Update and Egypt
Feb. 13th, 2010 02:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zahryn...
I've been terrible at keeping up with the blogging since we got back. Years start has been incredibly stressul and hectic, both at home and at work so although I've been flitting about online here and there, I haven't really had the inclination to sit and blog properly.
So, that's what I'm going to do now, starting with the text from the Egypt Diaries, which turned out to be much longer than I thought it would be, so I'll break it up into chunks, read them at your leisure:
Travelling Day: We arrived at Heathrow with plenty of time to spare. Checked in our luggage after saying goodbye to my folks and then stopped at Café Nero for bacon panini and coffee. Went through to departures and found a bar to sit and drink Bass and Hobgoblin until boarding time. Hobgoblin ran out after 1 pint, the curse has followed us from the New Inn to London :o(
We stopped in the Duty Free bit to buy an adaptor plug for Egypt then made our way through security to the gate. I got stopped and had my bag searched (due to the camera equipment) but by a very nice Indian man who was nice about it and we concluded that if everyone could have a sense of humour about their jobs it would make the whole process much easier.
While we were waiting at the gate to board, we both indulged in some serious people-watching, there was coat-man who seemed to think that he didn’t need to queue like everyone else and started asking the desk attendants to be let through to board right away (which didn’t happen) then he went away for a bit and came back and somehow got through one of the side barriers and tried to sit air-side so he’d be the first to board, until one of the attendants came and moved him.
Then there was turquoise-lady who didn’t have her passport out when it came time to board and then couldn’t find it, so instead of getting out of the queue (and out of the way) she stood right in everyone’s path emptying her bag until she found it. The last irritation was caused by red-dress-woman who attempted simpering her way through early, then wanted to upgrade to 1st class without paying, then tried to start her own queue by a side of the gate that didn’t open and lastly tried pushing her way back into the main queue after she realised!! We stayed sitting down until the queue had cleared and sniggered superiorly at the travelling-idiots.
The previous flight was late so we didn’t board until 40 minutes after the expected time, then flights into and out of London were suspended for about 30 minutes (with the thick Italian accent of the pilot we still have no idea why) and then we sat on the runway queuing for a takeoff slot until 18:45 by which time we were very nervous about connecting in Rome FCO. The flight wasn’t brilliant though I’ve been on worse, my tummy was v. unsettled and reading to distract myself became a very bad idea. I tried to sleep but that didn’t work either due to the length (or lack of) of the flight. Garry was happy reading his book, looking out of the window and asking “are we there yet?” which became a theme which ran throughout the entire holiday :o)
We got to Rome and had to dash through the airport to security following a green-jacketed Alitalia lady, we queued (or at least some of us did) to get through the next set of body and belongings scans then legged it through the terminal to Gate H08 for our next flight….only to find that it had been delayed for us by 40 minutes.
We took a bus to the plane and got on board. We were both very impressed with the seats on Alitalia, plenty of legroom and no feeling of a 4 hour game of “sardines.” We taxied to the runway and I was a bit worried that my tummy might rebel at having no break in between flights but we got some drinks, a bit of food (I ate fish…voluntarily) and then things were a bit rosier. Turquoise-lady, red-dress-woman and false-pink-woman took flights to elsewhere at Rome so we didn’t have to put up with them all the way to Cairo.
I had taken a pen with me to keep my diary, but filling in immigration forms on the plane taught us that it wasn’t working so we borrowed a pen from the man in the aisle seat to finish our forms. After supper, G went back to his book and I played my electronic sudoku game until we landed, still with no idea if our bags had made the connection in Rome. We made our way to passport control, bought our visa stickers, got them stuck into our passports and stamped then headed for baggage claim. We didn’t have long to wait, my bag came off first, then Garry’s and a big dose of worry was over.
I’ll gloss over the taxi-driver nightmare that was Cairo airport, the taxi drivers are really persistent and a couple of smarmy, well-coiffed guys were pushy, bordering on the rude, but we said “NO” a lot. We eventually worked out that there had been some confusion and our driver from the hotel wasn’t coming, so we walked right to the top end of the airport away from all the hassle and found “Ali” who took us to our hotel. Ali was quite funny, even if he didn’t quite know where he was going, we had a false start looking for Ramses St, but eventually we arrived, checked into the Arabesque Hotel completely exhausted and went straight to bed.
