Day 2

10/12/10 7:45pm (10:45am PST)

FULL DAY! I’m finding that the Ramses Hilton likes to feed us. Started the day off with breakfast at the hotel and met the rest of the group in the Lobby. There are only 11 people in our tour for the next 2 weeks. I’ve been on two other tours in my life and both were over 50 people. That being said, although you may think that 11 people are easier to handle, when a couple pairs of people think they are entitled to make the rest of the group wait, constantly, and somehow NEVER notice when they step in front of other people’s pictures…. Well, it complicates things. It’s all good though. I knew that Talia and I were going to be the youngest in the group, but next to us, my parents are second youngest. Anywhooooo… so we started our journey off to see some pyramids! But not the ones we thought we were going to see immediately in Giza. We went to a place where there was certainly a lot of sand, some tombs, some camels and a pyramid with a lot of steps!! We learned a lot about Ramses II. Apparently he was the most important Ramses. Ruled between the ages of 9 until 19 (when he dies). Tomorrow we’re supposed to find out about the controversies and different theories about his death. Oh yeah, I forgot about this other museum we went to before the step pyramid. There was a mini alabaster sphinx and a very large Ramses II that lied down. Everything there was definitely BC… definitely BC. We learned some fun facts during the drive. 22 million people live in Cairo, alone. The Nile has no been home to hippos or crocodiles since the building of the high damn sometime in the 60s, and it’s 500 km long! Visited a carpet making school, which was pretty intense but awesome. Had some lunch and then it was time for GIZA! We checked out the main 3 pyramids and took some photos and all that jazz, and then it was time for camel riding!! It was sweet. Definitely a lot of laughing. We sort of caravanned during our short ride and took tons of pictures. Mom is hoping that one of them will be our Christmas picture. After the ride it was time to see THE Sphinx. Unfortunately, we saw her during sun down so the pictures were not premium photos. By the by, she’s 70 X 20 meters. After that we went to a papyrus museum and cartouche shop. It’s the piece of jewelry (long necklace charm) where they put your name in hieroglyphics. Man, I’m beat!! We got back to the hotel an hour ago and just had dinner. I would like to be doing more shopping but the street vendors make me not want to do any buying. They’re soooooo obnoxious but still not as bad as China. Pay more in a shop with less hassle or pay less on the street with a massive headache?