July 15 - Egypt: Cairo
Despite our less-than-stellar initiation to Cairo, today we're ready to hit the Pyramids. Jon rallied early this morning, and we were out the door by 8:30AM. We caught the bus with no problems, and made it to the Pyramids by 9:15. This time, we walked with no-nonsense purpose and blew off all the camel and horse touts. We've heard terrible, terrible stories about people who pay to ride a camel and the owners won't let them off until hours later when they agree to pay some exorbitant amount of money. So no camel rides for us. They're ugly and smelly anyway.
We bought a ticket to get onto the plateau, and then climbed Cheop's Pyramid to buy a ticket into the chamber. When we got up there (sweating profusely, because it was 100 degrees today), the guy at the door told us that we had to buy tickets at the ticket booth WAY OVER THERE. So we swore, and climbed down the pyramid to go to the ticket booth. Tickets were twice as expensive as we'd expected, but we already hate this place and what's another few dollars? We then climbed the pyramid again and gave the guy our tickets. He asked to look through our back-pack, and when he saw the camera told us that we had to have a camera permit which we could get at the ticket booth WAY OVER THERE. We told him that we didn't want to take any pictures, but he says we had to have a permit to take the camera inside. @&*($#)$#!!!! Jon was about to lose his patience, so I went down to the ticket booth to buy a permit.
The ticket booth was closed.
I knocked and pleaded that I just wanted a camera permit. And someone inside had pity and sold one to me. So I made my way back up to the pyramid to Jon and the guy at the door. Apparently, they only allow 150 people access to Cheops' pyramid each day. So the ticket booth closed at 9:30 when 150 tickets were sold. I guess we were lucky.
But then again, maybe not. The inside of the pyramid was less than spectacular. We had to navigate through passageways that were 1.3 meters high to get to the Great Gallery, which is hardly great. It was just a room with four walls and was very dark. No interesting markings or anything. By this time, we were both in a foul mood and were soaking wet from sweat. So we hung around for a few minutes, tried to take pictures but couldn't because it was too dark, and then we left.
On our way out of the pyramid, we ran into Mark and Niloo who said "Tickets? What tickets?" We told them that they hadn't missed a thing and we descended the pyramid. Then we walked around the plateau to look at the other pyramids and the Sphinx. It was terribly hot and there were people everywhere trying to sell us camel rides and ridiculous trinkets. Jon decided that he was going to - when asked - tell people we were from Vulcan. I decided that I was going to speak what little Swahili I knew when someone tried to talk to us. It worked pretty well for a while and provided us with some interesting entertainment.
At least we got a pretty cool picture
At 11:30, we made our way off the Giza Plateau and back to the bus stop to go to town. We had lunch at an Egyptian Restaurant called FelFela, and had Fuul, Ta'amiyya, Baba ghanoug and tahina. It was actually good food. Then we went back to the hotel to take a nap until dinner, because we don't feel like doing anything else today and it's way too hot to be outside anyway. Lame, I know, but we really REALLY don't like this place and can't wait to leave tomorrow night!!
For dinner, we went to a restaurant called Abu Ramy's, which is described as a "meat-eating experience" and sat outside. There was no menu, so the waiter described what he had on the grill, and we ordered Kebabs and Kofta (both lamb). They brought it out with all the trimmings - tahini, baba ghanoug, pitas. The meat was prepared divinely and was very good. Unfortunately, I haven't had the stomach for lamb since our trip to Turkey last summer when I got sick. So even good, delicious lamb is a chore for me. So Jon got a lot of meat and I ate the pitas with the tahina and baba ghanoug. Still very, very yummy!
We hopped in a taxi back to the hotel, but stopped at El Abd's for ice cream first. This place seems to be a bit of an institution here in Cairo, and they definitely don't kid around when it comes to desserts. It's amazing!