We left Corfu at 4:00pm and set sail for Egypt, we will be at sea all day the 26th. As we cruise along we pass many islands, and boats, and land?? The water of the sea here is a blue like I have not seen before, it is a dark but brilliant blue, so gorgeous on a sunny day!. I spent a bunch of time out on the little deck watching the sea go by.
The boat was full of activity, all the time, we would get a schedule of the next day each night and every hour there are activities and things going on.....I am enjoying laying out on the top deck sunbathing and getting spritzed down by the waiters with their mr. misty water gun!! About midday we are getting really close to this island..and the boat that had been speeding along slows to a halt. A small boat comes racing out to meet us, come to find out their was a medical emergency, someone had a heart attack and he is being taken off the ship to Crete. We are off and running again within the hour.
Always sleep with the window open, so wake up to see and smell we are in Egypt! Alexandria is a large port, not like the little ones we have been docking at so far. We have to be on the bus early today for our 3hr drive to Cairo and the pyramids.
We head out of the port, lots of security and gun toting guards. The part of the city we drive thru is dirty and dingy, the buildings are run down and ugly. The guide tells us that in Egypt people don't spend any money or time fixing up the exterior of their homes, they focus only on the inside...it shows..not anywhere I would want to walk around. We leave the city and head into the country which is a whole bunch of sand, and some mosque's and these crazy looking cone things with holes in them. We find out these huge structures, bigger than many of the houses, are pigeon houses, cause they keep pigeons, and eat them.....ouch..won't be eating out with any mystery meat. So..did I mention we are travelling with a caravan of buses and a police escort...it is not safe for the buses to travel alone, tour leaders and tourists have been killed in the past...um..so..here we are in Cairo!
Cairo is disgusting...we drive along a canal that goes thru the center of the city and my mouth is hanging open as I am floored by the filth..A woman crosses the road with bags of trash and throws them into the canal!! The canal is filled with trash, I am talking they have dredged and pulled heaps of trash up on the banks, the banks of the canal are just huge heaps, 20 ft tall of trash, dead donkeys, and who knows what else are in there..and just when I think it can't possibly get worse..I see a man sitting on top of the trash with a fishing pole!!!!!!!!!!!! Yup, not just one deranged man out there, as we drive along their are several of them, even men in boats out there. Let me move on....
We arrive at the Giza plateau where the pyramids are, which are actually right in the city, strange, you would always think when you see them they are out in the middle of the desert...while they are..and so is Cairo. The Pyramids are very impressive, just amazing thinking of how old they are and how they were built and just how massive they are!! Taking away from all this are the annoying people trying to take your camera and take pictures of you, or trying to get you on their camel, or having you take a picture of them and then trying to charge you for it..Oh and then the pick up lines Egyptian style, how many cows for your hand, how many camels, I will give you 1 million camels to be my wife, I can't recall the others...cause they were so annoying..strange and annoying, just wanted to crawl back in the bus....The children, and vendors, would get irritated and say rude things if you wouldn't buy their things, they were rude and unfriendly. ok I am gonna stop here and separate some stuff here for better clarity....
We visited the sphinx and then on to the step pyramid, also the
