Cairo - Giza, Sakara, Memphis

The Mena House is an old hotel that is very close to the pyramids. We were able to get a room with a view from our balcony. This is what we woke up to that first day in Cairo:

Sure, it was a little hazy, but what the heck! It was the pyramids! And they were outside our hotel room! We had a nice breakfast at the hotel, and met our guide and driver and made it over to the Giza Plateau as the haze lifted.

Everywhere you looked,  there they were.

There is a site where you can take a picture of nine pyramids, but six of them are pretty small. I like this photo better.

 And, of course, we rode camels. You can't really come to Cairo and not ride camels at the pyramids. That would be some sort of wrong.

The ride takes you alongside the pyramids to the Sphinx. That is pretty amazing, too.

This was our camel boss. He did blackmail us a little to get off. As our guide said, it is really cheap to get ON a camel, it can be expensive to get off! (we didn't mind)

It doesn't look like it here, but the Sphinx site was pretty crowded. These first couple of days corresponded to the last few days of the Chinese New Year vacations, there were tons of Chinese tourists. The best thing I can say about them is that they make Americans look culturally sensitive.

But there is always a window in which you can take a photo where it makes it look like you are alone. But you never are. There are plenty of touts trying to sell you more camel rides, trinkets, water, soda, what have you. But as was pointed out in one of my books about Egypt (from the Cities of the Imagination series) there have been touts there since at least when Alexander the Great conquered Egypt (that is, as you know, 332 BC)

So we took our medicine, paid some baksheesh, and moved on.

The next stop was Sakara. This, I believe, is the oldest pyramid in Egypt.

And while the pyramid is impressive, the real appeal of this site are the tombs.

In them, they have wall carvings (Bas reliefs, mostly) of everyday life.

Butchers, bakers, farmers are all shown in living color - and about 4,500 years old.

We saw a lot of tombs on this trip. But this Mastaba of Ti was one of the highlights. (I learned about it from the above mentioned book. The guide tried to discourage us from visiting - but I really glad that we did. It was a short walk, but we were completely alone in that tomb. Like many of the tombs, photography was "officially" forbidden. But a handful of Egyptian Pounds (LE) solved that problem.)

From Sakara, we headed to Memphis. One of the early capitals of Egypt, there are some amazing monuments.

Lots and lots of Ramses II:

This is one really big Ramses II statue. Widely believed to be the inspiration for the Shelley poem, Ozymandias. You can decide for yourself.

Then we retired to the Mena House for a nice cold Sakara Beer.