Brass Mummy, You Funky Mummy

Cairo has been quite the whirl-wind tour as we've only had three days to explore... Whirl-wind comes to mind when speaking of the Nile cruise we took on the first evening on being in Cairo. When deciding to take a dinner cruise we thought it would be dinner on a nice little boat motoring around on the river, oh we got that and SO much more! For entertainment two whirling dirvishes came out, one was a little person and the other Robert Downey Jr. I'm really thinking he needs to do that for his next movie, who needs a sequel to Iron Man when we could watch him doing a whirling routine?! It was like a car accident, horrible but impossible to take your eyes off. After that we had a belly dancer come out, this is my time to explain my dislike of belly dancers, they make me overtly uncomfortable and this was no different. The woman had giant breasts and was less of a belly dancer and more of a booby shaker, most of the men were having a good old time. One guy taking pictures was especially funny to watch as his wife glared at him, I'm thinking she was in my frame of mind, not entertained. In reality, the Nile cruise was so amazing it needs its own posting but due to the shortage in time, this is all it gets for now.

The next day we traveled out to the pyramids in Giza, but being the cheap-skates we are, we decided to try to take the bus instead of a taxi, yikes! It took about 30min to find the bus stop and to top it off the numerals were in arabic, which we cannot read. Luckily, the Egyptians we've met along the way have been very kind and assisted us along the way. If it weren't for the five different men we met in the various buses we took, I don't think it would have been successful. As we hopped off the final bus we started hoofing it West, thinking we'd find it eventually. Well, it practically hit us in the face, pretty hard to miss as they are HUGE! It was a pretty amazing site, if only we could get the camel peddlers to leave us alone so I could take a picture or two, man they poop a lot!

Speaking of poo, yesterday we went to the Citadel, well, tried to get to the Citadel... We flagged down a cab this time, thinking it would be quicker, and told him, Citadel. The Citadel, a fortress built in 1176, is a major, if not the second most important landmark in the Cairo area next to the pyramids. Cairo Citadel, large fortress situated on top of a huge hill in the middle of town, something you can see for miles! I kept saying Citadel with the idea that it will somehow sink into the cab driver's head, no such luck. He didn't have a clue and everyone we asked along the way didn't have a clue either, it was overly frustrating as he cris-crossed the Nile three times when we started on the correct side to begin with! I even had a map to show him as to where it was located. Eventually we drove within eyesight of it and we pointed to the place, I still don't know if he understood why we got out of the cab when we did. Inside the Citadel the architecture was nice but the show was stolen by the dioramas of different battles. They looked straight out of a highschool history project and were awesome! It showed them triumphantly winning all of the battles, although if my history is correct, it's been awhile since they've won any, especially against Israel, of which they have a piece of a jet wing in the museum with the Star of David on it. I'm thinking their lack of map reading skills could be the reason why they were devastated, couldn't find the Israelis! The best part of the Citadel was the uniform hall, Bill you'll enjoy this, they have Porta-Troops and you guessed it, their uniforms are brown!

We then visited the Islamic area of Cairo. We laugh in the face of Giardia and other microbial diseases as we have been eating the sketchiest of places. Sketchy, yes, tasty, definitely! After a quick lunch of pita, foul, chicken and green stuff (sorry Tender Branson, no recipes for you this time because I really don't know what it was) we were off to the Khan El-Khalili. I didn't know Betsy loved her scarves until now, she made me haggle for four of them! Anyway, they are pretty nice but four scarves, who wears all of those?!

One more stop in the whirl-wind tour, the Egyptian Museum. The museum is large and very interesting, it has so much stuff apparently they haven't found the time to categorize and tack information to all of it. In some parts of the museum, they have so much stuff you can barely squeeze though the statue of Amenhotep and Cheop's alabaster canoptic box. It's unfortunate because most of the items are out in the open, people are touching them and sticking their heads were they shouldn't be, I guess Egypt has so much stuff it's kind of a crap-shoot. Most of the stuff lacks any type of description, at least the King Tut displays, for the most part, had index cards with dates on them. We left the museum with out heads spinning for the over-whelming nature of it all, we didn't even go into a quarter of the upstairs rooms because it was all just too much.

On final thought, I know one place Betsy should go if we were ever to spit, Cairo because they LOVE her here! Not sure if it's the long legs or the blonde hair but one thing is for sure, they think I'm the luckiest man in the world! Even if they can't ready maps atleast they got that part right.
-Ryan