew his Ancient Egyptian history!


The downside to touring Cairo from Alexandria is the three hour drive each way. But, while the tour buses must travel in convoy with a police escort, individual tour vans like the one we were in are free to come and go as they wish. The result is our drive to Cairo was about two and half hours (with a “pee break”) vs the three plus in the convoys.

The biggest advantage to a private tour is flexibility. There were in excess of 60 buses lined up outside the ship for the tours this morning and almost all of them were headed to Cairo in general and the Pyramids in particular. Knowing this from our trip two years ago, Larry suggested to Islam that we do the tour in reverse order, the Egyptian Museum first, then lunch and the Pyramids. While both sites were still crowded, the size of the crowds at each was significantly less than the last time we were here. As an aside, the other advantage is that when Islam asked, after leaving the Pyramids, if we wanted to go to a bazaar to shop, we told him to head for the ship. Try doing that on a bus full of tourists!

Mitchell in particular can now say that he’s been somewhere that NONE of us (including Larry and Monica) has ever been before - he’s been inside a real pyramid! There were optional ‘tours’ to go inside either the Great Pyramid or Khafre’s Pyramid. Since we didn’t have the time to wait for Mitch to make the apparently quite lengthy and strenuous trip into the Great Pyramid, he did the 15 minute tour of Khafre’s Pyramid. He said there wasn’t really much to see, but it was worth it for the experience.

This is a trip that is better seen than read about, so we will let the pictures do the talking from here……….

The Hard Rock Cafe (our guide Islam on the right and his 'trainee')

Oh, and did we mention the camel ride included with our tour?????

 
 

 
And after all that....we got back to the ship at about 7:45 and managed to get dinner in the Windjammer Cafe just before all those other buses returned.