First I will quickly finish up Rome.
Day two was for the Vatican. It was beautiful and big. The Sistine Chapel and the Vatican museum was astounding. The paintings, sculptures and tapestries blew me away. St. Peters cathedral itself was enormous...larger than I had expected. I spent about four hours taking in the sites. A crappy thing happened while I was walking around though. My right knee starting hurting bad. It was definitely inflamed. Lovely. Perfect time for this. It's not like I'm going to do any walking for the next three weeks. The ancient Romans must have had terrible knees. Damn cobble stones. Jet lag was catching up with me as well. I decided to sit in the shade of the giant columns in San Pietro's square and nap for half an hour.
I finally decided to head back to the Trastevere to meet up with Ingrid and Daniele (my hosts.) I luckily found a Farmacia (drug store) along the way and got some ibuprofen. When I found my way to their house, a gorgeous pasta with muscles dinner was waiting for me. Best meal I've had since I left Vegas.
That night, it was time to party and drink. Big surprise. The city was gearing up for White Night, which is kind of like a Mardi Gras. Everyone is out in the streets drinking until 6am. I did my part to contribute to the madness. I didn't get to sleep until 4am. That makes it fun when I have to leave for the airport on a train at 7am. I'll sleep when I'm dead.
AND NOW FOR CAIRO...........
I made it to the train station just in time. With all the stops, it took me an hour. I was expecting to sleep on the flight but I sat next to two Aussie kids (19 yr olds) and they had many stories to tell. They had been running around Europe for two months now and they were nice people. I was too hungry to sleep anyway. We traded stories and made fun of the fact that we were the best smelling people on the airplane. I hadn't showered since Vegas.
Flying into Cairo is dumbfounding. The city is simply MASSIVE. All of the buildings, apartments, structures....EVERYTHING is sand colored. A layer of dust and sand filled the air. You could hardly see any piece of ground. No parks, no open spaces. Just buildings. Just one color.
I was on the wrong side of the plane to see the pyramids from the sky. Even better for suspense I guess. I can't imagine flying into Cairo without having pre-arranged transportation. Fortunately, an old friend of my, Stefan, lives here now and had a car pick me up. Driving in Cairo, at the outset, seems utterly out of control. I don't know why they bother to put lines on the street. Nobody even cares about lanes. People are wandering the highways, car horns are in a constant banter with each other, dirt, sand and general crap is everywhere....this is most definitely the third world. It is overwhelmingly foreign. All of the "apartment buildings" are loosely stacked brick adorned with 30 or so satellite dishes on top. They are all "unfinished" with each top floor having rebar sticking out the top. I learned the building owners do not have to pay tax as long as the building is "unfinished." A different mosque was around each corner. Some of them were enormous and beautiful. Others were quite simple looking.
I arrived at Stefan's house with no trouble. It was great to see him. It had been about 11 years ago when we were both living in NYC. It was like yesterday. We immediately set out to the Egyptian Museum in the center of town. There we saw amazing numbers of artifacts, papyrus masks, and sarcophaguses. (It's actually sarcophagi but that's no fun to say) The crown jewel of the museum was the mask of Tutankhamen. Spectacular!! The workmanship on this ancient burial mask is mind boggling to say the least. We spent a couple of hours there and decided to head back to Stefan's so I could get a nap. I needed it bad.
That night, we went and had traditional Egyptian food and it was incredible. It was complete with a Sheesha pipe filled with apple and cantelope flavored tobacco. Exotic!! We hit a bar afterward and were home asleep by midnight. Tomorrow was the big day...the pyramids.
This morning, we took a cab ride across town to the Giza Plateau. I'm trying to think in words how to describe what kind of feeling you get when you finally see the pyramids, but it's difficult to say. The mystery of it all is overwhelming. The surroundings and the rustic nature of everything around it is overwhelming. You just can't believe it is right before your eyes. Stefan took us in the back way and we avoided most of the crowd. There is no organized method of seeing the pyramids, you just wonder around and look at them. There are offers of camel rides and merchandise everywhere. You just say no thank you and press on. It was hot and dusty. We were at the edge of the Sahara desert. From that point to Morocco, it was sand. We walked around for over an hour before heading down to the cafe to water ourselves. It over looks the Sphinx and the whole plateau. Stefan said there were a limited number of people that can go inside the largest pyramid, Khufu, and that we should try to get tickets. They didn't sell them until 1pm, so we had lunch and went to see if we could get in. We got 'em.
The entrance was dug into the side of the pyramid to the actual shaft to the burial chamber. It was tight at first...maybe three feet high. You had to crouch low and almost crawl. It finally opened up to the steep climb up the wood floored hall way to the chamber. It was very dark and humid. As we got higher and closer to the burial chamber, a low rumble got louder and louder. What the hell was going on? We were half way into 7 million tons of stone. What could possibly be making this noise? The three foot high steep tunnel finally opened up to a gorgeous wide open steep incline. The ceiling was now about 15 feet high. We could see the top and we kept climbing. Finally we hit the chamber. You have to crouch again into a 3 foot high passageway to get in. The roaring was almost felt at this point.
It opened up to this dank, stone room with hardly any light and a giant stone sarcophagus on one end. The roar, it turns out, is from the ventilation shafts to the chamber. Erie!! Amazing! Perhaps they knew this noise would be the result of the shafts. The humidity was around 280% but it was not very warm. What a highlight. We stayed for about 5 min. and made our way back down. An experience of a lifetime.
Stefan took a picture of me coming up the shaft with his phone. Luckily they did not confiscate his phone like they did my camera before going in. He made a google earth rendering of me in the pyramid. You have to download the new google earth 4.2 to see it properly, but the link is here: http://www.ogleearth.com/2007/09/photooverlay_wo.html Below the pics are links to download the ATF model of the pyramids and the photo.
I'm at an internet cafe now and we'll soon be off to have dinner with some of Stefan's friends. Tomorrow I'm headed back to Italy. I'll be in Venice. But for now, I'm still savoring the accomplishment of the day. One less thing I have to do before I die.........
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