End of an Era

  Cairo, Egypt
Sunday, May 13, 2007

The Imaginative Traveller Istanbul to Cairo Tour ends today - after 35 days together, it's definitely the end of an era!

W got off overnight train ride at about 11am this morning, dishevelled and hungry, and checked gratefully into our lovely hotel in Cairo for a shower. 

Breadfest on the Train

After we had cleaned up a bit, six of us who hadn't seen the Egyptian Museum last time headed out together in dilapidated taxis with dodgy drivers, picked up a guide at the entrance, and ventured in.  Nick, our Tour Leader, had warned us that although it had some incredible items, the museum was utter chaos, and that without a guide the labelling was so poor that we wouldn't really understand most of what we were seeing.  Fortunately, with a guide, it was still chaotic, but made minimally more sense.  It reawlly is jammed with a random assortment of priceless artifiacts, some still with the packing crates lying beside them because, as our guide told us, they had just discovered them in the basement.

Our guide was on a strict time limit, so we flew through most of the initial galleries, but despite his promptings we just had to linger at the room with all of the treasures of Tutankhamen, the Boy King whose grave in the Valley of the Kings was found completely undisturbed and with all of the grave treasures intact.  It was just breathtaking - the gold and turquoise burial masks that we must have seen a thousand times in National Geographic pictures were just incredible in real life, and the PILES of elaborate gold jewellery, the gold-covered coffins and couches, the alabaster carvings, the ancient weaponry......it was enough to literally render us speechless, and we ran from one exhibit case to the next like little kids at Christmas looking at all their new toys.  I can't even imagine how Howard Carter must have felt when he first opened the tomb and peered inside, and all of these incredible riches were just stacked on top of each other from floor to ceiling in the tiny little tomb.

We wandered dazed through several more rooms of priceless treasure and ancient art, and stumbled upon the room of mummified animals.  It was quite bizarre, but very interesting - mummies of dogs, baboons, cats, hawks, crocodiles and even a horse.  Some looked like they had just died a few days ago, it was pretty incredible.

Unfortunately, you can't take photos inside, but it was just amazing.  With any luck the new museum will open in the next year or two, and is supposed to be much bigger to display more of the pieces that the museum has, since what is out on the floor at the moment is only a fraction of the whole collection.  That said, I hope the new collection is a bit better organised, we found it a bit overwhelming.

After museum we headed back to the hotel, and made a valiant effort to repack for Greece before giving up shortly after and taking a nap instead - much more productive, since we were both pretty sick still with Ramses Revenge, totally wrecked after the overnight train and the succession of early mornings, and had to leave the hotel at 12:45 that night for the airport

We woke up in time to go out for the last dinner with the group, very fun, but some sad goodbyes after our crazy month together.  We were lucky, we had a really great group of people, and apart from a few oddball moments, no-one we really didn't get along with, which is rare.  We're going to miss them!!

Pashmina Parade

We got back to the hotel in just enough time to throw our stuff together and catch a crazy taxi ride to airport, we must have stalled no less than 8 times before elderly driver managed to grind the car back into gear.  Hopefully our fare helps him buy a new clutch.

As it turned out, we got dropped off at wrong terminal, but managed to share a taxi with a cool turkish guy to the right terminal, along with another crazy taxi driver with whom the Turkish guy had a stilted English conversation about price and baksheesh and tea.  We were too tired to follow it, but it sounded entertaining.

Got on our plane not too bad and left Cairo at 4:00am.......

Good bye Egypt!!!!