More pyramids and heat

Trip Start Jan 22, 2008

Trip End Aug 22, 2008

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Flag of Egypt Cairo, Egypt
Sunday, August 17, 2008

A first class train journey back to Cairo since that was the only one we could get on in the next ten days 110 USD for tourists and 110 Egyptian pounds for locals - just a little bit of a difference. Was a lovely train journey though and we slept really well especially since the train got in 3 hours late and therefore arrived at 9am rather than the horrible 6am we expected.

We went to Pension Rita , which was a lovely hotel in the heart of Cairo on the 3rd and 4th floor up a really old open style lift. The only problem was that there were not any places to eat by McDonalds, hotels and places where nothing was in English. So for a change and to enjoy air conditioning I treated myself to a thick shake at McDonalds - something I would never do in the UK!

We hired a taxi for one day �17/170 Egyption pounds to take us to Memphis, Saqqara, Dahsur and the pyramids/sphinx

In train - love it

. I had always wanted to do this since when I went the first time I felt I missed out. I realised that I missed out on seeing the bent pyramid and climbing into the pyramid at Dahshur, which meant we both had muscle ache and could hardly walk for 2 days afterwards.. but it was definately an interesting experience since the 165 or so steps took us down into the heart of the pyramid where the air was dense and tasted of ammonia or something - cant say it was the nicest experience especially since it was rediculously hot down there but once you had gone into the chamber it was about 20 ft high.
Memphis had a small sphinx and a collosus laid down which was a good photo opportunity.
The step pyramid at Saqqara was unfortunatley being renovated and therefore a lot of it was being sectioned off so that was a pretty brief stop but there were other pyramids and tombs full of coloured hieroglyfics , which were really impressive.
We then had an expensive brief stop at the spinx to try and take some good photos but there were so many people there and the sun was hazy and therefore it was hard to take good photos - all in all though it was a really lovely day.