Last day in Cairo

We’ve had an incredible last day in Cairo, not one bit restful but we’ve seen a great deal. We began at the Egyptian Museum and spent most of our short time checking out the King Tut treasures. Having been in the tomb in the Valley of the Kings, we can’t believe they fit all that stuff into those little rooms. From there we continued to the top of the world to the Citadel and the Alabaster Mosque. Our guide shared with us that it was conceived as a twin to the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, which we visited in 1995.

From their we continued to the Hanging Church, built around 600 AD in the old Coptic section. Next came the Ben Ezra Synagogue and the most massive gift shop we have seen in all of Egypt. We did not buy anything there but they had some very impressive stuff. Repeat after me, “no Jacob you cannot buy a real sword or dagger”. I seem to recall saying that to Stephen and Craig a few times over the years. From there we stopped for lunch at a local hotspot serving only the Egyptian favorite Koshary. It’s a mixture of pastas, rice, dried onions, lentils and some garlicy tomato sauce. It was delicious and filling. We continued on to the Pharonic Village, which we had thought would be pretty hokey (like an Egyptian Dollywood) but it was actually well done and educational. We really loved the section where they recreated all the King Tut tomb, as it was discovered with all the treasures in place. From there it was straight to the cruise ship for our dinner trip up and down the Nile. The entertainment was great and helped us not think about having to get up (?) at 1 am to head to the airport.

Here we are in front of the Egyptian Museum. Sorry no photos of the King Tut treasures. They were serious about allowing no cameras inside, even to the point of catching them all on the scanners and metal detectors at the door (the first time we saw security closely monitoring those machines in Egypt).

View of Cairo from the Citadel / Alabaster Mosque .


Koshary!


Pharonic Village!
This is the view from our hotel room window. On our final stay there we were moved up to the fifth floor in an attempt to cut down on the noise from the crazy intersection. The move had some effect, as it no longer sounded like the cars and trucks were honking right outside the window. This is the view from Christos, the restaurant we visited our last night there. The lights would slowly illuminate the Great Pyramid, and then after a few minutes fade out. This was probably part of the light show, which is done on the front side of the pyramids and we were now rotated around 90 degrees.