Day 1: We started our day with lovely hot showers and then did a bit of unpacking, we hit the streets in search of an ahwa (coffee house) and found a place opposite a huge circular roundabout-y type thing, it didn’t seem to have any actual rules governing who went when, but it was an entertaining place to sit and drink Turkish coffee, mint tea and water, Garry greatly enjoyed the culture difference of being able to sit in the café, drinking tea and smoking at the same time, not having to go outside, huddled in the cold like you would in the UK. We walked into the “Downtown” area and entered the pitched battle ground of mental drivers, walkers and hawkers. We fended off a million “Taxi Cheap” requests and offers of day trips “Citadel – very good, very cheap” and discovered that everyone in Cairo has a “government license” to run a bazaar and they don’t mind buddying up to you in the street to take advantage if you happen to be walking their way. We later discovered that in Egypt, you have to have a government license to run any business, so the people who wave official cards in your face or show you their government code are no more or less special than anyone else doing business in the country (although, they’d have you believe it’s a badge of ‘legitimacy’)
We stopped at the FelFela takeaway place for lunch (after nearly 14 hours with no food) and enjoyed the board outside advertising all kinds of “Foul” for lunch :o) It was really tasty food and exactly hit the spot, giving us a bit more energy for an afternoons wandering. We made it to Talaat Harb Square and stopped in at the “Groppi” pastry shop to buy sticky cakes and after a bit of a nosey down the alleyways to see what was there we headed back to the hotel and booked our driver for the following days excursion, Saqqara, Dahshur and Giza for LE 250 with an 08:30 start. :o( We finally decided to walk to the train station (Ramses) to buy our train tickets for the onward journey to Luxor, we passed a Mosque on the street with all kinds of signs hanging outside, but the one that grabbed me said: “Minarets are to guide Muslims to prayer, they are not to guide missiles anywhere” which really struck me. It was a lot further than we thought but when we got there, one of the Tourist Police “helped” us to try and buy our tickets. There were no seats left on the 07:30 train we’d originally wanted to take on the 24th December, so we had to buy sleeper car tickets for the night of the 23rd instead (LE 654.) The fact that we actually got tickets at all speaks more highly of the understanding of English demonstrated by the ticket attendant in the Abela office, than of the Tourist Policeman, but you can’t fault his willingness to try and help.
On the 45 minute walk back from the station (with some of the most tortuously high curbs you can imagine) we were stopped by an elderly gentleman who gave us a brief history of his life, including working on the Suez Canal with many nationalities of men in the 60’s followed by a stint working for the English Embassy in Cairo before he retired. He then shook our hands and told G to marry me “right away” before carrying on along the road. One of the nice things we found all over was that some people just want to stop you long enough to Welcome you to their country or city, pass the time of day, demonstrate their English skills and wish you well, sometimes we got a bit into the mindset that everyone who stopped us wanted to sell us something, and we would have missed some genuinely diamond conversations if we’d just ignored everyone who stopped us on the street.
We walked back to the Egyptian Museum trying to find a restaurant that G had enjoyed on his last visit to the city, but the complex around the museum had changed and much of it was a building site so although we walked around the area and down to the Nile, we couldn’t find the restaurant, but G was offered 10,000 camels and 10,000 chickens for me so it wasn’t all bad. Footsore and sweaty we walked along the Nile a little before heading back to the hotel. We flopped on the bed for a bit eating Groppi cakes and drinking water, before taking up residence on a sofa in the hotel sitting room, ordering dinner and cancelling our last nights stay in Cairo due to the trains…would you believe we actually got our money back!?
Now we’re sitting, eating Kofta and bread, resting and getting ready for an early night, Giza tomorrow and tons more walking …
Tired but V. Happy :oD
Day 2: Early start 08:30, meeting Ruby at reception. We got into his Nissan Sunny and headed out of town in search of pyramids. Ruby is brilliant, he talked us through the places we were driving, pointing out buildings of interest and gave us a suggestion: “start old and get newer.” He suggested doing the 3 places on our itinerary in chronological order, Saqqara first with the Step Pyramid, North & South houses and Shaft of Amun Tefnakht. There were lots of touts, all with the same necklaces, bookmarks and postcards but we avoided them all and walked around the whole of Zosers funerary complex relatively unmolested. We read about what we were seeing and were amazed by the scope of the desert and the number of random broken pyramids littering the landscape.
