Cairo Continues...

The Great Pyramids

The Sphinx

The first layer of the pyramid

Spent my first day visiting the pyramids which turns our are more than just a big pile of 4000+ year old building blocks.  I was able to go inside of the one with the still intact top.  There is no photography allowed inside the pyramids so here’s a photo of me inside the pyramid.  Thank you iPhone!!!

The entrance into the pyramid is only about 4 ft tall and has hand railings on both sides to so you are able to hold yourself steady as you descend approx. 100 ft down then another 50 ft up all the while staring at the ass of the person in front of you.  Once inside, in the exact center, is a room that opens up about 30 ft high where the body and treasures were laid.  The memory I will take away from this experience will be the smell.     Since there is little ventilation within the tomb, the tomb smells like the inside of a shoe...a really really bad smelling shoe.  Oh did I say that the temperature is quite high as well?  So the inside of a hot, moist, sweaty smelly sneaker.  Um yeah.  I guess there’s a price to pay to earn the bragging rights of being inside the Great Pyramid that’s visited by over 5000 people daily.  All in all, it’s pretty spectacular to be amongst something that was put in place and is still standing from so long ago.  

Here’s a few photos from Cairo.  Actually a beautiful city and relatively clean, Cairo didn’t fail to impress me.  Here’s a view of the skyline from Al-Azhar Park, their equivalent of Central Park.

Al-Azhar Park

On my second day, I went to the Egyptian Museum.  Sadly, the museum looks like it is quite short of funding as everything is cramped into 2 small floors.  Again, no photography is allowed but the main attraction is the King Tut exhibit which is amazing.  To think of the age of these items and to know that so many of these treasures were found and looted along the years (again +4000 years ago) to have one complete tomb untouched for such an eternity is quite amazing.  I wondered what it must have been like to be the one who wandered upon this great find not even knowing at the time what it was.  These Egyptians were smart dudes.  I once buried a jar of coins within the pine trees near my home in Wisconsin as a boy.  I doubt anyone will ever find or care about this in the year 2384 A.D.

Just a few random pics of what I saw walking through the local markets of Cairo.

Egyptian phone repair labor union rep.

Buffalo Head anyone?  I'll take the hooves.