My Forgettable Trip to Egypt. Travel Tips – part I

After returning from a trip, many times we use to say that it was unforgettable. The common meaning of unforgettable is that we loved our vacation, that we find pleasure in remembering it and in relating our happy travel to our friends.
What about the trips that we didn’t like? What about the travels that exhausted us without offering enough rewards in exchange? Based on the above, the logical definition would be “a forgettable trip”. This is exactly what I want to tell you in this story today about my trip to Egypt.

A. Cairo
It was a nice January day when we arrived in Cairo, the capital of Egypt. The weather was nice, not too cold but not too warm, either. We imagined that we could have lovely evening walks, enjoying sitting on some terraces, chatting and having fun, all right. Actually, this proved to be all wrong. In the first place, Cairo is not built for people walking, it is built for cars, with or without gps vehicle tracking devices. There were barely any sidewalks, and where we could find some, they were very narrow and extremely steep, making it impossible for two people to walk side by side. Besides, every 3-4 feet, huge trees were interrupting the sidewalks, forcing us to go down on the street, then up on the sidewalk again and so on, therefore we had rather gym sessions than nice, pleasant walks in our three evenings in Cairo.

Crossing the streets was a real adventure, as the crossings are there only for you to remind of civilization. No driver pays attention to those crossings, they don’t stop to let you cross, even though he has a red light. I imagine lights there are only to prevent drivers’ boredom, because in three days I was not able to decipher other meaning of them. What do you do when you don’t know how to do something? One way is to look at people who did it and find out how they did. We looked at the Egyptians crossing the street and we learned a scary but effective ritual that allowed us to cross those huge boulevards of Cairo: take one step, raise your hand and then look straight into the eyes of the first car’s driver. If you see determination or if you see he is not looking at you at all, then don’t cross, let him pass and repeat the ritual with the next car. If you see him looking at you and you feel like he might stop, make the second step, without taking tour eyes from him. Then, with your hand raised, make a third step, looking already for the eyes of the driver from the next lane. Repeat the procedure for all six lanes of a normal Cairo boulevard and here you are, on the other side of it, happier and thinner, with the adrenaline rushing in your body. What a fitness session! Besides, the city is very dusty and extremely noisy, as there is a habit that cars horn whenever they change the lane.

At least, I think it was a safe city, because about half the people in the streets were from military police, but at first sight their huge guns were truly scary, so if I were to describe my Cairo feelings, I can say that I was safe and frightened in the same time. It was like I wished to have not only two eyes but one hundred of them, spread all over my body, giving me the chance to see all around, to be ready to notice and to react to any danger. Sad but true, it was better in the hotel room than outside.

Nice to see and not very famous: The Copt Christians Quartier
I did not know that some Egyptians are Christians and I was amazed to see how well they managed to preserve this religion in a Muslim world.

B. Gizeh and the pyramids

The very first morning, a four star bus was waiting to take us to the pyramids. I have a piece of advice for those who think about going to Egypt: take the most expensive trip or don’t go at all, because their ratings have nothing to do with ours. That 4 star bus was all dusty, torn, worn, it had a stinky toilet with a broken door and the air conditioning was like crazy: half of us were heated like hell and the others were freezing. This applies also to hotels: if you choose 4-5 stars, then you can be sure that you will be treated like in a normal 3 star hotel. I imagine only if we have chosen 3 stars!!! Lucky us, we paid a lot but at least the accommodation was OK. I was not so impressed by their cuisine, except from some fried rice which was excellent and some delicious coffee cookies. The rest of the meals were mostly tasteless, or tasted rather strange.
The pyramids are really impressive on the outside. Well, you can visit them inside also. We waited in line for about one hour to enter one of the pyramids and we had to leave our photo and video cameras outside, as we were not allowed to take any picture inside. I was so curious what treasures are there inside the pyramids, that we cannot take photos. Ok, after going down on a narrow corridor for about 15 minutes, we arrived at the bottom: there was absolutely nothing inside! Not even paintings on the walls! There was just one old Egyptian beggar asking us for some change.

Speaking of beggars, there were plenty of them surrounding the pyramids and the Sphinx, from small dirty children to very old men, and all of them wanted tourists’ money, either by selling some souvenirs, or just by asking. They were really swarming around us as we walked.

I was about to forget the camels: very nice creatures, but extremely stinky. They were for rent: their masters would invite us to climb on them to walk us for free. It sounds nice, isn’t it? But they would ask you for 5 dollars to let you get down from the camel. That’s commerce in the Egyptian style.

I will have two or three more posts on this Egypt trip: I still want to cover the road to Asswan, the Valley of the Kings, the cruise on the Nile and Hurghada Red Sea resort. If you are interested, come back in a couple of days to see more of a forgettable vacation.