February 28, 2023

Hello!

First, some programming notes.  Blogger is being difficult and won’t show me all the pictures all the time.  That’s why there are duplicate photos at the bottom.  I’ve given up on trying to make the margins the same.  But, we will persevere.

We had another nice breakfast at Rawi this morning.  There is so much food available that it’s difficult to choose just a few things.  But I’m not complaining!

We were on the bus at 9am to go to the Citadel and the Egyptian Museum.  Our bus is very nice and big.  I haven’t mentioned the traffic much.  I’ve been trying to think of appropriate descriptive words but all I can say is that the traffic is utter chaos and crazy.  We’ve been in crazy traffic in other countries, but Egypt takes the cake.  Below is one small snapshot of the view from our bus windows.  The noise, the people crossing in front of traffic, the horns honking, the motorcycles with up to three people riding on them, the 3-4 vehicles abreast in a space for two lanes just makes me shake my head and laugh. Most cars have scraped up fenders and doors.  Gee, I wonder why?  There are over twenty two million people in Cairo and I suspect that they are all on the roads, in some form or another, at the same time.  

Anyway, we went to the Citadel where the alabaster mosque is.  We fought our way in, through the X-ray line and machine, then our guide Salah asked Bob to help out while he looked for the lost people of our group.  There is just so many people!  Bob, bless his heart, stepped up to handle the arduous task of holding the “lollipop”.  

We went into the courtyard of the mosque and Salah explained that the Citadel was built between 1176-1183.  In 1830 - 1848 Mohamed Ali commissioned the Alabaster Mosque to be built in the Citadel.  The mosque has the capacity to hold 10,000 people.  Mohamed Ali was a prophet in the Sunni Muslim religion.

Here is a picture of the inside of the Mosque.  

After we finished at the Citadel we climbed aboard the bus and we went to the Egyptian Museum.  Again, we fought the crowds, going through X-Ray, getting a ticket and fighting more crowds to get our ticket torn in a corner and to be let into the museum.

To say that the museum was crowded is an understatement.  However, there are so many amazing relics that it takes your breath away.  Some of the pictures below are of artifacts from 4500 years ago.  4500 years ago!  We saw so many amazing artifacts, that are in really good condition.  It’s because they were buried inside various Pharaohs tombs and Pyramids that were covered in sand for centuries.   It is really awe inspiring to think about standing there in 2023 and seeing the artifacts of people from so long ago.  Makes our problems and issues rather small in comparison of centuries of people and their lives.  

 

This is Alexander the Great and Cleopatra.

This is Tutankhamun’s throne. It is magnificent with all the work on it.  The foot pedestal has the 9 enemies of Egypt at the time. 

Being able to see all these sights today was sobering.  Can you imagine the work, the expense and the community it took to create these?  

Our eyes are burning and our throats are scratchy due to the “fog”.  When we were in China they called it “Mongolian dust.”  Here they call it “fog”.  When I was a kid in Southern California we called it smog!  If you mention the word smog in China or Egypt you are corrected and told it is what we now call “Mongolian dust fog.”  

We have a long day tomorrow going to two major pyramids Sakkara and the Sphinx.  We may not be up to blogging, but we will be back. So stay tuned.  

We are having so much fun!  

Bc and Gc