Egypt: Part 3 - Cairo and Giza

Upon first seeing the pyramids, I took a minute to just absorb and consider where in the world I was presently sitting and what I was actually looking at......an incredible moment as I was blessed to have traveled to yet another place I had only dreamed of visiting.

We arrived early into Cairo at 5am after a night spent on the sleeper train and waited at the gate to the Pyramids until they opened. Wael, our guide for the day, made sure to get us there very early to beat the buses and be able to get tickets to climb up the inside of the Great Pyramid! :) It was a LONG and very small enclosed shaft we clambered up and when we got to the top all there was, was a room with a large stone box in it! No pics, no paintings, no hieroglyphics, nothing! LOL We pushed our way back down the cramped path and when we finally emerged from the pyramid, our clothes were literally soaked with sweat! It was soooo humid and stuffy inside the pyramid, and even though we didn't really see anything, it was totally worth it! :)

This was the entrance to the Great Pyramid....we were fortunate to get tickets to go inside and climb up it as they only release 150 tickets in the morning and 150 tickets in the afternoon and there are thousands of visitors to this site each day.

Here we are at the entrance......you can start to get a better perspective on just how big this pyramid actually is!

Love this shot Kim took...

Yup! We were here! LOL

Wael took us to the back side of the pyramids so we could do a camel trek around them! :)

Love this shot as you can't see anything modern in it!

This is the medium-sized pyramid

Me and my camel! :)

Us being dorky tourists...

I loved riding my camel!! :)

I noticed that the sun cast a pretty clear shadow while we were trekking around, so clicked a quick pic and I liked how it turned out! :)

The Great Sphinx is literally just down the road from the Pyramids!

Here it is in all it's splendor! :)

From all these great sites of Ancient Egypt, we went to a more modern site - The Citadel of Saladin built in 1184 AD. The Mosque of Mohamad Ali was built much later in 1828 AD.

This old mosque was very grand!

You had to remove your shoes before entering this inner courtyard and the marble felt so nice and cool on our feet! :)

Arabic translation: "Mohammed, the messenger of God"

If you look carefully in the background, you can see a long line of boys who were in the middle of their prayers inside the mosque.

The view from the Citadel walls overlooking all of Cairo....no wonder Saladin built it up here on the hill! No one would be able to invade without being seen first!

We took this pic specifically for our girls we teach as this is a very special and significant mosque in their religion! :) We "heart" you, girls!! :)

From Cairo we flew to Amman, Jordan for more adventures in Petra, Wadi Rum and the Dead Sea! More posts coming soon...

Egypt: Part 2- Hot Air Balloon Adventure and Hatshepsut Temple

Sunrise from a hot air balloon!

We had an incredible opportunity to take a hot air balloon ride to watch the sun rise over the Nile and Luxor Valley. We figured that we may never get a chance to do this again, so why not!? It required us getting up at 3:30am in order to be on the bus by 4am. Yeah, you can only imagine as we are both non-morning people....LOL! Here we are on the sketchy bus......we look more awake than we thought we would at 4 in the morning! ;)

Sleepyheads at 4am....

Once on the bus, we drove around Luxor picking up other people from various hotels. We then drove to the shore of the Nile where we boarded a river ferry to cross over to the east side. We had to wear these life preservers and were served tea/coffee and twinkies. LOL

Starting to wake up...

It was an eery looking landscape when we first arrived because it was still very dark and these large mounds were silouheted against the lightening horizon...

This was our balloon.....it looked so cool and was VERY hot standing even this far away!

Balloons starting to inflate...

Me getting really excited for our balloon ride!! :)

Sun is starting to come up...

Up, up and away! Each time a balloon lit up it looked like a giant lightbulb floating in the sky!

Waiting for the sun as we lift off the ground...

The sun is coming! Yes, that is the Nile!

So enough of the sunrise pics......here is what we could see from being up so high! :)

Fields of sesame......that's what those bundles are!

This is the mountain that holds all of the royal tombs......you can see that right beside the road they are doing new excavations on some tombs they had just discovered in the week before we arrived in Egypt!

The Ramesseum which was the Memorial Temple of Ramses II

It's hard to see but at the front of this mountain is Hatshepsut Temple......the morning light makes it seem to blend right into the mountain. The black strip behind it is the Valley of the Kings.

The Nile Valley with the fields of crops.

There seems to be a distinct line between irrigated and non-irrigated land here!

Over the Valley of the Queens...

A fantastic view of the Valley of the Kings.....especially glad we got this as we found out later in the day went we went to it, that no cameras are allowed and our guide wouldn't even let us take pics of the valley when we were driving in it!!!

This is one of my favorite pics of that morning! :)

As our hot air balloon ride was winding down, we passed over a village on the outside edge of the irrigated valley....

Yumm! There's our supper! LOL

As we were flying over you could hear a little boy yelling out "hello" to us from this house!

Our landing spot.......little bit of a rough landing, but once again we were safe and sound on the actual ground! :)

Some pics of the Nile.........such a nice day! :)

Our water taxi...

We drove to the Colossi of Memnon which were built in the 14th century BC and are statues of Amenhotep III. They were the outer guards of Amenhotep III's funerary temple which no longer stands. Oddly enough, I found out that they call them the Colossi of Memnon after King Memnon, but he really has nothing to do with them at all!

From there we went to tour Hatshepsut Temple and the Valley of the Queens and the Valley of the Kings. Hatshepsut's Temple was HUGE! Apparently it was a funerary temple that was built simply to prepare her body for burial......so for a grand total of only 40 days! Some of the painted hieroglyphics and pictures were still pretty bright and we were able to take pictures of them. :) Here are some pics from this temple. :)

On the top level of Hatshepsut's Temple

Looking back down...

Queen Hatshepsut, the only queen to be buried in the Valley of the Kings! :)

Enjoying the beautifully painted hieroglyphics and pictures...:)

We were GREATLY disappointed that when we went to the Valley of the Kings and Valley of the Queens, that we were not allowed to take any pics whatsoever. Ok, inside the tombs I could totally understand as some of them don't even have a protective shield over the striking and still quite bright paintings, but outside and in the valleys themselves!? We wonder if we had a real stickler for a tour guide and if we really could have.....but being polite and rule-abiding Canadians, we did what we were told and respected what the guide told us. We just were quite sad to have no pics from there. :(

We were taking the sleeper train from Luxor to Cairo.....so hung out at the hotel for a few hours before going to the train station. We watched the sunset and it was spectacular! :)

So beautiful!! :)

The Luxor Train Station!

The train station was very sketchy and being the only 2 white girls in the place, we attracted a lot of unwanted attention, so hid behind our bags off to the side of the tracks.

Here comes our train...:)

So they served us mystery meat on the train.......it looked like beef but had the consistency of chicken! :P I told my kids at school about this mystery meat and they all say it was pigeon and seemed to be surprised I wouldn't know that. Hmmmmm, I don't know if that's what it really was, but it was gross and other than the taste test, we didn't eat it! :P

Here is our tiny little sleeper compartment. The seats fold down into one bed and then the second bunk folds down from the top. :) It was pretty cramped, but worked as a great safe place to crash before heading to the Pyramids! :)

And that pretty much sums up Luxor and everything we saw and did there! :) Next post will be on the adventures had in CAIRO! :)