Cairo, Day 2

After a long, exhausting day in Cairo, we awoke to face yet another just like it. Even sleeping here is an experience. Our room was right next to the common room, where random dudes where watching TV really loudly until around 3 or 4 AM. Add to that all the constant street noise, which maybe abated for about an hour or so around 6 AM. And they say New York is the city that never sleeps.

Once we had risen and left our hostel, we ventured forth into the city once again. The previous night we had learned that all the shady characters populate the city only during the day, while the best of Cairo shows itself at night. The city is so vibrant and alive after sundown that we just wanted to stay up all night and experience it all. However, with busy days ahead of us, we know we had to pace ourselves, so sleep won out. When we awoke, it was all business. We went to an internet cafe get in touch with our families, as well as upload pictures and update this very blog (see, we love you readers!). We then changed our money into Egyptian currency (note: it's about 5.44 Egyptian Pounds to US $1...that info comes in handy later). We had made plans to see the Pyramids at Giza that day before boarding our bus to Dahab at midnight. With the help of a city map provided to us by the fine folks at Lonely Planet, we walked from our hostel to a mooring point for feluccas (more on those in a later post), and took a taxi from there, since it's the closest major part of the city to Giza, and a taxi from there would be cheaper. We found a cab that was willing to take us there for 10 Egyptian Pounds (around US $2). It was a good price, so we decided to go for the ride. That's when we encountered yet another Egyptian scam. We were about ten minutes out from the Pyramids, when some dude, a friend of the driver's, hopped into the cab and started speaking to us in perfect English. He was trying to distract us by telling us all about the Pyramids while the driver was taking us somewhere we didn't ask to go. When he finally turned off the car, the English speaking guy started telling us that there was no way for us to see the Pyramids unless we paid for a camel or a horse to take us in. Yeah, right. Millions of tourists visit the Pyramids everyday, they're not all riding camels in there. Obviously, these guys had a third guy selling camels and horses, and they were trying to get us to buy one so they all make money. The driver actually dropped us off in the stables! You can't even see the Pyramids from where we were! However, these guys obviously had no idea who they were dealing with. We paid the driver the ten pounds, then stormed off in anger. They kept trying to get us to buy the camels and horses, but we wouldn't have any of it. We had our Lonely Planet and Snow's compass, and we found the entrance to the Pyramids ourselves. The camel guys meanwhile, were feeling pretty stupid. They thought they had this one in the bag. In the end, we scammed the scammers!

On our flight from Boston to Amsterdam, our new traveling friend Martin had told us that when he saw the Pyramids, he was absolutely overwhelmed by them. We had pretty much the same reaction. These things are huge and truly majestic. You really do wonder exactly how anybody was able to build these things millions of years ago, especially considering all the technology that goes into building even a pencil sharpener nowadays. All the pictures you see really don't do them justice. We toured around the Pyramid grounds for over an hour, well past the 4 PM closing time. We got a lot of great pictures (look for them soon), and even met another world traveler. We also made friends with the tourist police while they were kicking us out for being there after closing. We figured that while we were in town, we'd take in the Sound and Light show, which is a show that details the history of the Pyramids and the Sphinx using, appropriately enough, sound and lights. We had a couple of hours before the ticket window opened, so we found a nice restaurant to have dinner. The restaurant was literally across the street from the Pyramids. We were seated at the top floor, which was open air and had a great view of them. We were even able to watch the Sound and Light show from our table. What's even better than that was that when we got the check, we found that the super friendly wait staff had comped our meal, and they only charged us the 75 Pounds for the show. Another victory!

Next time: Back to Cairo to catch the overnight bus to Dahab. But for now: Pictures!

Cairo By Night