Day 8: Walk Like an Egyptian

As usual, we had to wake up early for our excursion out to Cairo. I think like six or something. We docked at the Alexandria port at around 7 and our tour left at 7:45. We got ready pretty quickly and went upstairs to get a quick breakfast before leaving for the tour. I had just recently discovered that they make you omelettes if you stand in the long line, so I got one for breakfast. A nice filling thing before the long bus ride to Cairo.

We went downstairs to get our numbers and do that whole thing and then got outside and loaded our bus for our trip to Cairo. I wasn’t too upset about waking up so early because the trip to Cairo was like three hours, which would be ample time to sleep. We got onto the bus and the whole time, all I could really think “oh my God, we’re in Egypt” and “oh my God, I’ve made it to Africa.” It was kind of surreal. The entire day was, actually. This tour was police escorted, so we also had a police escort who came along with us on our bus and on the tour. That was pretty interesting and probably will be the only time I will ever be on a police escorted anything, so I should have enjoyed that and pretended I was somewhat more important than I really am.

Anyway, as we were leaving the port and Alexandria, our tour guide told us some facts about Egypt, like information about the economy and the culture. It was pretty interesting, but I was also dead tired because I was awake at an hour that I do not enjoy being awake at, so I eventually just gave in and went to sleep for a while. During my sad attempt at sleeping on a somewhat uncomfortable bus, I heard Umma scream and laugh because Gianni had apparently come up to her seat and opened up (and broke) the ash tray in front of her. I asked her about it later that day, but she misheard me and thought I was telling a joke “what did the ash tray say to the cigar.” So, for a while, both she and Oppa eagerly waited to hear the punch line of a joke that I had apparently just created.

I woke up maybe an hour and a half to two hours after going to sleep because Umma was asking me if I wanted to get a cartouche with my name engraved into it. I said yes, and then had to figure out and order the one that I wanted and all of the jazz. It was complicated because there were a lot of choices to go through and everything. After using all of that brain power, it was kind of hard to go back to sleep. Plus, we were in the middle of the desert somewhere and probably somewhat near Cairo, so I didn’t go back to sleep.

About twenty minutes or so later, we were able to catch our first glimpse of the pyramids. It was pretty cool and very surreal. I almost felt like we were just driving into Vegas and looking at the Luxor from a distance and not one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. I pointed the pyramids out to Mia, who in turn pointed them out to Umma. When Mia told Umma about the pyramids, her response was “Oh, they’re probably fake.” We’ve been teasing her about that ever since.

It took us a little while longer to actually drive into Cairo and to the site of the pyramids. Once we entered Cairo, the bus driver’s style of driving changed. Driving in Cairo looks absolutely terrifying and I am pretty sure that we almost hit about five hundred people during our day in Cairo.

Anyway, we get to the pyramids and it was surreal how cool it was to see them up close. Our tour guide told us a little bit of the history of the pyramids and then we parked the bus and they let us out to look at them for about forty minutes before we would move on to our next destination. As we had expected, it was very hot once we got out of the bus and the fact that we all had to dress very conservatively for this excursion did not make it any better. However, it was a little more bearable than I had expected it to be, so it was all good. The moment we stepped off of the bus, we got barraged by people trying to sell us souvenirs from Egypt. There were postcards, dancing camel dolls, hats, etc., etc. It was overwhelming. We were also barraged by people who wanted us to take rides on their camels. This was actually something we were explicitly warned against before leaving the ship because they charge you both to get on the camel and get off. They were also kind of gross and smelly up close, so I was okay without it.

We walked up close to one of the pyramids to take about five hundred pictures, but we were not allowed to get too close to that particular one. Apparently Oppa was able to get up close and touch the other one, but no one else really approached it so no one else got to touch the pyramid like he did. So sad. I think there was something about our group that must have completely stressed out our police escort because he kept a closer eye on our group than any other one. He kept on watching us and stressing that we were too far from the bus.