Across the complex we visited the tomb of “TiTi” his wife Nefehetpes and their two sons: Demedj (“the overseer of the duck pond”) and Ti (“the inspector of royal manicurists”) It was a long trip round the mastaba with a “guide” in tow, trying to get ‘baksheesh for nothing’, we lost him eventually and enjoyed looking at the scenes of TiTi’s daily life which seemed to mostly include fishing, butchering cows and fiddling with goats, we came to the conclusion that the archaeologists had got it wrong…TiTi and his family were actually running a regular butcher shop!!
Next we went down into the tomb via a steep, narrow passageway, on a wooden board with metal slats attached to help give purchase. It seemed a very long way down but opened up eventually into a standing area, before another level tunnel took us into the first chamber. I overheard one of the overpriced local guides (that we didn’t get one of) telling another couple that the hieroglyphs in the first chamber were telling of the good deeds of TiTi and his family for their journey to the next life. There was another little tunnel into the sarcophagus chamber which had “stars of the heavens” carved into the ceiling and more hieroglyphics along the walls. The sarcophagus was massive, black and looked as though it was made of solid granite, it must have weighed a ton and neither one of us could work out how they could have got it down there!
We were pleased to discover that ‘Up’ is infinitely easier than ‘Down’ had been in the passageway and emerged into bright sunshine, slightly sweaty but very pleased with what we’d seen. The Step Pyramid of Zoser is the oldest pyramid on Earth, dating from about 2650BC, until in 2580BC Pharaoh Sneferu decided that he wanted to be buried in a tomb with smooth sides. His architects started building a pyramid with 54° angled sides but when they got halfway up it started to collapse, unable to sustain the walls at that angle. So they went away, had a rethink and started building again at a shallower 43° angle, which meant they were able to finish the pyramid. Thus was born the “Bent” pyramid of Dahshur, the first of it’s kind.
Understandably, Pharaoh took one look at this and said there was no way he was going to be ‘honoured’ under that, so he set his architects building again, this time starting the pyramid at the 43° angle and this is the “Red” pyramid of Dahshur, the first good one of its kind :o)
125 stone steps, varying in steepness are the way to the entrance of the Red Pyramid, followed swiftly by a 63m downward sloping passageway like the one at TiTis tomb, but longer in length and shorter in height. Not sure what to say about the inside, it stinks of Ammonia and although it’s probably seen as quite plain inside, I was impressed by the sheer mechanics of creating a 12-15 foot high vaulted ceiling, in perfect alignment all the way up and the chance to see up-close the tight fit and perfect edges of the stonework was worth the sweat and toil. At the Red pyramid it is not easier on the way up, it’s a hard slog and very much more difficult with a backpack on. Bent double, head down, uphill for 63m wouldn’t normally be my idea of fun, but I’d do it again in a heartbear!!
After the Red pyramid, we drove back down through downtown Dahshur, contemplating stopping for Camel-meat-on-a-stick or “Kofta” as it’s known locally, but upon seeing the gridlock of the downtown area we decided against it. We stopped on the way back to take pictures of the lush green crop and palm trees, such a vibrant shade of green it was a rare sight in a day of desert.
