Date: April 7
Location: Day 88 - Suez, Egypt (Cairo - Day 1 of 2)
Next Port: Alexandria, Egypt, April 8
Quick Summary: We disembarked the ship in the port of Suez for a complimentary visit and overnight in Cairo. On Day 1 we visited the Great Pyramids of Giza and had a private evening tour of the Egyptian Museum, followed by dinner in the garden.
Report: We dropped anchor outside Suez at about 3:30 a.m…Larry was roused by the anchors being dropped. The Captain had to change his position twice more before being informed that he would not be allowed to dock due to the high winds. So we had to tender to the pier. He was not a happy camper. But the tender operation went fairly smooth, including taking the luggage ashore and the departure for Cairo was only delayed by about an hour.
The local tourist vendor didn’t load the buses very efficiently, so we ended up on a bus with only 11 people – which was great! The loading and unloading flows much quicker and it’s so much easier to move such a small group along on the tour. We ended up with a very serious Egyptologist, Ahmed, who also had a great sense of humor. His call when he wanted to get us moving or to gather around him was, of all things, “tally ho.”
During the three-hour drive to Cairo, we went through a quite serious sand storm. Visibility was about zero. Once again we traveled in a convoy with a Tourist Police escort.
We went straight to the Great Pyramids of Giza. Directly on the outskirts of town, these three tombs are truly amazing. The largest, the Pyramid of Cheops, is 146 meters high and was constructed of 2,300,000 blocks weighing an average of 10,000 lbs each. Next in size is the Pyramid of Chephren, at 143 meters high. This is the middle pyramid that is still partially capped with the smooth mud filling which originally gave all three of the pyramids their smooth sides.
The Giza Pyramids were tombs built for the early pharaohs about 2500-2200 B.C.
A short drive away southeast of the pyramids was the Sphinx. Steeped in legend and superstition, the sandstone Sphinx is believed to be a monument to either the sun god Ra or Pharaoh Chephren. Its man’s head and lion’s body faces east. It is 20 meters high and 57 meters long.
We enjoyed a buffet lunch at the palatial Mena House hotel just outside the gates to the Great Pyramids. Enroute to the Marriott Hotel on the Nile in Cairo, we stopped at a papyrus factory/showroom for a demonstration on how this long-lasting paper is made. We also learned that the making of papyrus was a turning point in the recording of ancient history. Everyone also had a chance to shop there and at an associated bazaar.
We checked into the Cairo Marriott which was constructed around one of the palace hotels built for the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. (The Mena House was also built then.) We enjoyed walking around the shops, gardens and pool area before getting ready for dinner.
At 7:00 we all caravanned in buses to the grounds of the immense, world-renowned Egyptian Museum. The gardens, their sculptures and the museum were lighted by candles and spotlights. Here we were offered wine and juices before entering the closed museum for our private tour.
Ahmed was terrific. He expertly moved our small group of 11 through the deserted museum so that we saw all the major highlights. (He was so informative that our small band doubled in size as more and more people joined our group.)
We ended up in the King Tut exhibit on the second floor. King Tut was really a minor pharaoh – as pharaohs go. He was a boy king at 9 and died at 18. What made him famous was that his tomb was found totally intact. Almost all of the others had been robbed in antiquity. Included among the items was the famous mummy mask that we had seen when a partial exhibit of the museum’s collection toured the U.S. in the late 1970s.
(We happened to have seen it in Washington, D.C. when it was a traveling exhibit. Over the years, Karen has shared the story of how our then 5-year old Heather ran toward the glass case holding the bejeweled gold mummy mask. She hit her hands on the case…setting off all the alarms in the Smithsonian, causing guards to appear from all directions. Heather was chagrined for a week! Karen has used this as a great teaching lesson when preparing students for field trips “Not to Touch!”)
After the tour we had a dinner in the gardens in the lighted front of the museum. It was a spectacular setting for the end of a terrific day. (We were informed that this was a highly unusual honor to have the museum open only for our cruisers. Ahmed repeatedly told us what a pleasure it was to take a tour with so few people in the museum. He told us, “This NEVER happens.”)
Karen and Larry
Photos of our cruise are available at the following web site:
picasaweb.google.com/larryworldcruise
Photos of our first day’s visit Cairo have been added.
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