I think Andrew and Gianni managed to stress Umma out, though. In an attempt to stress either me or Oppa out, they kept on trying to make the little RCI tour stickers that we were wearing offensive. So they told everyone that things like the color purple, stickers, the number 9, Times New Roman font, etc. were offense to the Muslim culture. Everyone else ignored them, but after noticing the security escort follow us around looking very distressed, Umma tried to have us all rip off our stickers because she actually believed them. After about forty minutes, we loaded back onto the bus, but not before Umma purchased those Egyptian hats for James and his friends, Andrew, and Gianni. They looked kind of silly trying to put the hats on. Good times.

The great thing about this guided tour of Cairo was that even though we were in the middle of the very hot desert, we would be driven around everywhere in our very nice, comfortable, and air conditioned bus. So it was a great relief to be loading back into the bus, even though we knew that our next destination would be as hot, if not more.

Anyway, the next stop on the tour was to see the Sphinx, which was actually a lot smaller than I had expected it to be. We parked a little ways away, and we had to push our way through more souvenir vendors to get to the entrance. Once there, we had to stand in this very hot and sweaty pathway to get to a close and nice view of the sphinx. Before doing that, we had to push our way through a group of tourists from Scotland who chose the most awkward spot to take a picture in front of the Sphinx.

Once we finally did get out to an area that we could breathe, we were able to take a lot of pictures next to the Sphinx. Umma found this little kid who was probably James’s age who was walking around selling souvenirs that she decided she wanted to kidnap and adopt or something. He was this little street smart kid who ended up selling her “papyrus” bookmarks and who took a picture of James at an angle where it looked like he was kissing the Sphinx. Seeing the Sphinx was kind of like being on some movie set for Indiana Jones or something. We were in the middle of the desert, looking at the Sphinx and in the distance, you could see police guards watching the landmarks on top of camels. It was just so cool.

We walked back towards the bus, getting back there a little after we were supposed to meet. It was okay, though, because there were three or four groups who had to get on after us. We next drove through Cairo towards the Nile River for our lunch break. On the way, we saw all of these half-done houses and apartment complexes. Apparently the way things work in Egypt is that you don’t get taxed for living in a building where the façade is not completely done. This means that there were a lot of apartment complexes and houses that are not completed so that the inhabitants would not have to pay taxes. This seems like a kind of silly law, but whatever.

So, the next part of our tour was to eat lunch on a fallukah (sp?) along the Nile. Fallukahs are these little sail boat things. They’re very cute and were very comfortable to ride. We had to wait around a while to get onto one. Two buses hit the site at the same time, so it took us a while to get loaded on to the various fallukahs. During this period of massive confusion, we ended up being pushed to the absolute back of the line (probably because accommodating a group of nine is a lot more difficult than accommodating a group of four, for example). Anyway, in this confusion, we got to ride our own fallukah with the tour guide. Knowing our group, it was probably better that way.

It was very fun being able to ride around on a boat on the Nile. It was also fun to use puns using the word “denial” because Andrew hates puns. After walking around in the hot sandy desert area that surrounded the pyramids, the fallukah ride was a very welcome break. There was a great breeze in the area, which really cooled all of us down. Additionally, our lunch was very good. I was actually a bigger fan of all of the salads that we were eating than all the meat we got even though I did really enjoy the fried fish. This relaxing break lasted about forty minutes to an hour and we didn’t actually venture too far from where we started. After we docked and got off of the fallukahs, we loaded back onto the bus to hit our next destination.

The next stop was this mosque and the house of some high ranking officer in the British army. I don’t actually remember who the guy was, but his house was actually in the mosque. It was pretty cool to see the set up and it was a very nice house, but because of the narrow pathways and stairwells, it probably felt like the hottest point of this tour. I came out of this man’s house feeling absolutely disgusting because it had been so hot in there. This was also kind of not good because we also went to visit the mosque next door. The mosque was pretty. We pretty much just had free time to look around for a while and take pictures.

