Our Prior Cairo Visit

We traveled to Egypt 20 years ago with our 3 children when they were 1st , 3rd, and 6th grades. This was (as I said before) the best of the 22 family trips that we took together in the 4 years we lived in Europe. We did this 2 weeks before Gulf War I started.

As mentioned in a previous posting, I’m not going into Cairo this time, but Kathleen is. She’ll go to the pyramids at Giza (Giza is the west bank of the Nile; Cairo is the east bank of the Nile…together they are considered “Cairo” when they say that the population is 18,000,000), to lunch at a hotel built next to the pyramids the year the Suez canal opened to stage the celebration, to the Sphinx, and to the Cairo museum.

Of the pictures that we have from that trip, I do not find one of the Sphinx. Then we were able to stand by it and put our hand on the paw. Now, I understand, you cannot get that close.

Photos:
1) The Step Pyramid. This is the oldest of the pyramids, built around 2700 BC.
2) Inside the Great Pyramid. At that time we were able to go inside the Great Pyramid. Today they limit this to 150 people per day. There is not that much to see inside, and you have to go up and down steep ramps that are only about 3 feet wide by 4 feet tall to get inside. It is unsettling to be inside and realize that there are 2.2 million stones above your head, with each weighing 8-15 tons. (And they did not use arches to distribute the weight!)

The great pyramid’s base covers 13 acres and It contains enough stone to build a wall around all of France!

3) Our family on camels with the Great Pyramid in the Background. Then, the camel owners could go anywhere. Today, they are limited to two small areas.