Waking up in Cairo - Day 1

Originally posted May 15, 2004

Yawn. Stretch. Dang, it’s hot. Wait, this bed doesn’t have Mickey and Minnie cartoons on it. Where’s my desk? Oh yes, I remember, we’re in Egypt. Finally.

After missing our flight due to a miscommunication of meeting points to go to the airport on Saturday morning, spending the most depressing Saturday afternoon and night of my life in rainy, cold Paris trying to contact the tour company and my parents and deal with my ATM card that had been eaten earlier that same day*, a thoroughly spent Karla and brother Ben landed in Cairo at 7:15pm local time on Sunday evening to be met by a chipper and very kind assistant from our tour company. Our tour group consists of my brother, and me. We were picked up, got our Egyptian visas, got through customs, and were whisked off to our beautiful hotel in the center of Cairo within a half hour of landing. We were both worried about what missing a day of our itinerary would do, but the tour company rearranged our days so that we could fit everything in.

We got to the hotel, put our bags down, and shook hands for finally making it to this strange country. The sky is yellow with sand and humidity, the sun is hidden by a constant desert haze. The heat is intense and I am loving every minute of it. I can’t read Arabic, I can’t speak Arabic, and I’m afraid to walk anywhere alone, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I have always dreamed of coming here, and I now I am here; a realization of childhood fantasies of pyramids and Cleopatra, and the stories of the Egyptian gods. I specifically remember David MacCaulay’s Pyramids movie/book that told the story of Osiris and the journey to the afterlife and also showed how the pyramids were constructed. Now I get to see them with my own eyes!

Coptic Cairo

Our first morning we met our personal Egyptologist/tour guide and he took us through Coptic Cairo, these tiny beautifully crafted early Christian churches, one of which housed the Holy Family on their flight from Herod’s persecution, and all of which suffered through the even more widespread persecution from Emperor Diocletian until Marcus Aurelius took the throne. It was incredible to see the eastern influence and learn about what the orthodox Christian practices are in comparison to the Western ones I know. Then we visited the citadel of Salah El Din with the Alabaster Mosque of Mohamed Ali which is an incredible example of Islamic architecture. We all had to take off our shoes and I had to put on a robe because I was wearing shorts and you can’t have your knees exposed. Our guide, Galal, sat us down on the carpet and told us about what practices went on, about Mohamed Ali, about the architecture and the 182-foot dome. It was so cool because it was just the three of us sitting there having a regular old conversation, and all the other tour groups of 20+ were huddled around their guide trying to catch what he or she said and moving around like a flock of sheep. Ben and I were free to ask as many questions as we wanted and Galal, a Muslim, even told us about how he practices and helped us relate a little bit more to the space we were in. ***

Alabaster Mosque

Shorts and a t-shirt are a no-go in Mosques.  Hence, an awesome green cape. 

After a morning outside in the heat and brutal sun, (Egypt is in the middle of a heat wave…) we headed over to the Egyptian museum which totally blew me away. At the beginning it was like, oh okay these are the statues I have seen over and over again in books and pictures and replicas and other exhibits, then we got to the sarcophagi, and the entire wing of the museum devoted to Tutankhamun’s tomb and I was speechless. I never saw anything like what I saw there. The richness, the craftsmanship, the details, the quantity, the mass, the sheer volume of everything they found, added on to the fact that I had studied the very things I was resting my eyes on for years and year a hundred times over left me awestruck. I saw real mummies, the actual embalmed bodies of Thutmose II and Ramses II and V. I saw golden glory of King Tut’s funeral mask and his solid gold sarcophagus, I saw the ancient relics and mummies of a hundred other Egyptian nobles, 4500 year old clothes and scrolls and shoes and the embalming table which actually prepared King Tut’s body. It was just incredible to see how intact and alive the history is. It really did happen, all this stuff you hear about is true. This is a recurring theme from this year abroad. History is more alive to me now, having seen the places and beheld the proof. Seeing isn’t necessarily believing, but it enables a profound realization of the scale of time and the achievements of human life I never thought possible.

Ben outside Egyptian Museum

Funeral Mask of King Tutankhamun

And this was only the first day of the tour. Galal was supremely knowledgeable and very entertaining, and even invited us to come out with him that night to see Cairo night life**. Unfortunately, the program already has us on a Nile Dinner cruise complete with belly dancing so we had to decline. But we will be back in Cairo before the trip is over, we may just get our chance.

We came back to the hotel tired and really needing to sit down for a long time. We rested and cleaned up for dinner and then set out to embark on our dinner cruise. The food was incredible; the belly dancing was amusing (especially the drunk British guy trying to get her number and the giddy Japanese tourist showing her up with his hip- swiveling skills while 6 of his friends took pictures and videos) and seeing Cairo at night from the Nile made the evening.

My first impressions of Egypt are: hot, crowded, crazy traffic, and unfathomably old. I can’t wait to see the rest of this country.

*I later learned that it was not eaten, but stolen and when I got home, had over $3000 of charges on my debit card from some Parisian street urchin who spotted me a mile away.

**"WHY DID I NOT DO THIS!!!!" 31-year-old Karla asks herself, forlornly. Hitting the nightlife in Cairo with an Egyptian Muslim, and my older brother? It's the stuff travel bloggers DREAM OF.

***I feel like I missed out on exactly how amazing everything I saw this day was. I don't think I fully realized I was looking at a place where JESUS ACTUALLY WAS. Maybe traveling so much and seeing so many things makes you jaded after a while. I wish I had been more present and fully aware during this. This is a little sad to think about in retrospect.