First day in Egypt - December 19, 2010

We were all very excited about our Christmas holiday.  Our first day of vacation was actually a travel day - time spent in the plane, airport, taxi, wrong hotel, taxi and finally the right hotel.  It was early to bed and then early to rise the next morning. 

We met our group and were pleased to learn that it was just us and another family of four with the kids at 10 and 7 years of age; perfect for our two.  Today was touring in Cairo.  First stop was the pyramids of Giza.  It was very awe inspiring to see them up close and realize the amount of time and work that went into them.  The work is started as soon as the person becomes king and takes upwards of 20 years or more to complete.

Look guys, I am squishing the pyramid! :)



The boys in the picture with Samantha and Patrick are James (10 year old) and David (7 year old).

Once we had a go around the pyramids we went down to see the sphynix.  This was the guardian and where they prepared the body for burial.

Next stop was the papyrus "museum" (basically a store but they show you how they make the paper).  What a neat place.   The kids are watching as they do our names in hieroglyphics.  Wayne and I bought a few large pieces to be framed and hung on the wall as our Christmas presents to each other.

We then went for some lunch (street shwarma) and were off to the Cairo museum.  We were not allowed to take pictures here but there were some amazing things to see.  We got to see King Tut's things from his tomb, which included: his gold funerary mask and sarcophagus, four huge gilded boxes that fit inside each other, thrones, jewlery, beds etc.  We also got to see hundreds of statues, mummified animals and what not but the museum is so large that we didn't see all of it.  On the way back to the hotel to get our things we did a little tour through the back allies of the city and saw some pretty culture shocking things (dirty and destitute).
We picked up our things from the hotel and were off again for the sleeper train headed to Aswan.  It was a late night for the kids and they ended up falling asleep on us while waiting for the train.  They thought it was neat on the train to be able to sleep on bunk beds though.

This ends our first full day in Egypt!