When we got back to Cairo we stopped at Golden Eagle papyrus “museum” where we were given tea and a lesson in how papyrus is made, we also had two famous papyrus scenes explained to us, one of which was the story told on the papyrus that G bought last time he was in Egypt: the Last Judgement. The other was the famous Egyptian Calendar which we both really liked so we ended up buying 2, one for us in blue and one red with gold for Mum and Dad. We also bought a gorgeous black and silver pyramids papyrus and were given a “Honeymoon” papyrus of King Tut and his wife in a lotus garden with our names in hieroglyphics in cartouches either side, we worked out that we’d got nearly LE 1600 of papyrus for almost half price! :o)
Next stop was a little restaurant for lunch, which Ruby treated us to, our first taste of Kushari (or koshary) a fantastically tasty dish of rice, noodles, lentils, macaroni, fried onions and a hot tomato salsa sauce which you pour over and mix in. It may not sound particularly appetizing but it was lovely!! After lunch we carried on to Giza and (small break for hawking aside) headed to the ticket office and paid our entry. We decided ages ago that we didn’t want to pack the entire plateau, all the tombs etc into our day, we wanted pyramids and the Sphinx (or “Spink” as the Eyptians call it) so we refused the Bedouin horse/camel tour and used our own shoe leather to walk instead, no guide, nothing and it was by far the best way to do it.
The people in and around the plateau will insist it’s too far and try to get you in a kalesh to travel around but it’s no father or steeper than Glastonbury Tor and it’s incredibly difficult to get rid of these people if you show any sign of weakness or indecision. If you want to travel by kalesh and don’t mind paying the fee and the baksheesh then it’s up to you, but we were happy to walk it.
The plateau is divided up and it’s difficult to get from one part to another without having to go back on yourself, we started with the Sphinx, put off all the kids and old people trying to sell us the same bookmarks, postcards and necklaces we saw at Saqqara and then walked up the Pyramids road to the right of the Sphinx. It seems every Egyptian hawker knows every nationality by the same three things. As soon as you identify yourself as English (they don’t seem to understand “British”) you automatically get either:
a) “Oh Manchester United football”
b) “Lovely Jubbly”
c) “Oh, Queen, Very Good”
We passed one guy who offered us his tourist tat for “Asda Price” which was hilarious, especially when he followed it with “cheaper than Asda.” We got up to the top of the hill, I was having trouble fighting the urge to beat the kalesh drivers with their own whips for making their poor skinny horses trot down the pyramids road which is steep and slippery even if you’re not trying to pull (or trying to brake) a cart with 3 people in it, while shod!
When we got to the top, we walked around the biggest (Cheops) pyramid and half-heartedly tried to find a ticket office. It certainly wasn’t obvious, nor was it anywhere near the entrance, so we continued our walk and took some excellent photos of the Cheops (Khufu) pyramid, the pyramid of Chephren (Khafre) and the pyramid of Menkaure (Mycerinus) which were quite breath-taking. As we walked back down the pyramids road again we spotted the sun setting behind the Sphinx so we waited until it was directly behind his head before taking some very lovely picture.
We met an American lady from New York, who lived in Kenya and was holidaying in Egypt, we took some pictures of her (at her request) and then went back down to the Sphinx entrance, we wanted to price some glass engraved pyramids and as we got to the bottom of the stairs, I heard someone go down hard behind me, then nearly had my legs knocked out by the person hitting my legs from behind. It was an older man who seemed to have lost his balance on a step while trying to get away from one of the (more persistent) hawker kids. We helped him up and he seemed to be ok, more worried about his camera but that was (fortunately) fine. The Sphinx gate was closed by this time (after 4pm) so we made our way back to Ruby and he brought us back to the hotel.
We had a quick break then went out for tea, although we got stopped by “Mohammed” who took us into his perfume shop for Bedouin coffee, which was less bitter than the, more usually served Turkish coffee. While there, he took us through his oil and perfume collection which we expected, but since I’d already expressed an interest in shopping for Egyptian perfume (no oil, alcohol or chemicals) we didn’t fight too hard. After “letting” Mohammed make us happy by making him happy, we walked round the block to a ATM to get the cash to pay him. I finished up with 3 small bottles of perfume “nefertiti”, “lotus” and “kilopatra” I also have a slightly bigger bottle of lemon oil, which smells gorgeous. He wrapped all the bottles up so well, then put them in a box which he also wrapped well and was so insistent that we “not open until you get home” that he made us suspicious, so the first thing I did upon sitting down in the ahwaz was unwrap it all check that everything was there!! It was and we relaxed with our tea for a while, talking about our incredible day.
