Egyptian Museum, Egyptian Citadel, Coptic Cairo

We woke up and met our guide at 8:30 in our lobby. We were keen to explore Cairo today. We got into a small van and we lucked out that the tour would just be the three of us, our guide Samara and our driver Ahmed. Our first stop was the Egyptian museum that holds a majority of the artifacts found in all the Egyptian ruins and pyramids. From the outside the building doesn’t seem all that big, but when you get inside you can see that it is packed full of artifacts from jewelry to large tombs to huge statues. Samara walked us through a majority of the museum explaining the history of Egypt and pointing out various artifacts that had significant meaning. Initially I knew very little about ancient Egypt (mainly what you would see in movies or television, which isn’t very accurate at all) but it was great to have someone who has spent time studying this, break down the different periods of ancient Egypt, some of the rises and falls of great Pharaohs and some of the history and discoveries made by archaeologists. We spent a good 3 hours at the museum exploring the different exhibits they had. Its hard to say weather or not it was a good enough time. Typically I love historical museums, however the size of it and the difficulty of organizing the amount of displays made browsing it all very difficult. There were small signs that may have explained what you were seeing, but not all items had this. You could clearly see that they were hurting for more space to properly display all the finds which impacted how easy it was for a visitor to intuitively take in all the information. Thankfully Samara mentioned that the Egyptian government is currently building a much larger and modern museum to properly display all the treasures of ancient Egypt. We drove by it later and I think its safe to say that when it is completed (hopefully by 2017) the Egyptian museum will be a top destination that would rival some of the larger more well known ones internationally (It looked huge!).

Moving on Samara took us to the Citadel of Cairo. This was an old castle/fort built on a mountain in Cairo. In the fort was a mosque and the residence of an old Egyptian King. The mosque was very cool and pretty, though having been to the Grand Mosque just two days prior it was hard to compare. What was neat was that Samara sat us down in the middle of the prayer area and spent some time explaining the Muslim faith to us. Its incredible how similar my Christian faith and her Muslim faith are. She gave us the opportunity to ask her questions about her faith and I thought it was a very cool time of respectful conversation, questions and answers. You can tell how deeply troubling it is for her and other believers that her faith/country is often painted in a negative light by the media and how they want the world to know that their beliefs are very much based on supporting and loving other human beings. I personally really enjoyed this time asking her questions about their prayer life and truly admired their discipline and commitment. It gives me an opportunity to pause and self-reflect on my own faith and what I may need to do in order to strengthen my own commitments and dedication to my God.

After leaving the mosque we were treated a view of Cairo from an elevated position on top of a mountain. Its a pretty breathtaking view just to see how large and compact Cairo really is. Cairo is also noticeably old, and the state of a lot of the buildings in Cairo is pretty rough. At the same time I think it gives it a lot of character. While in Dubai both Gimpy and I felt it was lacking something, its ultra modern with amazing structures and attractions, but it seemed to lack a bit of “soul”, while Cairo didn’t seem to have these things but had a great deal of depth to it.  Maybe it was just me!

Moving on from the Citadel, we drove to Coptic Cairo, One of the interesting things about Cairo is that its been ruled by a number of different groups throughout its existence. With different rules, comes different religions. While a majority of Egyptians now are Muslim, there is a large Christian/Catholic population as well (from the time of roman rule). We visited the hanging church which was a church built on top of an old fort (thus the name “hanging”, like a tree house) in the church itself is a place for worship similar to a very small roman cathedral. There were also places you could look down and see the  foundations of the fort and how the church seems to be built on top of it. Samara made mention that you can see when the Nile floods based on the water levels against the walls of the old fort. We also got to visit an old Jewish Synagogue that was in the same area. Samara explained that there was a large Jewish presence in Egypt, but when Egypt and Israel went to war that population declined drastically. So sadly there are only two synagogues in Egypt and they are both unused.

By this time Samara could tell that we were fading in the heat and offered to take us to lunch. We stopped at what appeared to be a popular stop for many tours, given the number of vans and buses outside. It was a small buffet that had some typical Arabian food: Rice, veggies and grilled chicken. We ate quickly because we were hungry, but also because Samara wouldn’t be eating with us (due to Ramadan) and we didn’t want to keep her waiting. After this Ahmed and Samara took us to our new hotel: Pharaoh’s Hotel where we met our new G Adventures CEO for the Egypt portion of our tour, Mudi. Mudi is a very charismatic and happy guy and he greeted us enthusiastically. He helped us check in and let us know to meet him in the lobby at 6 for our orientation meeting. We settled into our rooms and let the A/C do its thing! I hopped into the shower really quick, feeling pretty gross, sweating most of the day (I realized upon arriving in this region that I hadn’t packed enough shirts, I was sweating through them a lot quicker than anticipated! Looks like I’ll need to do some in room laundry at a few stops). It was soon 6 and we all piled down to meet the rest of our tour mates and get this leg of our trip kicked off!  We had a good representation of many nationalities, Canadian, American, Australian, New Zealanders and Scottish. It was a larger group than our South African tour, but everyone seemed friendly and we all got along right off the bat. Mudi went through some of the details of the trip with us and then took us out to a restaurant nearby for dinner. He was excited to eat (because of Ramadan) and we were all keen to get to know one another better. It was a good evening of food and new friends! Mudi then took us to a nearby grocery store so we could stock up on supplies (Lots and lots of water) for the day ahead. We’d be seeing Pyramids up close tomorrow so we were all very excited!