Cairo, Egypt


Oh, if you have the chance, GO TO EGYPT. You have GOT to GO TO EGYPT.

I visited Egypt in February-March 2019. We flew out of JFK — economy class — and landed at Cairo Airport. The first thing you must do upon landing (after stretching your legs, of course ... it's an overnight flight and economy class is not comfortable) is visit the Egyptian Bank with US$25 in cash to pay for your visa to enter the country. No $25 cash, no visa and you turn around and go home on the next flight. You can give them US$30 or US$50 if you want, but they will not give you change. Just take US$25 with you.

Only after you visit the bank and get your visa do you collect your luggage and go through customs. I was with a tour group and I've had a KTN (Known Traveler Number) for awhile now, so customs was probably easier for me than it might have been.

You're going to be exhausted after that flight, so don't do what I did and spend $69 to hear the Great Sphinx of Giza talk. I saw the sound-and-light show the night we arrived, but I was really too tired to appreciate it. Wait until you've been there for a little while and you're over your jet lag (it's a seven-hour time shift from the Eastern Time Zone of the USA). I went to the sound-and-light show because I didn't read my itinerary, which promised us a good look at the Pyramids later in the week. But I got some decent photos. That's the Great Pyramid of Giza in the picture. Read up on the Pyramids.

In the morning, we hit the ground running. Our first stop was the Great Mosque of Muhammad Ali Pasha.

 The mosque is beautiful from the outside. But then we went in...

 This is the bell tower given by the French King to the then-current Egyptian ruler in the 1700s.


And here we have the Alabaster Courtyard of the mosque. Absolutely stunning.

 And the worship space ... it's enough to make an agnostic like me believe!



The Egyptian Museum was next. 
I wish it had been our only stop that day ... I could have spent the entire trip in that place. Statues with paint on them from 2,500-4,000 years ago. 

The Egyptologists do not re-paint. These 3,500-year-old figures bear their original paint job. No touch-ups.

 It's not marked or labeled, but this is the head of the snake that once adorned the head of the Great Sphinx of Giza.

 This is the entrance into King Tut's tomb. Tutankhamun was actually a very minor Pharaoh, but his tomb was fitted out for what would today be a powerful, wealthy king. His tomb was in the Valley of the Kings.

A Pharaoh of Upper and Lower Egypt. You can tell that he's king of both the kingdoms of ancient Egypt because he wears a dual crown; the red cap and the white tower (the white tower hat looks like a modern dunce's cap, I'm sad to say).

Tomorrow, we move on to Aswan.

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