Flew 4 hours from Abu Dhabi to Cairo and met at the airport by an APT representative. Transferred to Sofitel. Had a welcome dinner with the tour group – only 9 of us on this tour, 2 from NZ and the rest from Australia.

Thursday morning city tour  – Cairo is huge, dirty, full of traffic and always very busy.

• 80 percent Moslem, 20 percent Christian
• Buses are hop on hop off, doors always open
• Egyptians are a lazy race and do not like to exercise
• The Citadel in the city of Cairo is 900yrs old, built as a fortress but never used for that purpose. Was built 1km from the sandstone mountains for ease of access. The alabaster Mosque is within but only used now on Fridays. The tomb of the original builder Sheik Mohammed Ali lies within.
• Traffic in Cairo is horrendous, bribery for number plates is rife – bribe officials to change the reported plate and they scrub out yours so someone else gets booked.

A visit to the rather large and confusing bazaar was on the agenda but ended up just looking and buying nothing. We were told that this was the site of a terrorist bombing a few yrs ago. A little scary to think that we were standing in the very same bazaar!

Spent the afternoon at The Egyptian Museum – a fascinating museum with statues and artifacts from King Tutenkanem, Queen Neferetiti and a number of true Egyptian Mummies which have been un-earthed – as said, fascinating! What we were amazed at was the size of King Tut’s headpiece – always thought it would be bigger than it really was. The museum itself is very disorganized, not well lit and a bit of a hotch potch but has HUGE potential to be a magnificent museum if only the Egyptians had the money to do it. The shop only had books and postcards! Shock horror – I couldn’t spend money!

Anyway it was a long day Thursday and once again we both missed dinner and crashed instead.

Friday morning was another early one and we were on the bus at 7.30am off to our first stop not far out of Giza at the first and biggest of the pyramids. These in themselves are magnificent of course and one can only realize the magnitude of the building project if you are in front of them. Not only the outside of the pyramids, but a short trek down into the inner of a pyramid also reveals how clever they were to build small caverns within. We spent much of the day visiting different pyramid sites and photo spots to get the best shots and full understanding of what was done so many years ago. Camels and their owners are everywhere as are the touts plying their wares for any small dollar they can get. Take a photo??? Sorry – costs money. Early in the day I ‘showed my money’ to a camel driver first and then he politely posed for me to take photos – hand over the money, then I offered another dollar to sit on the camel and all was good. No arguing, no hassles as long as he knew he was getting paid – a whole measly $2 was all it cost me and he was happy!

Anyway it was a great day – a visit also to the giant Sphinx was spectacular as well – another mindblowing ‘wow’ experience.
A visit to a silk carpet factory on the way back to the hotel – oh for more money!!!!!! They were absolutely beautiful!!! But where would I put one?? Decided that I really didn’t want to spend $600 on something the size of my kitchen mat!!

Back at the hotel again now and ready for a 4am!!!!! Wake up  call. We are off to Luxor on a 7am flight so need plenty of time to get through Cairo traffic.