Way Bigger... and Way Smaller!

Well, today was the day! We saw what we have heard about since we we're little kids, and perhaps we've all seen pictures of; the great pyramids of Eqpyt and the sphinx. And to borrow a pun from a good friend, it was quite fun to "peer amid" them! Our first reaction of the pyramids, which is the first thing you seen when you enter the park, was, "wow those things are huge!" They were way bigger than we ever thought they'd be. In the park called Giza, there are about 6 pyramids. One is gigantic, and the others are very big. The stones that were carved, and stacked into place are bigger than vans. The obvious question is, "how in the world did they build these things?" Really amazing!
The other attraction at Giza is the sphinx, pictured below. This looks enormous in a photo, but when we saw it, it wasn't as impressive as we had hoped. Of course it is still amazing work. It's around 50 metres long and carved out of one rock. We just thought it would be bigger.


It really was a good park. Erin and I also enjoyed, in a wierd way, all the hasseling you get at such a huge tourist attraction. It was almost a constant question, "do you want to ride a camel?" There were so many of them. It would be kind of neat to ride around the dessert on a camel or a horse and look a the pyramids, but it really wasn't that much walking. Erin and I also had swarms of Egpytian school kids pestering us constantly. Not that we minding having our picture taken with teenage boys and girls who thought we looked like "movie stars", but it just got to be too much. I adventully got the idea to try saying, "I no speak the english." This worked very well." A few times we were asked then what language we speak, and a simple reply of "me from sweeden" had the tout of your back instantly. That was a real laugh for us!

We then hired a taxi to take us to another ruins site about 30km out of the city. We saw some more pyramids, including what is believed to be the first one that was built. There were some tombs to go inside, which was neat, and also a pyramid we could enter. This was the highlight. You first climb some stairs about a third of the way up the side, and then enter a long shaft down into the pyramid. It was very steep and very low. The tunnel was about 3 feet by 3 feet, and maby 100 metres long or more. Once inside, we were struck by the very stale and hot air. It was really uncomfortable. It was also much smaller inside than we thought it would be. However the cieling went up very high. We were the only ones in there. It was really was hard work, and I don't think the average yuppie tourist would be able to go in and out, at least not without a heart attack. We really enjoyed this. It was also really a treat to see the country side along the nile on the way to here. It was all farm land, since the nile is an excellent irragation source. They grew everything from oranges, to turnips, to alfalfa for the horses and donkeys. We picked up some fresh mandarins that were picked today, they're awesome and cost 40cents for a kilo.
That took up the day. After we returned to Cairo we walked to what was heralded in our guide book as "the best pasta in Cairo. We didn't realize it was so far away from where we were staying though, and it took us 45mins to walk there. But man, was it ever worth it! We each had bruchetta, and spaghetti with meat sauce. Erin had a fanta, and yes Froese boys, I had a coke! What a sweet meal. So good that this dutchman even left a tip! The 6 dollars we spent was a bit steep however. Since we were so full, Erin even talked me into taking a taxi back.
Cairo is a really huge busy, busy city. The traffic here makes Toronto look like Virgil on a Sunday morning. There are cars everywhere. Someone told us 6 million of them. When you need to cross the street you just go, and weave across 6 lanes of honking, crawling vehicles.

Enough talking, here are some more pictures. Thanks again for reading and commenting. We really look forward to reading what all of friends back home wrote!

Sorry our batteries just died on the camera. We realize these are the pictures you want to see, but I guess we'll just whet your appetite with these two. Sorry, we promise to come and put them on tomorrow morning. So if you get up at 2am you should have some.