Egypt- Day 2

All day long Sunday we had seen banners for the election… and during the performance we heard many sirens.  The next morning we found a bulletin on the English version of Aljezeera TV that protests over fraud in the election had turned violent. The next morning as we turned from the Alexandria Highway onto Giza Road we saw army armored personnel carriers and riot gear. 

We got to Giza just before it opened.  The smog was a bit better, but it was still hard to see.  The best part was we beat the hordes of buses.  At the panoramic overlook we had the place to ourselves.

We finished with a walk down from the Great Pyramid to the Sphinx.  It looked a bit bigger in the daylight.

We headed from there into downtown Cairo to the Egyptian Museum where we had a chance to see the King Tut exhibit and many, many antiquities.  No pictures were allowed here.

Our drive back to Alexandria was more of an adventure than the southbound trip.  About an hour out of Alexandria, right in front of the McDonald’s pit stop, we were stopped by the police.  Ahead we could see smoke, and people on the highway.  We sat for about half an hour before the police allowed tourist vehicles to go over to the frontage road and around the problem.  As we are moving past, the police in full riot gear are moving in a phalanx along the southbound lane, with weapons drawn.  Scott got a picture of two civilians running along the right hand side of the road with AK-47 rifles.  We were very glad to get away.

We had arranged to return to Alexandria early to tour the Roman catacombs… a cemetery that supposedly was found in the early 1900s when a donkey’s leg broke through the ceiling.  It was originally three levels underground, but problems with ground water prevent anyone from going past the second level.  Because Alexandria was founded by Alexander the Great, this cemetery was part Roman, part Greek and part Egyptian… the Greeks and Romans were into cremation, and the Egyptians mummification, so this was a mix.  There was a place they called the dining room, where Greeks would bring supper and get out the urn of their departed family member and have a feast.  In the Greek tradition, after they would break the dishes.  The Arabic name of the place meant pile of broken dishes.  No pictures were allowed here either.

Just as we got back to the ship, they announced that additional problems along the Cairo-Alexandria road meant that most of the buses were going to be late, so they delayed our sailing.  We left nearly an hour and half late.