Eileen and Bryan arrived last Saturday safely to Alexandria. They had a few glitches in their travel plans. British Airlines cancelled their return flight and so they had to move everything up a day. This in turn had us scrambling to get things changed here. But everything is working out. We have a great travel agency that we work with, “Harty Tours”, and they were able to switch our cruise transportation schedule around so we could make it back here for their flight back to the states. In addition, Fifi (our government liaison official) helped rearrange all our local travel plans so that Eileen and Bryan could tour Alex and we could make a trip down to Cairo today. You can’t visit Egypt without a trip to the Pyramids and we were worried that with the change in flight schedule we might not make it there but all is coming together.
Sunday evening we took a walk in the “hood” to see the locals who surround our school. Both Eileen and Bryan commented on how “alive” the area is. As we have mentioned throughout the blog – you can see nearly anything here. They are amazed with the traffic – no lights, horns honking, cars coming down the wrong way and bumper to bumper traffic without accidents. It has been neat showing them around the school and introducing them to all of the staff here. Everyone makes guests feel so welcome when they come.
Today we boarded the fast train and headed to Cairo for the day. We were met at the train station by Rasha (our guide that we used when Aaron visited). She is very knowledgeable about Egyptian history and culture and very organized when planning a visit. We visited the pyramids, Coptic Cairo and the Kahn in a 8 hour time period. It was very windy at the pyramids today and wind means dust. Sometimes you could not see Cairo from the Giza where the pyramids are. Eileen had her picture taken on a camel and we went down into one of the pyramids where the burial chamber was. This is located beneath the ground in the middle of the pyramid. If you don’t like tight places, this would not be the place to be, but we found it fascinating. This is the 3rd time we have visited the pyramids and there is always something new to see.
We stopped for lunch and then went over to Coptic Cairo – sight of one of the oldest areas in Cairo. There was settled by Christians during the time of the Romans. There are several Coptic Christian Churches located in this walled area. In addition, there are 12 homes that people live in that when they all die will be turned into an open air museum. The government cannot take the area until they die. From here we went to the open air bazaar known as the Great Kahn. The shopkeepers sure spotted Eileen and Bryan and really went after them. But they proved up to the challenge as negotiators and made several good buys. It is always a challenge here because in addition to haggling for prices there is the issue of what Egyptian money is in comparison to US Dollars and you have to get over the idea that 50 LE is really not much ($28.50).
After a full day of sightseeing we headed back to the train station for the journey back to Alex. As always it was nice to see the friendly face of our driver when we rolled into Alex.
