Pharaohs Hotel & Casino Giza

... is a dump.<br><br>The museum has some fantastic early carved figures but the rest is poorly displayed and the 'highlight', Tutankhamen is rather like the Pyramids. You feel you've already seen them before. <br><br>We had lunch in wonderfully bizarre restaurant called Felfela which is so over the top it's worth a visit even if you don't eat there. But you should. Went to the Coptic Museum to see the Nag Hammadi Codices. Stunning if you are a Catholic conspiracy fan.

... group meeting was still happening upstairs. We joined the circle for the last 10 minutes of what was a 3 hour meeting. That should have been clue number one that our guide loved to talk. Everyone looked exhausted so I was glad we'd missed the meeting and could head directly to bed. But not before following the first rule travel in Egypt: Always have a 2 L bottle of water with you.

... lines to get out and showed to our buses...so far so good. As a measure of good faith I gave the guy the $15 I would have spend on the Visa as a tip and hoped that he would feel guilty if this was a scam and let me know with a big tip. But he was insistent that it was free.<br><br>Too make a long story short we ended up getting everything as advertised and were back with time to spare and a personal tour of Giza and one of the 7 Wonders of the World.<br><br>Now off to Nairobi.

... boat's incredibly loud motor was turned on...<br><br>It was probably a 15 minute ride from the sleeping spot to the opposite shore where we caught the bus.<br><br>As we were departing the boat we paid for our drinks, the few sodas we had had while on the felucca tour. And that's when I noticed it was gone...<br><br>See when I had gotten onto the felucca in by bathing suit I had strapped on my waistbelt money wallet. Of course there was really no ...

... corner, small children beg for "baksheesh," and on the next corner a man walks by you, wearing the latest fashions. That's what's so amazing about this place - the sheer contrast brought about by those packed in this relatively small place. Cairo is known partially because there are so many people per square foot, and that claim isn't threatened by my experiences. From what I've seen, that means the rich and poor have at least one foot in each other's houses. I have two main ...

... can&#8217;t help but gape at, where every different angle presents a truly imposing picture of its constructed grandeur that you feel privileged to be able to witness. For me the Pyramids are the pre-eminent of the latter. Mostly I think that it&#8217;s the mystique of how millions of colossal blocks of stone could have been arranged so precisely, but regardless of that, the sight of the sole surviving ancient Wonder of the World was as overpowering as the tidal ...

(Originally published at http://www.troysgonewalkabout.com)<br>< br>Our travelling trio was complete when Paul and I met Hoges in the foyer of the hotel in the morning. He had arrived from Sydney overnight, and being the first time all three of us had been in the same place at the same time for quite a few months there was much blokey gossip to catch up on over a few beers. But before that, and the evening meeting for our Intrepid tour starting the next day, there ...

... a happy and noisy crowd of locals of all ages who crammed along footpaths strewn with piles of refuse. Sirens wailed at every intersection and no-one was taking any notice. At almost every street corner we passed a mosque, each intermittently blaring out what I could only guess as sung recitals from the Koran or calls to prayer from huge megaphones. And all the while this whole seething mass of nocturnal activity was bathed in a mustard yellow glow as the ...

... 8220;bent pyramid&#8221; is shaped something like so. It was also built by Sneferu, and is quite amazing to see. It has its outer casing intact &#8211; the only pyramid left in Egypt for which this is the case. We also saw the Black pyramid of Middle Kingdom Amenemhet III. It has pretty much collapsed since the theft of its outer casing. <br><br>From Dahshur we drove to Saqqara. I ...