It was December 19th 2010 and my family and I were going to have a day out at Cairo in Egypt. We would get up very early, around 5:00am to get a bus to travel to them airport at Sharm el Sheik. Once we arrived at the airport we would catch a plane to take us to Cairo. The flight would be 45 minutes and we would be in Cairo by 7:30am.
At Cairo airport we were met by our tour guide for the day, Abdul. He took us out of the airport, into the car park and on to a bus where we met our driver for the day. Once we were settled in the bus Abdul told us how the day would be.
First we would visit the Egyptian Museum were Abdul would take us on a tour around all of the exhibits. Abdul was so incredibly knowledgeable about all of the exhibits; it’s like he brought them alive for us. Later on in the tour Abdul took us to see Tutankhamen’s death mask, it is made out of gold, semi-precious stones and inlaid with coloured glass. Sadly his red marble sarcophagus was not there.
When we had to go to the toilets we had a bit of a shock, there was an attendant standing in the door way offering 1 piece of toilet paper to whoever walked in, in return they wanted a tip. The toilets in the museum were a lot better than some of the toilets in Egypt.
After going to the museum we would have had a boat trip up the Nile to our next destination but sadly no one was aloud up the Nile due to political un rest, shortly after we left the riots broke out in Cairo which led to their president fleeing the country.
Our next stop was a shop near the pyramids, this shop sold lots of papyrus paintings, they also shown us how to make papyrus paper. After the demonstration we were allowed to look around the shop I brought a painting of the pyramids and got my name imprinted on the bottom of it in hieroglyphics.
Next we would have a short drive to the pyramids were we would have about two hours were we could walk around the pyramids. We were looking around the great pyramid and saw a tourist police officer standing next to it behind a rock urinating! We decided to take a picture of this for a bit of a laugh. On a serious note we were a bit disgusted by his behaviour towards these ancient monuments. Later on we went down two of the smaller pyramids; it’s quite amazing how far down you travel to get to where the sarcophagus was laid.
After we visited the pyramids we went to a perfume factory were we had a meal, it was a mix if lots of vegetables and pasta. After we finished the meal we got served drinks and all talked for a while, we were allowed to look around the shop at all the different perfumes. The family that owned the shop were very hospitable; this was probably in an attempted to make us by their stock. By the time we went to Cairo I had run out of money and managed to get one for free.
At the end of the day we arrived back at Cairo airport at about 19:00 and back at our hotel by 21:00. It was still very hot so went into the pool. The day we had just had has to have been one of my favourite days in my life. We couldn’t of been to Cairo and come out alive without him.
By Lee Mitchell
No comments:
Post a Comment