Egypt - January 28

Breakfast news was that we are staying in the hotel. Riots continued in Cairo and elsewhere, people died, and the tourist police is worried. Given that our plan today was central Cairo, that made perfect sense. However at 11am Danny convinced them to let us go to Memphis, and see more pyramids.

While not as impressive as the Giza pyramids, the two we visited were really interesting. Both belong to the same Pharaoh - Seneferu - father of Hufu. He first built the "crooked pyramid", in which the angle up changed midway, didn't like it and built the "Red pyramid", which is called so for no obvious reason. We climbed inside to the burial chamber, which is hidden behind two false burial chambers - these kings were well aware of tomb-looting and devised childish ideas to prevent them, like false doors etc. Nothing worked, and all of them were robbed (well, except for King Tut's, where the robbers were caught red-handed). The soldiers guarding these pyramids were very bored and glad to kid around with us, being photographed and very happy for any baksheesh we gave them.



Then we went to Memphis itself, to a museum which collected tons of sculptures. The most impressive is an absolutely huge one of Ramses II (later we found out there is a much bigger one, which weighs 1100 tons!). Others include another sphinx, the goddess Chatchor (looks like a cow, and has several portfolios including protecting Egypt's borders, music, orgasms and more) and others. Then another hour in traffic to go to lunch at 5PM - this is a good place to say how amazing our group is. Most people are older, quite a few in their 70s and even 80s, and they accept hours on end of heat, no toilets, standing, and listening to the elaborate lectures of Danny without a complaint - quite a feat!

As we were finishing the meal, around 6pm, we got the news of the curfew at 7pm, rushed to the bus and headed to the train station, bypassing various blocked roads and seeing people obviously converging to a demonstration. But we made it, waited like refugees in the station, boarded the train, which left and arrived on time. It was a nice experience overall - clean, organized, 2-person cabins with bunk beds and clean sheets. Not that we slept much - talked late about the "situation", then the rattle kept us awake, and then they woke us up for breakfast at 4am.