Cairo

We took a day trip to Cairo. This involved paying large sums of money, in cash (euros, to be precise) to some sketchy people, with the promise that a bus would pick us up at 4:30 a.m. Okay, they operated out of the hotel, so it couldn't have been that sketchy, but still.

The van did come at 4:45, so we had started to get a bit panicky. We drove to the airport, presented our passports and boarded a plane. Jason, helpfully, informed us that this very plane had crashed previously in Darfur. Way to instill confidence!

Surprisingly, we did not crash and nobody attempted to hijack us, even though (and this is true) almost everyone on the plane brought liquid. That's right. Water bottles, juice boxes, you know those things terrorist use. See, since the flight had nothing to do with the US, they used more sensible security measures, like multiple luggage screening and scary looking dogs. Everybody had boxed breakfasts from their hotels, so we all had liquid.

We arrived in Cairo and went to meet our tour guide. He was late, so we were a bit nervous, given the sketchiness of the whole deal. Fortunately, he arrived and it turned out to be just 7 of us in our group, along with Ibrahim, our tour guide.

Ibrahim was in his mid 20s and announced he was looking for a British wife. He also liked Russian women because they were easy, but he really wanted to marry a British girl and did we know any?

Our first stop was the Cairo museum. We look nice and well put together, which changed throughout the day. The Cairo museum was fascinating. We learned all about King Tut and had a great time.

Then we went to lunch at a boat on the Nile. It was billed as 5 stars, and I'm sure this is true if your rating system consists of 1 to 25 stars. We had a choice of chicken, fish or "meat." Our fellow group members and we decided that the "meat" was most likely camel. Yum.

After a brief stop at a papyrus museum (gift shop) we headed to the...

Pyramids! This was so awesome. We got to climb up on the great pyramid and then go down into one of the smaller ones. The way down was too steep for Daniel, so Sarah and Jason went down, and then when they came up, I was going to go down alone, but Sarah volunteered to come with me. The others in our group called her Indiana Jones because she could scamper up and down the steep ladders. She had the distinct advantage of being short enough to stand upright on the paths.

We then got to go on a camel ride.

Daniel was pretty unsure about this, crying, "Cow, cow!" But once on the camel, he did pretty well. Our helpful bedouin guide said, "happy baby!" The ride was about 30 minutes long and the most awesome thing ever. It was so cool to ride up behind the pyramids on camels.

We then visited the Sphinx. We told Sarah that they had just met and she should not be kissing anyone, but you know how kids are these days.

After the Sphinx we got dragged to a "fragrance" factory, which was another blatant attempt to sell us things. But, they had clean bathrooms and drinks, so who could really complain?

We headed back to Sharm El Sheik on the same plane, which (incidentally) was so filthy you couldn't see out the windows. Since everyone on the flight had up since about 3:30, there was some serious cranky pants going on. Our children performed admirably.

I did learn, while waiting to get off the plane, that if there is one thing people hate, it's waiting to get off a plane. I think we if we were trying to get off the plane to meet a firing squad people would still be groaning about how long it was taking.

All in all, a fabulous day!