After our third cup of tea, we went in search of a restaurant that Ruby told us about called “Abu Tarek” and we found it, complete with green and blue signs proclaiming “We have no other branches” and it turned out to be another koshary restaurant, so we had that, followed by cold rice pudding and vanilla pudding, the perfect end to our meal. We paid £2 each for dinner and it was excellent!! We walked back to the hotel and spent a bit of time pulling the photos off the camera and putting them onto a pen drive, then sat and had tea in the sitting room before coming up to our room for showers and relaxing before bed.
Egyptian museum tomorrow and I can hardly wait to see all the treasures that were found in the places we visited today!! :o)
I've been terrible at keeping up with the blogging since we got back. Years start has been incredibly stressul and hectic, both at home and at work so although I've been flitting about online here and there, I haven't really had the inclination to sit and blog properly.
So, that's what I'm going to do now, starting with the text from the Egypt Diaries, which turned out to be much longer than I thought it would be, so I'll break it up into chunks, read them at your leisure:
Travelling Day: We arrived at Heathrow with plenty of time to spare. Checked in our luggage after saying goodbye to my folks and then stopped at Café Nero for bacon panini and coffee. Went through to departures and found a bar to sit and drink Bass and Hobgoblin until boarding time. Hobgoblin ran out after 1 pint, the curse has followed us from the New Inn to London :o(
We stopped in the Duty Free bit to buy an adaptor plug for Egypt then made our way through security to the gate. I got stopped and had my bag searched (due to the camera equipment) but by a very nice Indian man who was nice about it and we concluded that if everyone could have a sense of humour about their jobs it would make the whole process much easier.
While we were waiting at the gate to board, we both indulged in some serious people-watching, there was coat-man who seemed to think that he didn’t need to queue like everyone else and started asking the desk attendants to be let through to board right away (which didn’t happen) then he went away for a bit and came back and somehow got through one of the side barriers and tried to sit air-side so he’d be the first to board, until one of the attendants came and moved him.
Then there was turquoise-lady who didn’t have her passport out when it came time to board and then couldn’t find it, so instead of getting out of the queue (and out of the way) she stood right in everyone’s path emptying her bag until she found it. The last irritation was caused by red-dress-woman who attempted simpering her way through early, then wanted to upgrade to 1st class without paying, then tried to start her own queue by a side of the gate that didn’t open and lastly tried pushing her way back into the main queue after she realised!! We stayed sitting down until the queue had cleared and sniggered superiorly at the travelling-idiots.
The previous flight was late so we didn’t board until 40 minutes after the expected time, then flights into and out of London were suspended for about 30 minutes (with the thick Italian accent of the pilot we still have no idea why) and then we sat on the runway queuing for a takeoff slot until 18:45 by which time we were very nervous about connecting in Rome FCO. The flight wasn’t brilliant though I’ve been on worse, my tummy was v. unsettled and reading to distract myself became a very bad idea. I tried to sleep but that didn’t work either due to the length (or lack of) of the flight. Garry was happy reading his book, looking out of the window and asking “are we there yet?” which became a theme which ran throughout the entire holiday :o)
We got to Rome and had to dash through the airport to security following a green-jacketed Alitalia lady, we queued (or at least some of us did) to get through the next set of body and belongings scans then legged it through the terminal to Gate H08 for our next flight….only to find that it had been delayed for us by 40 minutes.
We took a bus to the plane and got on board. We were both very impressed with the seats on Alitalia, plenty of legroom and no feeling of a 4 hour game of “sardines.” We taxied to the runway and I was a bit worried that my tummy might rebel at having no break in between flights but we got some drinks, a bit of food (I ate fish…voluntarily) and then things were a bit rosier. Turquoise-lady, red-dress-woman and false-pink-woman took flights to elsewhere at Rome so we didn’t have to put up with them all the way to Cairo.
I had taken a pen with me to keep my diary, but filling in immigration forms on the plane taught us that it wasn’t working
I’ll gloss over the taxi-driver nightmare that was Cairo airport, the taxi drivers are really persistent and a couple of smarmy, well-coiffed guys were pushy, bordering on the rude, but we said “NO” a lot. We eventually worked out that there had been some confusion and our driver from the hotel wasn’t coming, so we walked right to the top end of the airport away from all the hassle and found “Ali” who took us to our hotel. Ali was quite funny, even if he didn’t quite know where he was going, we had a false start looking for Ramses St, but eventually we arrived, checked into the Arabesque Hotel completely exhausted and went straight to bed.
