We made it!

We flew through Zurich and landed in Cairo on Saturday. Going through customs was easy once we stopped trying to figure out the system ourselves and followed the rest of the crowd through the visa purchase line. Jen grabbed the bags while J tried to track down our transfer contact. We eventually found Islam (the contact, not the religion) on the other side of customs. Islam is a university student and his English was quite good. He was a good resource for our questions.

The first thing you notice about Cairo is the permeating brown fog accompanied by the smell of thick exhaust. The pollution wasn't a surprise - all the travel books mention it- but there's a difference between reading about smog and bathing in it. The blame for the haze may include the location of the city or the lack of regular rains, but the primary reason has to be the number of vehicles cramming the streets. Pedestrians, scooters and donkey carts all vie for space in what amounts to a death-defying game of human Frogger.

The ride took us from east Cairo past the massively sprawling cemetery, over the Nile and into Giza. We had assumed that Giza was a subdivision of Cairo but it is actually a separate city. Our room is large, clean, well appointed with a King bed, table and chairs, a desk and has exceptionally high ceilings. The balcony is large, with a table and chairs, overlooking the pool but the smog pretty much keeps us from going out there too much. The pool is beautiful, but the water is pretty cold and our confusion about the modesty “rules” will keep us out of the pool. This picture kind of demonstrates the pollution as well as the pool.

Today was our first full day in Egypt and we spent it walking around Giza. We found a very cool street with vendors selling everything from tissue packets to fruit to fresh, hanging meat and many other things that we just could not identify. We met up with our tour group (nice folks) and went to dinner, which was much better than last night's hotel food. On the ride to the restaurant we had our first glimpse of the pyramids! It was difficult to see to through the soup of pollution, but we saw them! Tomorrow we head to the pyramids and Sphinx, and a tour of the Cairo Museum.