Day 2 - Wednesday, February 21st

Our 26 member tour group met in the lobby of the Marriott Hotel and settled in to meet our guide and get started on our adventures. Walid is our guide and little did we know at this time just how special he would make this exploration of Egypt! Walid informed us that we would be called "Habibi" group. Habibi means "beloved" and we came to love our own Habibi, Walid!!

Walid has degrees in Archeology, Politics, and Commerce and is passionate about the history of his country, the culture of the Egyptians and the politics. Every explanation and description of what we were seeing was colored with every ounce of knowledge Habibi could impart to us.

Our first stop of the day was the Citadel of Salah El Din and Mohammed Ali's Mosque. The Citadel was home to Egypt's rulers for almost 700 years - originally founded in 1176. The upper terraces of the Citadel offer spectacular views of the city. Mohammed Ali's Alabaster Mosque is enclosed in the Citadel is was built in the mid-19th century (he was regarded as the founder of modern Egypt). Walid had given us a lesson on Islam before we arrived and so had a very respectful tour with a little more understanding of the Muslim faith than we had before. The size and beauty of the Mosque was just a teaser for the size and beauty of the temples we would see in the next days.

The Egyptian Museum was next. We saw the originals of statues, coffins, jewellery, linen cloths, furniture, effigies, a war chariot, all items that we've seen copies and pictures of. And then...the Tutankhamun Galleries...life sized statues, clothing, hunting implements, jewellery, couches and beds...and...Tutankhamun's fabulous death mask. For Les seeing the death mask was worth the price of the whole trip!! The Museum is very old and considering the priceless treasures that it houses, not at all secure or particularly safe for the artifacts. For instance the glass cases that contain fabrics, some as old as 3500 years are cracked and in sunny areas of the museum. (We discovered later in the tour that a new Museum is being built near the Pyramids of Giza - thank goodness!) One piece that we saw only a copy of (the original is in the British Museum) was the "Rosetta Stone". This piece was found in 1799 and had a text in 3 scripts: hieroglyphic, demotic and Greek. In 1822 Thomas Young translated the demotic text and identified the cartouches of Ptolemy and Cleopatra. At the same time, Jean-Francois Champollion also deciphered these names and others, compiling an extensive list of symbols. He realized that there were separate types of hieroglyphics with different functions and so discovered the basis of the writing system used in hieroglyphic texts.

In the evening we drove to Giza for the Pyramid Sound and Light Show. The Pyramids are not outside of Cairo anymore. The growth of this huge city (the current metropolitan population is 16.1 million) has encroached on the area surrounding the Pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx. Our first glimpse of the Pyramids was awesome - really...who gets to actually see the pyramids in their lifetime?? We are so lucky!! Up close you can feel the magic and mystery of them. It helped immensely that the crescent moon was clear and present (and the crescent was on it's back - something we never see in Canada!). The light show was beautiful, it incorporated history and facts with dialogue and lights. Next week we get to come back in the daylight to explore some more.

Tidbits from today:

• Habibi tells us about everything we pass (you will read lots of "Habibi says..." in my descriptions of our tour!)
• Went passed the area where leather is tanned - beside an ancient aqua-duct - horse or donkey carts are used to move the goods throughout the area - leather drying on roof-top racks - fur & "stuff" thrown and left on the streets, dogs & cats rummage through this - people live here too
• Passed the Northern Cemetery "City of the Dead" - homeless people inhabit some of the tombs and now the living and the dead coexist side by side
• Armed soldiers are everywhere - either hand guns or AK47 Russian semi-automatic or machine guns - we go through security machines everywhere (including the hotel) - most times the machines just beep and beep and no one stops to check the reason why
• The area around the Pyramids of Giza is at least 1000 years behind the rest of the world - donkeys & horses are used for transportation, with or without a cart - aqua-ducts full of garbage - trash everywhere - shops line the streets to the pyramids - alleyways (imagine a picture from the time of Christ; robed people, donkeys, horses) - derelict buildings & rubble - merchants & food sellers; bakeries, meat shops - slow moving people - Hard Rock Cafe beside t-shirt, sheesha pipe, book, souvenir & jewellery shops
• Our tour group consists of new friends from: Australia (Adelaide & Brisbane), South Africa, U.S.A. (Washington & Oregon) & Canada (N. Saanich, B.C.; Picture Butte & Edmonton, Alberta; Oshawa, Guelph, & Belleville, Ontario; & Halifax, Nova Scotia)