Day 1: We started our day with lovely hot showers and then did a bit of unpacking, we hit the streets in search of an ahwa (coffee house) and found a place opposite a huge circular roundabout-y type thing, it didn’t seem to have any actual rules governing who went when, but it was an entertaining place to sit and drink Turkish coffee, mint tea and water, Garry greatly enjoyed the culture difference of being able to sit in the café, drinking tea and smoking at the same time, not having to go outside, huddled in the cold like you would in the UK. We walked into the “Downtown” area and entered the pitched battle ground of mental drivers, walkers and hawkers. We fended off a million “Taxi Cheap” requests and offers of day trips “Citadel – very good, very cheap” and discovered that everyone in Cairo has a “government license” to run a bazaar and they don’t mind buddying up to you in the street to take advantage if you happen to be walking their way. We later discovered that in Egypt, you have to have a government license to run any business, so the people who wave official cards in your face or show you their government code are no more or less special than anyone else doing business in the country (although, they’d have you believe it’s a badge of ‘legitimacy’)
We stopped at the FelFela takeaway place for lunch (after nearly 14 hours with no food) and enjoyed the board outside advertising all kinds of “Foul” for lunch :o) It was really tasty food and exactly hit the spot, giving us a bit more energy for an afternoons wandering. We made it to Talaat Harb Square and stopped in at the “Groppi” pastry shop to buy sticky cakes and after a bit of a nosey down the alleyways to see what was there we headed back to the hotel and booked our driver for the following days excursion, Saqqara, Dahshur and Giza for LE 250 with an 08:30 start. :o( We finally decided to walk to the train station (Ramses) to buy our train tickets for the onward journey to Luxor, we passed a Mosque on the street with all kinds of signs hanging outside, but the one that grabbed me said: “Minarets are to guide Muslims to prayer, they are not to guide missiles anywhere” which really struck me. It was a lot further than we thought but when we got there, one of the Tourist Police “helped” us to try and buy our tickets. There were no seats left on the 07:30 train we’d originally wanted to take on the 24th December, so we had to buy sleeper car tickets for the night of the 23rd instead (LE 654.) The fact that we actually got tickets at all speaks more highly of the understanding of English demonstrated by the ticket attendant in the Abela office, than of the Tourist Policeman, but you can’t fault his willingness to try and help.
On the 45 minute walk back from the station (with some of the most tortuously high curbs you can imagine) we were stopped by an elderly gentleman who gave us a brief history of his life, including working on the Suez Canal with many nationalities of men in the 60’s followed by a stint working for the English Embassy in Cairo before he retired. He then shook our hands and told G to marry me “right away” before carrying on along the road. One of the nice things we found all over was that some people just want to stop you long enough to Welcome you to their country or city, pass the time of day, demonstrate their English skills and wish you well, sometimes we got a bit into the mindset that everyone who stopped us wanted to sell us something, and we would have missed some genuinely diamond conversations if we’d just ignored everyone who stopped us on the street.
We walked back to the Egyptian Museum trying to find a restaurant that G had enjoyed on his last visit to the city, but the complex around the museum had changed and much of it was a building site so although we walked around the area and down to the Nile, we couldn’t find the restaurant, but G was offered 10,000 camels and 10,000 chickens for me so it wasn’t all bad. Footsore and sweaty we walked along the Nile a little before heading back to the hotel. We flopped on the bed for a bit eating Groppi cakes and drinking water, before taking up residence on a sofa in the hotel sitting room, ordering dinner and cancelling our last nights stay in Cairo due to the trains…would you believe we actually got our money back!?
Now we’re sitting, eating Kofta and bread, resting and getting ready for an early night, Giza tomorrow and tons more walking …
Tired but V. Happy :oD
Day 2: Early start 08:30, meeting Ruby at reception. We got into his Nissan Sunny and headed out of town in search of pyramids. Ruby is brilliant, he talked us through the places we were driving, pointing out buildings of interest and gave us a suggestion: “start old and get newer.” He suggested doing the 3 places on our itinerary in chronological order, Saqqara first with the Step Pyramid, North & South houses and Shaft of Amun Tefnakht. There were lots of touts, all with the same necklaces, bookmarks and postcards but we avoided them all and walked around the whole of Zosers funerary complex relatively unmolested. We read about what we were seeing and were amazed by the scope of the desert and the number of random broken pyramids littering the landscape.
