Museum and Wedding

Trip Start Aug 19, 2008
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Trip End Jul 04, 2009


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Flag of Egypt  ,
Saturday, May 2, 2009

Charles' sister and friends are in Cairo and planned to go to the Cairo Museum, Jen and I may have invited ourselves along for the trip. Spent about 4 hours at the Cairo Museum looking at the different historical finds that Egypt had to showcase. And in typical Egyptian manner, more then half of the artifacts were not labeled and didn't offer any explanation of what each piece was. Thank goodness there was a guide there to explain what some of the pieces were. Four hours was definitely not enough time to look at what the museum had to offer, our guide just highlighted some of the many pieces.
King Tut's tomb is the only tomb that was found untouched by grave robbers, so all his treasure is at the museum and is one of the highlights of the museum. The amount of stuff they found is pretty amazing the mask of King Tut is a lot bigger then I expected. For an additional 100 LE (or 50LE if you have the ISIC card) you have access to the Royal Mummy Room, which I thought would be cooler. I was expecting a huge room with tons of mummies instead it was a small room with about 12 mummies, and tons of people pushing and shoving to see them.
I managed to freak myself out thinking that they at any time the mummies would open their eyes are start banging their hands against the enclosure trying to get out. Another thought that I kept running through my head was the CSI episode where they managed to get fingerprints, off a what I believe was a, mummified body by taking the finger and soaking it in fabric softener. I know, I worry about my brain and what goes through my brain as well :). Overall, the mummies were cool, you could see their hair, toe nails, fingernails and dried up skin.
Jen and I headed over to the animal mummy room, which was free, and awesome-er, if I could say so myself. They had so many different animals mummified like cats, dogs, alligators, birds and I think a fish as well. There were also some fake ones in the mix, with a card saying that after X-rays, or CAT scans or something, it was just an empty shell. Oh well, it was awesome to be in that room. I wish I could have spent more time in that room looking at the different things mummified there.
This is one reason why I love this country, you never know what's going to happen. The only plan that I had for the day was to go to the Egyptian Museum with. Afterwards Jen and I decided to make use of the fact that we were downtown to go book my trip for Abu Simbel, Aswan and Luxor. At the travel agents Jen and I were asked if we wanted to attend, what we were told, an Egyptian wedding. One of the van drivers of the travel agent is getting married, since he's driven us before Jen and I agreed and invited others to join in the festivities. Went to the wedding, where we found out that the wedding wasn't going to take place till Monday, and today's event was sort of like family and friends of the groom celebrating the upcoming nuptials. It was a great time, we got fed, we danced with the kids and watched the kids and grown men dance.
Days like this is why I don't like planning for the weekends, things always pop up when you don't expect it.
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