We loaded back onto the bus and saw a clear look of relief on the face of our security guard when he saw that our group had returned. Once on the bus, we drove towards the Cairo bazaar. On the way, we passed through a number of other pretty cool sites, such as the city of the dead, which I think used to be a cemetery that people started building houses on until the Egyptian government forbade it. I think that’s what it was.

The bazaar was pretty cool. The streets were not as narrow as the Turkish bazaar that we saw in Kusadasi, but the people were just as persistent in trying to get you into the store. While the Turkish people’s selling argument would be that it was free to look around the store, the people in the bazaar in Cairo were a little more blunt. They straight out asked us how they could take our money. Because of the limited time that we were spending at each site on this tour and the fact that we had spent most of our cash before even getting to the bazaar, we didn’t actually end up doing much shopping at this point. We managed to run into Uncle Alex and co., which was a pretty surprising coincidence. Gianni wanted to buy a pharaoh hat because he is weird and Andrew wanted to buy a miniature fez because he is weirder. I bought a couple of last minute souvenirs, but the one who really came out of the bazaar a winner was Mia, who managed to convince Umma to buy her an Egyptian guitar-thing. We also bought little scarab necklaces from some little kid who ended up giving us a lot of scarab necklaces for free as “gifts” and then got hit in the head by a local shopkeeper because he was probably taking away business. At this point, I also noticed our security guard watching our group again, making sure that we weren’t causing a ruckus. I really don’t know what it was about our group that stressed this guy out, but it was almost funny.

We managed to drag ourselves away from the bazaar to get to the bus stop on time and before any other group, all of the groups of people who had not decided to spend most of their money on the souvenirs at the pyramids. Once on the bus, we headed over to the papyrus store to go watch a papyrus making demonstration (which was kind of cheesy) and wait around while people bought authentic Egyptian papyrus. I wasn’t going to get anything until I noticed that I could buy bookmarks for a lot cheaper than everything else and get my name written in hieroglyphics on it. This stop was also a great stop for a clean bathroom before the three hour ride back to Alexandria and allowed everyone to go pick up the cartouches that they had ordered earlier in the day.

This stop seemed to take forever, but I think it probably just felt like it was a lot longer than it really was, probably because the novelty of it wore off after you bought the things that they wanted you to buy. In retrospect, I should have gotten more papyrus bookmarks. Anyway, after that stop, we headed back to Alexandria. This ride seemed like it took a lot longer than the ride into Cairo, probably because we hit traffic pretty much everywhere we went. It didn’t really matter for me though, because I fell asleep shortly into the trip. The end of this tour was kind of sad. Out of the three organized shore excursions that we went on this time around, this one was by far my favorite.

We got back to the port of Alexandria around 8:30 or something and got bombarded with more storeowners trying to give us last-minute Egyptian souvenirs. We also got bombarded with cruise staff handing us glasses of water and moist towels, which were very refreshing after the long hot day in Cairo. We got back onto the boat, put our stuff down in our room and went up to the Romeo and Juliet dining room for dinner. As we were waiting for everyone to get together, we looked outside of the ship to see an epic line of people trying to get onto the boat. Apparently our timing was perfect. There was no assigned seating for the dining room for dinner because we were in port for so long, so we ended up eating on the other side of the dining room, something that felt awkward and weird after eating in the same place every night. Food was good though. I had French Onion Soup and some Mahi Mahi Tempura. Good times. The shhh woman and her friend sat near us while we were eating. The whole time they were there, they would glare at us for very long periods of time. It was kind of funny to know that they still hated us.

We spent so much time eating, that we missed the 10:15 Name that Tune with Ian, the guy who plays piano every night. This was fine with me until we went to listen to him perform later that night and found out that one of Mia’s favorite songs, Wild World was one of the songs played for the game. Mia’s been kind of bitter about that ever since. We spent some time at the piano bar after that to listen to him and Gianni and Mia put in their usual five hundred requests, but we eventually went downstairs to sleep since it was a very long day.