Across the complex we visited the tomb of “TiTi” his wife Nefehetpes and their two sons: Demedj (“the overseer of the duck pond”) and Ti (“the inspector of royal manicurists”) It was a long trip round the mastaba with a “guide” in tow, trying to get ‘baksheesh for nothing’, we lost him eventually and enjoyed looking at the scenes of TiTi’s daily life which seemed to mostly include fishing, butchering cows and fiddling with goats, we came to the conclusion that the archaeologists had got it wrong…TiTi and his family were actually running a regular butcher shop!!
Next we went down into the tomb via a steep, narrow passageway, on a wooden board with metal slats attached to help give purchase. It seemed a very long way down but opened up eventually into a standing area, before another level tunnel took us into the first chamber. I overheard one of the overpriced local guides (that we didn’t get one of) telling another couple that the hieroglyphs in the first chamber were telling of the good deeds of TiTi and his family for their journey to the next life. There was another little tunnel into the sarcophagus chamber which had “stars of the heavens” carved into the ceiling and more hieroglyphics along the walls. The sarcophagus was massive, black and looked as though it was made of solid granite, it must have weighed a ton and neither one of us could work out how they could have got it down there!
We were pleased to discover that ‘Up’ is infinitely easier than ‘Down’ had been in the passageway and emerged into bright sunshine, slightly sweaty but very pleased with what we’d seen. The Step Pyramid of Zoser is the oldest pyramid on Earth, dating from about 2650BC, until in 2580BC Pharaoh Sneferu decided that he wanted to be buried in a tomb with smooth sides. His architects started building a pyramid with 54° angled sides but when they got halfway up it started to collapse, unable to sustain the walls at that angle. So they went away, had a rethink and started building again at a shallower 43° angle, which meant they were able to finish the pyramid. Thus was born the “Bent” pyramid of Dahshur, the first of it’s kind.
Understandably, Pharaoh took one look at this and said there was no way he was going to be ‘honoured’ under that, so he set his architects building again, this time starting the pyramid at the 43° angle and this is the “Red” pyramid of Dahshur, the first good one of its kind :o)
125 stone steps, varying in steepness are the way to the entrance of the Red Pyramid, followed swiftly by a 63m downward sloping passageway like the one at TiTis tomb, but longer in length and shorter in height. Not sure what to say about the inside, it stinks of Ammonia and although it’s probably seen as quite plain inside, I was impressed by the sheer mechanics of creating a 12-15 foot high vaulted ceiling, in perfect alignment all the way up and the chance to see up-close the tight fit and perfect edges of the stonework was worth the sweat and toil. At the Red pyramid it is not easier on the way up, it’s a hard slog and very much more difficult with a backpack on. Bent double, head down, uphill for 63m wouldn’t normally be my idea of fun, but I’d do it again in a heartbear!!
After the Red pyramid, we drove back down through downtown Dahshur, contemplating stopping for Camel-meat-on-a-stick or “Kofta” as it’s known locally, but upon seeing the gridlock of the downtown area we decided against it. We stopped on the way back to take pictures of the lush green crop and palm trees, such a vibrant shade of green it was a rare sight in a day of desert.
When we got back to Cairo we stopped at Golden Eagle papyrus “museum” where we were given tea and a lesson in how papyrus is made, we also had two famous papyrus scenes explained to us, one of which was the story told on the papyrus that G bought last time he was in Egypt: the Last Judgement. The other was the famous Egyptian Calendar which we both really liked so we ended up buying 2, one for us in blue and one red with gold for Mum and Dad. We also bought a gorgeous black and silver pyramids papyrus and were given a “Honeymoon” papyrus of King Tut and his wife in a lotus garden with our names in hieroglyphics in cartouches either side, we worked out that we’d got nearly LE 1600 of papyrus for almost half price! :o)
Next stop was a little restaurant for lunch, which Ruby treated us to, our first taste of Kushari (or koshary) a fantastically tasty dish of rice, noodles, lentils, macaroni, fried onions and a hot tomato salsa sauce which you pour over and mix in. It may not sound particularly appetizing but it was lovely!! After lunch we carried on to Giza and (small break for hawking aside) headed to the ticket office and paid our entry. We decided ages ago that we didn’t want to pack the entire plateau, all the tombs etc into our day, we wanted pyramids and the Sphinx (or “Spink” as the Eyptians call it) so we refused the Bedouin horse/camel tour and used our own shoe leather to walk instead, no guide, nothing and it was by far the best way to do it.
