CC Travel Blog

Although full of amazing displays, the Egyptian Museum was rather small compared to most of the art museums in Europe. The security was tight and the guards double checked for cameras. Even though I hid my camera in another compartment of my bag, the halls inside were so small and staff watched as hawks that I could not sneak out a picture.

Once getting in, we went straightly to the Mummy Room, which costed another 35 Egyptian Pounds for students. The room inside showed about 10 mummies, all completely intact, still wrapped in clothes, with heads and feet sticking out. Some mummies were as old as from 1200 years BC. The kings from the last few dynasties were so well preserved that their hair was vividly looking as if they passed away just a few days ago. Most of their hands positions were crossed in front of the chests. The Mummy Room was rather small and no mummies were completely unwrapped. The mummies all look shorter than modern human beings, around 4-5 feet max.

We then visited the animals’ mummy room where all kinds of animals were presrved by salt and natron. Animal mummies included crocodiles (there was one that even had a small crocodile inside the mouth), cobra, cats, dogs, falcons, monkies and even khepri (the beetle that survives in dungs)! From the displays, we learned that the priests would make animal mummies and sell them to people that need to make sacrafices. And moving on, we saw displays of wooden coffins that were fake without a real animal inside! So I guess faith, the need and believe of ultra power, and the human cheating natures are timelessly true.

With plenty of time on hand, we checked out the rest of the museum displays. On the second floor, there was a room to display King Takantunun’s treasury and the Valley of King’s treasury from the tomb. There were huge wooden boxes painted with gold outside that held human mummies, treasuries, animal mummies, furnitures and even mummified poultry and the king’s inner organs for the deads to use when they get to the after world. (What a thoughtful idea!)

There were also huge furnitures covered in gold such as beds. The displayed treasure included gold head mask and gold necklaces. In the more recent Roman ruled stage of Egypt, some Greek letters were found on the statues which showed a more Romanistic style.

In about three hours, we finished the museum while I planned for five. So leisurely we went to the Cairo Tower via metro. Cairo’s metro stations were quite colorful and new compared to the experience we had in the Old Cairo.

The bottom of Cairo Tower was in construction; neverthelss, it is an important landmark in Cairo and the tallest building in the city.

The entrance ticket had an option to include a meal (but not drink) so we took the offer and went to the rotating restaurant for lunch. We both selected steaks for the entrees and it came out well done instead of medium. The sauce tasted OK but nothing fantastic.

Although it was a rotating restaurant, the motion was not smooth and the glass windows were very blurry, most importantly, Cairo was hazy and foggy. We couldn’t believe that it was such a disappointing experience!

After lunch, we took the stairs up to the 16th floor in open space. The view was really hazy!

As we were about to leave, we saw a few local young couples there dating romantically, at last I see a bit of a unrestricted Egypt.

In Cairo for the third day, we decided to check out the official tourist office. Boy! We walked around and around and finally we found this SMALL oblivious office. The staff was helpful but there wasn’t much material to provide.

Around the entire Cairo, we discovered that the culture here was very different. There were no local cafes or tea shops for us to get a drink and sit down (perhaps as a women, I also had less choices). We had to finally went to Hilton to get a drink. Despite the grey and ugly appearance, the hotel inside was comfortable with a nice atmosphere.

With a little bit of time on hand, we took a quick ride to the Coptic Cairo, which is the heartland of Egypti’s Christian community.

Behind the thick walls, there stood churches and synagogues.

Right next to the metro exit, we saw the City of Dead, a cemetery full of tombs and graves. It is so huge and sacred that when the cross lit up, everything seemed so quiet and dark.

The night fell in quietly and we returned to the hostel to sneak in a shower before we took the night train. There my horror started.

The hostel owner Ramy saw us and “invited” us to his office to help him out with his hostel rating. Since he would take us to the night train, for fear that he would do anything harmful, in front of him, we had to rate the hostel “highly” on hostelworld.com (so don’t take in too much of the comments about Egypt’s hostels, I suspect that all men are equally aggressive in Egypt). Then he asked us to help him translate to Chinese an ad he wrote in English about his hostel. Oh boy….

As we were drained out of energy, I went to check email and received a note from Memphis Tour saying that 100% cancellation fee was appointed despite our cancellation and 10% deposit and that he would come to the hostel to personally collect it.

I panicked and told Ramy about it. Ramy promised to cover for us (since he sold us his package!). Then a man showed up, looking sneakishly into Ramy’s office where we were sitting at. I freaked out, grabbed my partner and ran out to get food (or to avoid being spotted at). Near the hostel there was a plaza and we sat at Hardee’s, shaking and quietly eating our grilled chicken. My partner broke the ice and joked that I looked like a good student on my first cheating. I bet he wasn’t that confident himself!

Anyhow, at 9pm, Ramy took us to the train station and led us to our seats. We bought the 2nd class tickets, which had reclined seats in a 2-2 line up (while the first class was 1-2 line up). We felt asleep in no time before the train departed at 10pm.

At last, we were leaving Cairo and heading to Luxor.