Blogging the Nile | Museum, Dining, and Laundry

CAIRO, EGYPT – Museums are cool. Cameras are cool. Cameras in museums are cool. In this way, Egypt is not cool. Get the drift?

Three Observations from today:

1. Exploring the past. We got up relatively early, got ready, and headed out of the guesthouse by 9am this morning. Then, instead of paying $40 for George to drive us to the museum, we paid 75pt (less than 1 LE) to ride the subway down to within a block from the museum. HAHA GEORGE!

Anyways, we swung in and began looking around. From the incredible Narmer Palette to the huge statue of Pharaoh Djoser, his wife, and two children, everything was simply mind-boggling, and that was just in the atrium! As I’d went through gift shops and different places across the city, I’d noticed pictures of famous artifacts from the museum, and now, all of a sudden, I see them: the Seated Scribe, Seneb, Tuthmosis III and Hatshepsut’s shrine. All of these things were all about people who I remember learning about in history classes, in books I’d read, in movies I’d seen. All of a sudden, so real.

Upstairs of the museum was even cooler, with rooms and rooms of pharaonic jewelry, masks, chariots, and the infamous blue faience hippopotamus that seems to be the city’s mascot. But the trip peaked at the Tutankhamun galleries, with his tombs, statues, wigs, canopic jars, clothing, and of course, the contents of room 3: the infamous death mask (11kg) and two golden sarcophagi (110kg). Just incredible. This is why you come to Egypt.

The only annoying thing was what I just near-mentioned: the picture policy (or lack of one). Lonely Planet and Rough Guides said that all indoor museums, tombs, and sights would only allow picture-taking for a fee of 5 LE. Worth it to take shots, I'd say, so I'd planned on getting a "picture permit" and the museum. But nay, that policy had just been overturned by the Minister of Tourism. Turns out the flash destroys the paint, the wood, the stone (that had been strong enough to survive thousands of years of weathering, but not a flash?). So a ban was put in place. *sigh* Ah well, everything was still amazing enough without the shots.

2. Hungry hungry hippos! After we explored for a couple of hours, Lauran and I made our way out of the museum and over to the Cairo Hilton (Paris’s Muslim cousin?) to eat at an incredibly nice (and expensive) restaurant, Da Mario’s. I justified the cost by convincing myself I hadn’t eaten at such a quality establishment in close to a year, and that spending $20 on a meal would be justifiable since with the cost of food we’d normally been eating.

The best on the buffet? The pasta with the incredible mutton steaks. Sweet mercy… and desert? Let’s just say we spent 2 hours at the place for a reason. We ate, we just hung out, snacked a bit, came back for more servings, rested some more and did desert. Price per plate made the extra expense VERY valid!

3. Rest of the day… Pretty easy, to say the least. Lauran and I took a river taxi up and down the Nile, my first time on the famous river. After some of that and some walking around downtown, we hopped on the subway and got off at our stop, Saray el Kobba. We headed back to the guesthouse, spending some time at an internet café near Midian Roxy. I found out that the Chiefs had lost, killing my Christmas. But hey, all was well; lots of people had written me! Cool!

It was relatively early when we got back, but after so much walking around, we were pretty pooped. I wrestled with the laundry machine for a while, figuring out how to make my clothes fresh and clean. Awesome.

Ok, better hit the sack soon here. Tomorrow we have to be up and awake early to head out to Alexandria! We’re taking a train up to the Mediterranean city to check out what’s up there. Wish us ok sleep!

-cw, (or in Arabic, )