Walking in Memphis (and Saqqara and Alexandria and Cairo)

We had a nice visit to Memphis and Saqqara. There's not much left of Memphis, even though it was the capital of ancient Egypt for so long. It is now a small, poor, rural town but has a small open-air museum with some interesting statuary including a huge statue of Ramses II (the egomaniac pharoah :-)). They are gradually buying-out the villagers in order to excavate under the village and are due to start their work shortly. Radar would indicate somewhere in the neighbourhood of 28 temples in the area.

Saqqara is interesting in that it is home to the oldest pyramid in Egypt (and the world). It is called the step pyramid, as it doesn't have smooth sides like the others. It belonged to Cheops' grandfather (Cheops being the owner of the biggest pyramid in Giza), and you can see Cheops' father's pyramid in the distance from the step pyramid. The father's pyramid is referred to as the "bent pyramid" because he experimented with a new angle which proved ineffective and changed the angle of the walls half way up. It looks quite funny on the horizon. I had another off-putting experience at the step pyramid with an over-zealous staff member who refused to leave me alone. It's such a drag when these things negatively affect your opinion and memories of an otherwise lovely travel experience.

I spent the evening alone in my hotel room, which was absolutely heavenly after almost six weeks of sharing quarters. Even though I had to get up very early the next morning, I had a great sleep. My hotel, which doesn't look like much from the outside, is a turn-of-the-century colonial hotel. It's beauty has certainly faded, but it still has a lovely charm and a wonderfully hospitable staff. I'm really enjoying it there.

The next day I walked the 45 minutes to the hotel where my ex-tour-mates were staying. Given the early hour, I didn't have much traffic to contend with, but I did have a problem of another sort to deal with. Egyptians don't use any of the lights on their cars, either headlights or turn indicators. Drivers in lots of other countries don't use turn indicators, so I have become somewhat accustomed to it. The headlamps are another story. Egyptians don't use them because they don't want to burn out the car battery. Apparently they do understand the concept of alternators, but that doesn't seem to factor into the argument. They are also preserving the bulbs in their headlights. Needless to say, this makes crossing the streets at night a bit hair-raising. It should be noted that crossing streets in the daylight isn't much easier as traffic lights are totally ignored. I'm not sure why they even hang them. The major intersections have traffic cops who help things a bit for the motorists, but pedestrians are always on their own.

After arriving at their hotel, I joined the others for the three hour bus ride to Alexandria. We had a guide there who walked us through the National Museum, catacombs and mis-named Pompeii's column (which was actually built by Diocletian). The museum, as might be expected, has a lot of stuff about Alexander in it, but also houses some interesting older artifacts as well. The catacombs were really neat and I thoroughly enjoyed my visit there. We had very limited free time after lunch and most of us opted to check out the library. Unfortunately, I virtually ran through it and saw very little. The library itself is huge and a spectacular work of architecture. It currently houses about 550,000 books but has room for eight million. There are a couple of museums housed in the library as well as some wonderful art collections. I could easily have spent hours there.

When we returned to Cairo, I took a cab back to my hotel and settled in for my first night in six weeks without a wake up call waiting at the end of it. This morning I lounged around in bed and finished the book I had been reading - another wonderful luxury. I spent a few hours wandering around the Islamic part of the city which is home to a myriad of mosques as well as the bazaars. I am actually warming up to Cairo a little bit, but don't think it's a place I could ever fall in love with. Like Delhi, the size of Cairo allows a certain amount of anonymity. Unlike Delhi, it doesn't smell of urine and cow dung.

Later this afternoon I found my way over to the American University book store. It was like taking a long cold drink on a hot day. After 15 months of reading whatever I could get my hands on, it was wonderful to have stacks and stacks of English books to choose from. I limited myself to three quite small, but not inexpensive, treats. It was very hard to drag myself out of there.

I am now headed back to my hotel where I will take a bath (my first since Australia)with one of my new books and glass of wine. I am so looking forward to it.