Day Four

Day 4: CAIRO

Today is the first proper day of our top deck tour around Cairo. Today we visted the Egyptian museum, the three pyramids, the sphinx and a papyrus institution that taught us how to create papyrus paper.

Museum:

First of all the museum had over 120,000 different items, with a representative amount on display, the remainder in storerooms. We weren't allowed to take photographs inside the museum but we could take photographs of the statues on the outside and take photos of the museums building and main entrance. There were so many stray cats running around the place it killed me not to pat them but I really didn't want rabies. We went around with a tour guide called Meda.

The first level of the museum is all about the old, middle and the new Egypt. Which had different statues and Egyptian art.  It was very interested, but there was so much to look at that not much sunk in my head. In one ear out the other ear pretty much hahha. 

The second level consisted of the things to do with King Tutankhamen this includes his gold plated jewellery, head mask, his tomb and the gold plated coffin he was placed in. This was amazing to see and you honestly appreciate all the little details in everything. 

There was another exhibition you could do it cost 100 Egyptian pounds and you got to see 24 mummified bodies. It was pretty gruesome but in another way it was pretty amazing knowing that these bodies are the real deal. We saw bodies from royal kings, queens to princes and princesses. They still had their toe nails and their teeth were still in tack.  

Pyramids:

After the museum we headed to lunch then heading to see the Giza pyramids. They were incredible. There are three main pyramids and they are all different sizes. The tallest one being around 138 metres used to be 158 but got damaged. We went different tourist areas to take photographs the first one was called the panoramic photograph. Where you could see the three pyramids in the same frame. While we were taking photographs locals were trying to get us to buy their souvenirs and they were determined to get someone to buy their things. I didn't get caved in luckily hahha. 

From there we paid 40 Egyptian pounds to actually go inside one of the pyramids. It was sooo cool!!! Like you expect it to be painted with Egyptian hieroglyphics but the inside was so plain. The walls were bare and then entrance into the pyramids was tiny even I had to duck down to enter down the stair case. You weren't allowed to take any photographs in the pyramids. Our tour guild told us that as a scheme some of the workers tell people you can take photographs to make easy money for them. Luckily the tour guy did tell us because the guy that showed us the tunnels wanted to rip us all off. But no one fell for it thank god!

Through out the entire areas of the pyramids locals were offering camel rides and horse rides up and down the pyramids. I got some wicked photographs of some of the animals. 

Sphinx: 

After the pyramids we went back in the bus and drove 5 minutes to look at another significant ancient Egyptian sculpture the sphinx. My first impression that I really didn't expect it to be so huge!! It was incredible it was a shame how damaged it has gotten now but it was made Thousands of Years ago. So you expect it to erode. 

This is the first of many busy days for us on our tour. It's amazing how they can cram so much in just one day. When it was all over we expected a nice relaxing afternoon. Well a nice resting afternoon because we walked so much haha. But then the bus dropped us off at a papyrus museum to show us how to create the paper and they told us how to recognise a real painting to a fake one. Even though we got taught the other day there are different techniques on doing it and different people have different beliefs on what each painting represents so that was cool to hear their side of the story. 

From then we went back to the hotel but only had 50 minutes to pack all of our stuff to get on the bus to head off to Aswan. The total bus trip is 15 hours not looking forward to our first bus trip to be so long oh well it will only get better from there I guess.

Stay tuned if you want to hear about my adventures in Aswan. Xx