Day1:Giza and the Sphinx

Good Morning from Cairo! We snuck in all the sleep we could at the Intercontinental which had a lovely view of the Nile, Cairo tower and the moon which stays late into the morning. 

Our first stop was Giza and the pyramids. They were huge, they were emphatic, they were pretty empty. I wanted to travel back in time at least to Victorian Egypt when they were smelly and full of bat guano and you had to crawl and there was the possibility of an unknown shaft or amulet. Still, it didn't disappoint. Actually I was pleasantly surprised that you could actually climb up a few levels. Our guide, Achmed, was a wonderful story-teller. I wanted to soak up every minute but alas, how can you hold a wave?

In my mind, we would have an an entire album of Christmas hat shots all over Egypt! Who thinks that's what I ended up with?

Our guide didn't really see the purpose of going inside the pyramids because there was nothing to see. He didn't understand the indoctrination of pyramids I've been receiving for the last 15 yrs. As far as I knew, this was my only chance. Matt would agree to whatever I said was important but of course he was inclined to agree with the guide. And yet, he didn't want to be left out and just allow me so what we decided on is that I would to the great Cheops pyramid by myself and they would do the less expensive one together and we would compare notes. 

It was a beautiful moment for me. I think everyone else enjoyed it as well. 

The tourist shots.

Next we drove over to see the Sphinx. Consensus was, it was much smaller than we'd imagined.

You know, there's part of me that wishes we'd just stopped right there, just taken a day and absorbed what we'd seen and learned. This trip was an absolute fire hydrant experience.