For all of those who doubted it, I have returned unscathed from Egypt..... and let the record show that they are the nicest people I have met thus far. After our VERY scary car ride from the airport to the hostal (I'll get back to this point later) we were greeted with a cup of tea and loads of information on how to plan our week. The guys that worked at the hostal were extremely helpful and organized everything for us. The first day we took a day trip to Alexandria, the second day we saw the pyramids, sphinx, some ruins, and went on a dinner cruise down the Nile, and the third day we saw Islamic Cairo, saw the light and sound show at the pyramids, and took an old fashioned boat down the Nile.

First of all, for those who don't know there are 18 million people that live in the city of Cairo alone....yes, that is right 18 million and on top of that an extra 5 million come into the city everyday to work.... which means on a regular day there are 23 million people in the city and not one of them thinks that the sidewalk is preferable to the street for walking places.... which means that it is guaranteed that there are millions of people walking in the street with millions of cars dodging them every minute of the day.. Because of this the concept of driving in your own lane does not apply to Cairo. If you took an aerial shot of any of the streets it would look like one big traffic jam of both cars and people... so I hope I have given you a better understanding as to why we were so terrified during the drive from the airport to the hostal. One of the guys that worked for the hostal picked us up and after he sensed our fear he said, "don't worry everyone in Cairo drives like maniacs... its just easier." to this Becky, who was sitting in the front seat said, "I feel like I'm in a video game right now" and I am pretty sure she closed her eyes for the rest of the ride. However, after several car trips we were somewhat used to the chaos...our driver in Alexandria even hit a motorcylclist, got out of the car, looked to see if there was a dent, talked to the guy he hit for all of 2 minutes and then we left as if nothing had happened and the motorcylist drove away as if getting knocked off his bike by a van was a daily routine. Now that you have an idea of how people drive in Cairo... I'm sure you are asking yourself why the hell do the people walk in the street especially since the sidewalks are quite large and empty..... and I do have an answer for you. It is not a very good one but it is an answer nonetheless. According to Hassan (one of the guys who worked in the Hostal), Egyptians don't like walking on the sidewalk because it is too small (which is a lie because it is not too small). He then likened his experience of walking in Cairo to music "you just have to find a rhythm and you can't think twice about whether you are going or not because then you get hit, once you have made the decision that you are going to walk in front of the car you can't hesitate."

I think it is safe to say that if you can drive in Cairo you can drive anywhere in the world.

As I mentioned before, the first day we took a day trip in a car to Alexandria, which took 3 hours (probably could have taken 1.5 hours if they drove and walked like the rest of the world but what are you gonna do). Peter (one of the hostal workers), accompanied us on the trip as our tour guide. Alexandria is on the Mediterranean so we had a delicious white fish and tons of authentic Egyptian appetizers with pita bread for lunch. We also saw the catacombs which were somewhat eerie... they kind of looked like a really oldfashioned morgue underground. We also saw the new library which overlooks the Meditteranean. There were also several other ruins like the Roman theater and a small scale sphinx. After we had seen everything he let us have some free time at a market by the Mediterranean...which resulted in us warding off 20 year-old something guys who wanted to take a picture with us...contrary to what I had previously thought... some people still like Americans.

The second day Sherif took us to the Red Pyramid and the Bent Pyramid in Dahshur, which was awesome because we were actually allowed to go inside the Red Pyramid. We had to climb half way up the Pyramid to get to the entrance and then down the huge ramp inside of it. If you are chlosterphobic it is definitely not the place for you because it was very hot and after a while the smell of the limestone bricks was a little nauseating, however, none of us had any problems. There were three rooms inside the pyramid and while it was incredibly cool to be inside it was also somewhat eerie. After that we drove over to Giza and rented camels and horses to ride up to the pyramids on.... which was absolutely awesome. I took a camel there and a horse back. The camel was cool because now I can say that I have ridden a camel but I liked the horse better because it was a lot faster. We took a two hour tour through the desert and saw 7 pyramids (including the Great Pyramids), and the Sphinx. Sherif also made sure that we took all the classic pictures like kissing the sphinx, touching the point of the pyramid with your finger, and his personal favorite jumping off the camel which was quite scary but resulted in an awesome picture. Later that night we took a dinner cruise down the Nile. After dinner there was a belly dancing performance and other Egyptian dancers... one of the dancers came by our table and asked where we were from, Becky said the U.S. and his response was, "No, you from heaven!" After the cruise we went back to the hostal and Mustafa and Hassan took us to their favorite hookah bar where they taught us how to play dominoes and backgammon...we also tried some of the local drinks including Hibiscus juice and Sahlab which is an ancient egyptian drink served hot and made from a flour like powder taken from an orchid. On the way home I talked to Hassan who is originally from Iraq but he moved to Egypt with his family when the first Gulf War started, his dad was a business man and he said that as soon as the war started most of the people his dad worked with left because they knew that the country would be left in ruin... however, they were not allowed to fly out of Iraq so they had to take a bus to Jordan where they waited in the airport for three weeks before they were able to get on a plane to Egypt because there were no tickets or any sort of organization because everyone was trying to get out of the country. Listening to him talk about his experiences was one of my favorite parts of the trip.

The third day Peter took us to Islamic Cairo where we saw the Citadel and several churches and synagogues. The mosque in the Citadel was very impressive and so were the churches and synagogues in Coptic Cairo (Old Cairo). One of the churches, St. Sergius, is where Jesus, Mary, and Joseph hid in Egypt from King Herod. After Coptic Cairo and the Citadel we went to the market, Khan el-Khalili, where Alex bought a hookah for 10 American dollars and I picked up some souvenirs. Later that night we went back to Giza to watch the light show, which demonstrated Cairo's ability to light up the pyramids with colorful laser lights (technology cerca 1990), narrarate the story of how the pyramids and Sphinx came to be over a loud speaker, and charge 75 Egyptian Pounds (which is actually only about 15 dollars so I shouldn't be complaining). While it was cool to see the pyramids at night I think if I ever have a lot of money and free time I might go back to Cairo and offer some assistance in improving the show. After the show, Akman took us out on an old-fashioned boat down the Nile with some of his friends from his University and they sang and danced to Egyptian music... it was quite the experience.

Although we tried to occupy every minute that we had while in Egypt... there is so much to see. We saw ten pyramids, which I thought was great but there are actually 98 in total and we weren't able to make it to Luxor to see the temples so if anyone is interested I will definitely be making my way back someday.