Last day in Cairo

Last day in Cairo

Arrived back in Cairo yesterday and had a lazy afternoon followed by a lovely Egyptian Dinner at the hotel.

This morning had a 8.30 pick up but we went to the wrong pick up point so a bit late in starting out.

First stop was the Citadel of Salah al-Din.  The original fortress was built to stop the Crusaders, who were defeated in Jerusalem so they didn’t get to Egypt.  Later on Mohammed Ali (Turkish guy not the boxer) built a mosque inside the Citadel.  Very large and elaborate and we got a lesson in the Islamic faith.  A very enjoyable visit.

 

 

Followed this with a trip to the hanging church.  This is a greek orthodox church and I didn’t quite understand how it was hanging even though there is glass in the floor looking onto nothing. Lots of relics of saints etc inside but everything in Egyptian so couldn’t read it.

Last stop of the day was the Egyptian Museum.  You could spend a month in there looking at the exhibits.  Unfortunately the Egyptians don’t seem to be organized or have money to display things properly.  The Museum is a huge building with display cases haphazardly placed and many without a description so you have no idea what you are looking at.  A lot of the statues were covered in thick opaque plastic to protect them which meant you couldn’t see them as the lighting was very bad.  Regardless of this Mohamed showed us the important exhibits and it was interesting to relate these back to sites we had visited.

The most famous exhibit is King Tut’s stuff.  This was spectacular.  Tut’s mummy is still in his tomb in the Valley of the Kings but everything else from the Tomb is on display.  He had 3 coffins that fitted inside each other (like the Russian dolls) each one more elaborately decorated.  These went into a huge gold box (solid gold), which went into another one, then another one and then the final one which was about 5mrs x 3mtrs – all gold plated.   Incredible to see and also had 2 rooms with just the jewelry that was removed from the tomb.

Unfortunately you are not allowed to take a camera into the museum and didn’t find a book which detailed what was there so will just have to remember it without photos.

Said goodbye to Mohamed, Lynette and Henry and returned to the hotel and will spend the afternoon at the pool before departing Egypt for Barcelona in the morning.

Thoroughly enjoyed Egypt but will be glad to get out of the dust.

Alan, Mohamed, Henry, Di & Lynette