The Long-Awaited Return to the Egypt Chronicles: Day 3

Hey!

Yeah, I can give you my excuses for not having blogged, but even though I did have a lot of school work, that's no excuse for going like two weeks without it. I'm a new woman (let's hope) and I'm going to try to do as much of this darn Egypt trip tonight as I can, because I have so many more things to tell you since Egypt! It's funny, this really is exactly what my real journal sounds like in about every single entry. The only difference is that now, all you guys get to see what a bad/seldom writer I am!

Okay, so back to Egypt. Our third day was AWESOME!! (Prepare yourselves, this might be a long one, but complete with many a picture). So we wake up in Cairo and meet our new tour guide, Noha, who lovingly requested that we nickname her "Mama Pharaoh." She was HILARIOUS! Some of her pearls of wisdom include but are definitely not limited to:

"We have lanes, but they are more for decoration." (in reference to the insane traffic in Cairo, where there are about seven lanes of cars across a three-lane highway. Seriously. This is no joke.)

"Traffic is amazing, amusing, and confusing." (in reference to the same traffic).

Yeah, she was great. There were a lot more but I never wrote them down. So anyway, the first place we went to were the PYRAMIDS!!! Off we go to the Giza Plateau!!

The Three Great Pyramids of Giza

Human pyramid at the pyramids of Giza! Here we are at the first and biggest of the three, the Pyramid of the Pharaoh Khufu. I'm on the bottom cause I'm rough and tough.

AAHHHH!!! We're at the Pyramids!!!

Is this crazy or what?! This pyramid alone has 2.3 million stones!

Here's some more crazy fun facts about the pyramids that you'll enjoy (I was fascinated):

• Get this. Their architects and builders were so exact in their construction that the longest side is only 7 inches longer than the shorter side. It is almost a PERFECT SQUARE!


• I can't remember this fact exactly, but it's another one of the architecture ones. The entire base of the pyramid is on almost the exact same level. There is only a variation of a few centimeters for the level of the entire base!


• It took about 20 years to complete and if I remember right, they guess that there had to have been about 10,000 men working on it constantly for those 20 years.


• The pyramids are SO OLD! About 4,600 years old to be exact. That means that when Abraham (who's one of the oldest people we know of in the Bible) came to Egypt, he saw the pyramids himself, and they were already about 800 years old. I looked on the same sight that Abraham did. That's mind-boggling.
  

So yeah, the pyramids were incredible. We also stopped by to see the very first pyramid ever, called the step pyramid. (The very first one was made by Pharaoh Zoser's architect Imhotep who stacked mudbrick structures on top of each other, thus creating the step effect. And yes, I also realized that Imhotep is the guy from "The Mummy," though I don't think they're really the same person...)

The Step Pyramid at Saqqara (This is actually huge like the others, but the artistic abilities of Richelle are unmatched)

While we were at the pyramids, we stopped over at the sphinx. Yep, just stopped on over. It's right in front of the second pyramid of Giza, and is all made from one single stone. I think there are a lot of debates as far as who it's supposed to represent, but the human head represents the intelligence of mankind and the lion body represents the strength of a lion.

Annie, Me, Sphinxie, S. Allison, Alexis

He loves me

We Love Egypt!! (Me and my roomies I love so much in with the pyramids)

Well, we finally left the Giza Plateau and headed to the Papyrus factory, where we learned how ancient papyrus was made from a Papyrus plant. Pretty cool stuff. It was so neat to see all the authentic Egyptian symbols and paintings on real papyrus. (I may or may not have bought a couple to bring home....)

Valorie and I trying to squish the papyrus plant

Wow! What a day! We also went to Memphis (the original capital of Ancient Egypt) and by the end we were exhausted. But oh no no, our day was not over yet. We left the majority of our stuff in Cairo, packed one small backpack, and hopped on a plane to fly over to Luxor for a few days. It was pretty exciting. Let me just say, Egyptian airport security- not too particular. In fact, they never even checked the names on our tickets once, so I flew as "Alisha Anderson." It was an awesome flight.

Me and Elyse SO excited to fly Egyptianair. Woot woot! Don't mind that we look like we're about to fall asleep. It was a long day.

So once we got to Luxor, we went straight to our hotel, which was a HEAVEN ON EARTH!! The Sheraton gets two thumbs way up from me! Seriously, I didn't even realize how beautiful it was until the next morning when we woke up and realized where we were and what we overlooked! This was the view from where we ate breakfast. It doesn't even do it justice AT ALL, but that is our swimming pool, overlooking the Nile River. Wow. So beautiful. Luxor was a beautiful experience altogether. But that post is for Day 4.