The people in and around the plateau will insist it’s too far and try to get you in a kalesh to travel around but it’s no father or steeper than Glastonbury Tor and it’s incredibly difficult to get rid of these people if you show any sign of weakness or indecision. If you want to travel by kalesh and don’t mind paying the fee and the baksheesh then it’s up to you, but we were happy to walk it.
The plateau is divided up and it’s difficult to get from one part to another without having to go back on yourself, we started with the Sphinx, put off all the kids and old people trying to sell us the same bookmarks, postcards and necklaces we saw at Saqqara and then walked up the Pyramids road to the right of the Sphinx. It seems every Egyptian hawker knows every nationality by the same three things. As soon as you identify yourself as English (they don’t seem to understand “British”) you automatically get either:
a) “Oh Manchester United football”
b) “Lovely Jubbly”
c) “Oh, Queen, Very Good”
When we got to the top, we walked around the biggest (Cheops) pyramid and half-heartedly tried to find a ticket office. It certainly wasn’t obvious, nor was it anywhere near the entrance, so we continued our walk and took some excellent photos of the Cheops (Khufu) pyramid, the pyramid of Chephren (Khafre) and the pyramid of Menkaure (Mycerinus) which were quite breath-taking. As we walked back down the pyramids road again we spotted the sun setting behind the Sphinx so we waited until it was directly behind his head before taking some very lovely picture.
We met an American lady from New York, who lived in Kenya and was holidaying in Egypt, we took some pictures of her (at her request) and then went back down to the Sphinx entrance, we wanted to price some glass engraved pyramids and as we got to the bottom of the stairs, I heard someone go down hard behind me, then nearly had my legs knocked out by the person hitting my legs from behind. It was an older man who seemed to have lost his balance on a step while trying to get away from one of the (more persistent) hawker kids. We helped him up and he seemed to be ok, more worried about his camera but that was (fortunately) fine. The Sphinx gate was closed by this time (after 4pm) so we made our way back to Ruby and he brought us back to the hotel.
We had a quick break then went out for tea, although we got stopped by “Mohammed” who took us into his perfume shop for Bedouin coffee, which was less bitter than the, more usually served Turkish coffee. While there, he took us through his oil and perfume collection which we expected, but since I’d already expressed an interest in shopping for Egyptian perfume (no oil, alcohol or chemicals) we didn’t fight too hard. After “letting” Mohammed make us happy by making him happy, we walked round the block to a ATM to get the cash to pay him. I finished up with 3 small bottles of perfume “nefertiti”, “lotus” and “kilopatra” I also have a slightly bigger bottle of lemon oil, which smells gorgeous. He wrapped all the bottles up so well, then put them in a box which he also wrapped well and was so insistent that we “not open until you get home” that he made us suspicious, so the first thing I did upon sitting down in the ahwaz was unwrap it all check that everything was there!! It was and we relaxed with our tea for a while, talking about our incredible day.
After our third cup of tea, we went in search of a restaurant that Ruby told us about called “Abu Tarek” and we found it, complete with green and blue signs proclaiming “We have no other branches” and it turned out to be another koshary restaurant, so we had that, followed by cold rice pudding and vanilla pudding, the perfect end to our meal. We paid £2 each for dinner and it was excellent!! We walked back to the hotel and spent a bit of time pulling the photos off the camera and putting them onto a pen drive, then sat and had tea in the sitting room before coming up to our room for showers and relaxing before bed.
Egyptian museum tomorrow and I can hardly wait to see all the treasures that were found in the places we visited today!! :o)
