Touched down at Dubai at 1.45am local time, too bad we were not allowed to disembark during the 1 hr transit. SQ flight this time round did not offer very exciting movie selections as I've watched most of the interesting ones. In the end I only watched Julie & Julia, which did not make me sleepy as I thought it would :D
After flying 5,133 miles, we arrived at Cairo International Airport at 05.18am local time. Upon landing, the plane crawled slowly waiting for a vacant gate. We went down, exchanged some USD to Egyptian Pound (LE), passed the immigration, collected our luggage. And today's tour started right from the airport.
At 7am, Cairo was cold and foggy. As today's the feast of Eid Al-Adh'ha, the streets were really empty and jam-free as people went for prayers and gatherings. Cairo was just like another old city, with policemen watching all around. Only big junctions had traffic lights, the rest did not have at all or were not in operation. For really big junctions, on top of traffic lights they also installed a count down timer to indicate how many more seconds the light would be green or red.
Our first destination was Giza Pyramids. The first pyramid we visited was originally 147m high but lost 10m of its top-most peak. So the highest now was the second pyramid, standing proudly at 143m. The third one was only 70m, surrounded by 3 much smaller pyramids for the 3 king's wives. We only viewed this wonder of the ancient world from outside, since going in needed extra ticket and according to our local guide, the inside did not have anything worth seeing. Pyramids were usually built once a king was crowned, in order to be completed when the king died. Most of them was robbed due to the treasures buried with the mummies.
We also rode camels on the pyramids' area. Camels looked cute and innocent but smelly and our rides were bumpy. At first it was quite scary as camels are much taller compared to horses, but after a while we got used to it, as we got more scared of the camel's owner instead. Apparently they all did the same thing: they guided the camels to quite a distance, offered nicely to take our pictures using our cameras and then asked for money for tips. They even asked for more when they felt the money's not enough. We could always reject the request, of course, but who would dare to refuse while sitting vulnerably on the camels, with the risk of not getting down as one piece?
Next was the Great Sphnix of Giza. Sphnix was depicted with lion body and human head to combine the strength of lion and the thinking capacity of human beings. It was meant to guard the pyramids.
We had lunch at Hard Rock Cafe, located at the basement of Grand Hyatt Cairo. It was a buffet of Mediterranean and European food - salad, soup, main courses and dessert.
Last sightseeing for the day was the Egyptian Museum, housing numerous collections of ancient antiquities. It was not as new, as big and as grand as its counterparts like Paris' Louvre and London's British Museum, but yet they did not allow visitors to bring cameras in. A few artifacts were highlighted to us. According to our guide, all artifacts displayed in the museum were original, except for Rosetta stone - the original was in British Museum. Upper floor housed mostly treasures found in King Tutankhamun's tomb - the only tomb found intact as it was built farther below another tomb.
For the night we rested at Le Meridien Pyramids Hotel. We had a short stay as we had to wake up early in the next morning.
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