20-21 November 2024 I cannot report what the group did today, the 20th, except to say that we flew to Cairo together. Last night and all day today, I barely coped with the "traveler's curse," headache, upset stomach, overactive lower digestive tract. This ailment affected five of us and probably stemmed from the salads at the farewell dinner in Aswan. I don't think the others visited the mosques in Cairo, as planned. They probably went shopping or to general, unescorted sightseeing. Meanwhile, I stayed in my room and missed the second farewell dinner at the Cairo Marriott. The night was very short. On the 21st, most of us met in the lobby at 3am to catch the bus to the airport, which took about half an hour. There, we had to pass through three levels of security before boarding a tight, packed airbus, with a narrow aisle and no legroom, bound for London's Heathrow Airport. At Heathrow, we endured another two securithy gauntlets before scattering to find the...
9 November 2024 This morning we boarded the bus for the 30-minute drive to Giza, just outside Cairo, where the Pyramids, Sphinx, and Grand Egyptian Museum (the new museum) are located. It is Saturday, so the whole area was flooded with buses and cars carrying tourists and school groups. All around the biggest pyramid were hoards of people, some of them drumming us for money--for example, wanting to hand us a "gift" (perhaps a Chinese-made trinket or a photo) and then expecting from us a "gift" (i.e., money) in return. Our guide, Hend, had prepared us well for such approaches, so we weren't much bothered by them. Although I had seen many pictures of the Pyramids, getting the three-dimensional view up close was very special. And the same goes for the Sphinx. I climbed up a few courses of the huge limestone blocks used the build the Great Pyramid, peaked into the entry door, and climbed back down. I didn't go in, because Hend had said that I would have to do ...
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