Our first few days in Egypt were spent relaxing in Alexandria. The coastal setting and coffeehouse culture makes Alex a great place to unwind and catch up on washing, blogs and Skype with our families. After the recent upheaval in Egypt, life seemed to be continuing as normal on the streets of Alex. We saw a few army tanks along the seafront "Corniche" road, but they appeared to be protective rather than a threatening force. In Alex we visited some interesting sights, including ruins of a Roman ampitheatre and subterranean Egyptian burial chambers, which were discovered in 1900 when a donkey fell in.
From Alex we took a train to Cairo and checked into our hotel right on Tahrir Square, where the protests had taken place. I was surprised to find that Tahrir Square was mostly busy roads with pedestrian areas around the edges. On TV the massive crowds made the square appear completely pedestrianised. People we spoke with in Cairo seemed pleased that Mubarak had finally been overthrown. We saw lots of cars with "January 25" stickers on rear windows, marking the day the protests began. On a street behind Tahrir Square we came across barbed wire remnants of a road block, but otherwise Cairo was business as usual as in Alex, but with virtually no tourists.
We found Cairo more pleasant and much cleaner than we expected. Everyone we knew who'd visited the city had mentioned how dirty Cairo was, but to us it seemed fine - not as clean as Europe, but nothing that made us cringe. Perhaps our month in India has desensitised us to dirt! We had some time to ourselves before beginning our tour from Cairo, so we went to the sound and light show at the pyramids and explored Coptic Cairo and the old citadel. Wandering in downtown Cairo near Tahrir Square was lively and interesting. We chilled out with turkish coffee at a street cafe where locals smoked sheesha and sipped tea and enjoyed cheap and tasty Middle Eastern takeaways from the popular Felfela eatery.
The next day we began our final group tour of this trip. Low tourist numbers mean there are only 8 people in our group where normally it would be about 15. Fellow group members are an easy-going mix of Aussies, Canadians and one American. We spent the morning in the Egyptian Museum where the scarcity of other tourists made for a very pleasant experience. The amount of Egyptian artefacts was stunning and made the British Museum's collection seem tiny in comparison. The treasure from King Tutankhamen's tomb and incredibly well-preserved mummies were our highlights. We took a daytime visit to the pyramids and climbed the Grand Pyramid - more for the experience of climbing the ramps inside a pyramid than the dark little roo we arrived in after the energetic climb! That evening we boarded the overnight train to Aswan. With comfortable two berth cabins and airplane style meals, it was an agreeable way to travel south to see the treasures of Upper Egypt.
No comments:
Post a Comment