A Belated Post for Cairo & Alexandria

Please accept my sincerest apologies for the delay in writing and posting this; things have been a bit busy on the ship as of late so I have not had time to write it all. Nevertheless, enjoy.

November 10, 2008
Alexandria, Egypt

We docked on Monday in Alexandria, Egypt for the first time since I signed on board. It was my first trip to Egypt, and my first visit to Africa since I spent three weeks in South Africa in 1997. As usual, I signed up for a tour and after getting off the ship, I realized that this was the best possible decision I could have made. I cannot imagine being able to do anything without the armed guard that came with us on our tour bus.

My tour, despite being only five hours long, had three destinations: the Roman Catacombs, Pompey’s Pillar, and the Alexandria National Museum. An added bonus was the chance to drive through a new place that was like nothing I had ever experienced. Traffic lights are quite scarce, and the streets are just riddled with large amounts of pedestrians and no crosswalks. As we made our way to the Catacombs, we passed countless men sitting alongside the road smoking tobacco through hookahs and others just sitting enjoying cups of tea. We also passed plenty of military personnel all over the city, which I would later find is a mainstay in all of Egypt.

We arrived at the Roman Catacombs, which were an underground three-tier family burial ground. Above the ground were various artifacts recovered, and also a burial chamber that had been moved to the catacombs from another sight. As I descended deeper and deeper into the 100+ foot underground burial chamber, I became more and more mesmerized by what I was walking through. It was like nothing I had ever seen, and that definitely says something since I have seen quite a bit in the last two months. I had the opportunity to walk around the middle of the three tiers (the bottom one had been heavily damaged by water and was not accessible) and I was fascinated by how they dug these catacombs out of rock. I walked through hallways with holes in the wall intended for bodies to be placed in, and there were even rooms to relax and have celebrations in. It was remarkable how the Egyptians were able to construct such an architectural masterpiece underground.

We left the Roman Catacombs and headed for Pompey’s Pillar, which was a single granite pillar over 2,000 years old. I was under the impression that I was going to visit a pillar, but it was in truth a full archaeological sight. It contained the remains of a couple temples, and also a library. I was able to go down and explore the remains of the library and there were beautiful artifacts laid out surrounding the ruins as well. We had some free time to explore before we headed to the Alexandria National Museum.

When we arrived at the museum, we were given plenty of free time to explore the different exhibits inside after a brief explanation from our tour guide. The museum contained some ancient artifacts, including coffins and a mummy, but the highlights for me were the statues of different Egyptian gods and symbols, including Anubis and the ankh symbol. It was a fun experience seeing a mummy in Egypt for the first time after seeing plenty of them stateside at museums like the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. There were also examples of ancient Egyptian pottery and jewelry spread out through the entire museum, and it was an exciting experience to see all of these different artifacts. Everything was so well preserved and it was a taste of something different from what I had been seeing in Italy, Greece, and Turkey. Still, I knew that the real highlights would come on Tuesday, when I would be traveling to Cairo.

November 11, 2008
Cairo, Egypt

The ship docked on Tuesday in Port Said, Egypt, which sits at the very top of the Suez Canal, and in addition to being a large industrial port of Egypt, it serves as a gateway for cruise ships to reach Cairo, so I signed up to do a fantastic (albeit a very long) tour to Cairo. I boarded my tour bus at approximately 7:00am and was soon joined by the bus’s very own armed guard (this would be the first time in my life I would ever travel around sitting across the bus from a man carrying a sub-machine gun hidden under his jacket) and soon thereafter, our bus joined the other nine doing the same tour in our military-escorted convoy and began the nearly four-hour drive to Cairo.

The tour I signed up for packed the most into the amount of time we had: it started at the Pyramids of Giza, then made its way to the nearby Sphinx, and then after lunch we were going to visit the Museum of Antiquities, where one will find a large portion of the contents retrieved from the tomb of King Tutankhamen. This was the one place that I had no idea I was going to get to see before joining the Queen Victoria. In the case of other ports, the listed itinerary would say something along the lines of “Livorno (For Florence/Pisa)” or “Civitavecchia (for Rome)”, but for this port, it just said “Port Said, Egypt”. Needless to say, I was excited to make it to such a different place and see the only remaining ancient wonder of the world.

Driving around Cairo was an experience in itself. Even at large intersections, traffic lights were nowhere to be seen. Pickup trucks were a common sight on the streets but their contents were quite unpredictable. I saw everything from fruit to sheep to people being carried around in these trucks, and many of the other cars on the road were so very run down that it was depressing in itself just to look at them. The traffic probably added another 30-45 minutes to our trip before we finally reached our first stop: the Pyramids of Giza.

As we approached inner-city Cairo, the pyramids began making their presence through the distant fog, and I found myself wishing for clearer skies, but when we reached Giza, and the pyramids came into clear sight, I was overcome by the same feeling I experienced when first seeing the Colosseum or the Acropolis in Athens, except this time it was even more special since the journey to Giza was that much more of a trek.

We got off the bus and were given about thirty minutes to explore the three pyramids at our leisure. I was also given the opportunity to visit the burial chamber of “The Second Pyramid” and I jumped at the chance without hesitation. I walked downhill down a pathway that was probably one meter high and then up one as well, but this took me to a short cave-like passage that brought me to the pharoah’s burial chamber. It only hits me now that I was inside such a remarkable place, but inside, it was not all that exciting. It was just a big room with a stone sarcophagus where the coffins would have been. I turned around after getting there and then headed out to take more pictures of the pyramids before we left to go to a panorama.

From the panorama, we headed downhill and after passing by the pyramids one more time, we arrived at the Sphinx. While we could not get completely close to her, we were able to catch an amazing view with the pyramids providing the perfect background. I took some great photographs before walking around for a few minutes and then headed back to the bus.

We went from the Sphinx to a nearby hotel where we ate lunch, and after lunch, we spent close to an hour in the bus heading across town to Cairo’s Museum of Antiquities. It was here that a large portion of what was recovered from the tomb of Tutankhamen is on display, so I was excited to get to see so many wonderful artifacts. We were going to be at the museum for about an hour and a half, so I elected to spend most of that time exploring the contents of the museum on my own rather than listening to our tour guide. I went up the stairs and followed the signs to the artifacts recovered from Tut’s tomb, and was immediately taken aback by the sheer quantity of items that they could fit into the tomb. There were thrones, games, the ancient equivalent to a folding chair, small statues, even three chariots, but the real gems on display were in a separate room. It was in here that Tut’s gold mask was located, and additionally there were two of his coffins. The sheer beauty and detail exhibited by these artifacts was astounding. There were additional pieces of gold jewelry kept in this room but the mask and coffins were the highlights of the exhibit. I spent a few minutes staring at them and then went off in search for some souvenirs. I was able to walk through a few exhibits in my quest for the exit and enjoyed everything that I saw.

From the museum, we boarded our buses and made the long trek back to Port Said. We were stuck behind some accidents in Cairo and that, coupled with the fact that Cairo traffic is bad enough to begin with, added nearly an hour and a half to our drive time. I arrived back at the gangway at about 8:15pm, over 13 hours after I departed from it, making this the longest amount of time I had spent off of Queen Victoria since the start of my contract.

I was really excited to get a chance to see the pyramids, the Sphinx, and the items from the tomb of Tutankhamen, but I doubt if I will ever return to Cairo. I would only want to visit Luxor and the Valley of the Kings, but beyond that, returning even to Egypt does not interest me too much.