Cairo, Egypt

We arrived in the Suez Canal early Monday morning to get off for a 2-day, one-night adventure in Egypt. We pulled the kids, and ourselves, out of bed at 3am and were waiting downstairs, along with about 100 other passengers who would be taking this trip with us, to be let off the ship and onto the tenders that would be taking us ashore.  With lethargic looks on all the faces around, and coffee cups in hand, everyone waited patiently for about two hours when they finally announced to us that for weather and wind related reasons, we could not go ashore and they had cancelled our trip. So here we are at 4:30 am, finally awake, wondering what to do with 3 kids who, the night before were drugged at 5pm with Benedryl to help them go to sleep early in preparation for this early morning wake up, and are in effect now ready for the day to begin.  It didn’t take us long to find our newest favorite morning activity of playing hide and go seek amongst the rows of seats and lofted boxes found in the large, dark and empty Royal Court Theatre on the ship.  Here we were, running, screaming and hiding through Cunard’s finest and most elegant theatre at the wee hours of the morning, and no one was around to tell us no.  It was one of our finest moments on the ship so far. 

Round 2 for getting off in Egypt, on Tuesday morning, was a success.  We skipped out on seeing our port city of Alexandria, and chose instead to go to Cairo and visit the Pyramids and Sphinx (what we would have seen had we gotten off the day before).  We were camped out in our usual spot, the long back row of chairs, on our tour bus for a fun filled 3-hour ride to Cairo. And by fun filled, I mean that at one point we had Isabelle filling up the only available plastic bag found on the bus, with her carsickness, Jeanie pinching off the corner of the bag that had a hole in it so that remnants of regurgitated breakfast weren’t leaking onto the bus floor.  During this time, Grisha is on the other side of the bench watching the movie Cars on the hand held DVD player as he’s licking a scoop of peanut butter off of a knife, while, let me remind you, on the very bumpy ride in a moving vehicle.  I’m not sure how we all survived, or how we got so many comments at the end of the day about how well the children were behaved…obviously people aren’t aware of the trick where you put a movie in the kids lap, and stick a knife in his mouth and they shut up.  Needless to say, we all took a deep breath of relief, as we stepped off the bus at the Pyramids of Giza.

You always hear about the famous Pyramids of Egypt, and I remember learning about them in school for years.  They’re one of those places that are found in the book about 1,000 places you have to see before you die.  I realized, that’s just what they are, something to say you’ve seen.  Maybe I’m being a travel snob by saying this, but I really wasn’t as impressed with them as I thought I would be.  Up close, they looked more like loose rock formations slowly falling apart, unlike the much more impressive look they gave from a distance. The coolest part of Cairo to me was when we were driving around the city and amongst the crazy traffic and dirty streets, you would look up and above the rooftops, you could see the tip of the Pyramid, standing out and above, unlike anything else around it.  When we made our way around to the Sphinx, low and behold there were both a Pizza Hut and KFC no more than 50 yards away that we of course had to make a lunch stop at. There’s nothing quite like the experience of looking out the window of a Pizza Hut to a view of the ancient Sphinx and Pyramids of Giza.  Traveling with kids takes on a whole new meaning to “seeing ancient history”.

The local sales people here are just as aggressive as in any other country, eagerly showing you the postcards and small pyramid models they are selling.  But here, they have this creative, and might I add annoying, sales tactic that I of course fell for and gave me a reality check and stupidity slap in the face that I guess was well deserved and needed.  I try to have a good attitude around these people, who swarm you like you’re some movie star the second you step off the bus.  They ask you where you’re from and tell you how grateful they are that you have come to their country, welcoming you with much thanks, as if you’re any different than those other thousands of American people who they see every day.  This one kid comes up to me and shows me some headdress he is selling and I tell him I don’t want it.  “No it’s a gift for you, no money, free,” he says. FYI, nothing is free in Egypt, nothing. Before I can walk away, he has the thing wrapped on my head and is telling me that I need my picture taken in front of the pyramids with the camel.  Gosh, he really knows the way to a tourist’s heart…  Trying to be nice I said fine and walked with him over to the guy selling camel rides and he tells me to get on the camel, “no ride, just sit for free”.  I’m thinking ya right, I know this game, the camel stands up, you run off with my camera and I’m too high off the ground to jump off the camel and chase after you.  I refuse and after his third attempt to get me to sit on the camel, he finally just agrees to take the picture of me standing by it, all the while I’m saying cheese, thinking “I’m not some stupid American who will fall for your trick”. Well, I did. Before I know it I have two guys telling me I owe them money, one for taking my picture and the other for standing in front of his camel.  After trying to tell them I had no money and walking off, the camel guy finally gave up on me, but the other kid (the one who “gave” me the headdress at the beginning) kept following.  Giving me more gifts and then pointing to my pockets, telling me I owed him money.  Somewhere along the line after handing his gifts back several times and then finding them back in my hands a few seconds later, I pulled out five dollars, and he said “I give you change”.  Under his discretion of course as he started adding up all my charges for the picture and the camel and the headdress and the dumb pyramid model.  I impatiently waited for my change, and finally threw his “gifts” at him and ran off annoyed before he could give me back any more than 2 of my 5 dollars.  So basically I paid 3 dollars to be reminded that I’m more of the naïve American tourist than I had believed myself to be.  All in all, this might have had some play on my somewhat negative view of the pyramids.

The dreaded three-hour bus ride back to the ship became closer to a four-hour drive as we moved slowly through the traffic of a wreck.  Driving in Egypt must have very little limitations and I noticed as we were driving around, that lanes don’t really exist here.  The worst wreck I have ever seen in my life was the effect of the wreck less driving that takes place here. At least 15 cars were piled up, scattered across the road, going the opposite direction we were on as we headed into port.  Cars under trucks, squished between cars, and at least 30 people out of their cars in the street trying to pull cars out from under other cars, was the last scene of an already chaotic day in Egypt.