Cairo City

Day three was a tour of Cairo and we got to see some key religious sites, the famous markets, the infamous Cairo museum, and of course that unfortunate eyesaw of plague proportions - the Retired American tourist.

I really hate to perpetuate stereotypes but these insensitive, self righteous people honestly do it for me. One woman, while standing in Cairo's most sacred and breathtaking Mosque proclaimed at the top if her lungs, "I literally have sweat dripping between my ass cheeks". She then turned to a table laden with traditional Muslim head dresses and observed "that would make a great Halloween costume"! Outside we saw a fat American man walking through the Mosque courtyard with his entire shirt unbuttoned and his enormous gut blowing in the wind. Intolerable!!!!

Anyway the mosque was architecturally and artistically beautiful, as was the 1600 yr old catholic church. We giggled at the tacky plastic souvenirs in the gift shop - transparent virgin Mary alarm clock anyone? Crucifix calculator? It is nice to see that Egypt is so proud of the co-existence of both faiths.

Next stop was the market. This was an intricate rabbit warren of stalls selling everything imaginable. But when the hassling got a bit too much and I'd had another hard bum squeeze, we decided to sit it out. We another delicious local meal as we rested our weary legs. We needed to conserve our energy cos we were off to the famous Egyptian Museum.

The crowds were still huge at 3pm as we took a tour of the most important of the 120,000 exhibits - as many again are in storage, awaiting the erection of the new museum which will be ready in 2012. The highlight of course was Tutankhamun's treasure.

The cache did not disappoint... I have never seen so much gold in my life! But it's the detail that astounds. Thousands of stones inlaid into intricate jewellery, two huge sarcophagus', or his myriad funeral furniture. We debated the existence of the curse - I'm definitely a believer. Seeing those artifacts that I'd studied so hard in highschool was amazing... It all came flooding back.

What really gets me though is that all this treasure was found for a boy king who only reined for ten years and had no other notable achievements. Just imagine what must have been left for the great kings like Ramses II had grave robbers over the years not beat us to it. I mean, even Lord Carnavon who funded the expedition that found Tutankhamun's tomb was entitled to a third of it's contents, according to government policy at the time. A state sponsored form of modern grave robbery if you ask me. Luckily the curse got him quickly and the entire contents stayed where it belongs - in Egypt.

This theme permeates much of what we see - foreign countries helping themselves to Egypt's ancient history. The great pyramid for instance is 10 metres shorter than it should be because of someone helping themselves to the smaller granite blocks on top. A huge amount of relief work in the tombs is damaged cos the Christians defaced these representations of foreign gods. A copy of the Rosetta stone hangs in the museum because France traded the original with Britain in return for passage back to France for it's occupying soldiers. It still hangs in the British Museum. Shame. When these graves were robbed at least the mummies were left behind - but sadly they were then later burned by Arab militants seeking refuge in the tombs, because the resin used to mummify them burned slowly. So much history lost!

After another long, exhausting, rewarding day we headed for the train station for our overnight train to Aswan. We smoked some apple Shisha and tried a scrumptious Egyptian drink of hot milk mixed with coconut powder with nuts and sultanas stirred into it. Delish!

We copped a ribbing from those on the sleeper train but were pleasantly surprised to find the sitting train was like business class on an aeroplane. The toilets, however were not. But the seats reclined right back and I got in ten hours of sleep, only interrupted briefly by a foghorn snorer a few rows back.

While alighting in Aswan we were greeted with a wall of searing heat... But more on that later.

Big kiss for Harvey Bear xxx