Continued from yesterday”¦ We left the sphinx on foot from an exit different than the one we came in, and walked a block down a street lined with tourist shops to the restaurant. Lunch was included in our tour package, and our hearts sank when we saw it was a buffet geared at big tour groups. We probably should have asked to go somewhere else. They probably would have been happy to accommodate us, but we didn’t ask. Once again, the food was OK. We did try a new food, pickles stuffed with rice in a tomato sauce that was surprisingly good. The bell peppers (capsicum) on the tray along with the pickles are stuffed with the same rice.

From there we went to the Cairo Museum. No photos are allowed in there, either. It is a good size museum, and it is jam packed with over 120,000 artifacts. The museum was probably laid out in the 40’s and hasn’t been updated since. The bottom floor has the big pieces, and has sections for Old, Middle, New and Greco-Roman Kingdoms. The upstairs houses the smaller pieces, and is laid out by theme. Many of the artifacts are not labeled at all, so you have no idea what you are looking at. The ones that are labeled have a small index card with a few words typed on it with an old school typewriter, and what is on there is usually pretty uninformative. Downstairs the poor labeling isn’t a problem since you know what period pieces you are looking at, but upstairs, it is can be confusing.

There are definitely a lot of sarcophagi on display. The pharaohs were usually wrapped the granite outer case, and two or sometimes even three inner cases, usually made of painted wood and shaped like a body. Many of the inner sarcophagi were elaborately painted both inside and out, and the granite sarcophagi carved inside and out. The inner sarcophagi were mostly upstairs, and dates on those would have helped a lot to understand the evolution of the art and carving work.

There was an exhibit on mummy animals included in the tomb. They would mummify pets, food, and animals needed for rituals in a similar manner to how they mummify humans. There were quite a few remains on exhibit, including a big fish. To get into the human mummy display was an extra fee, and we decided to skip it. Seeing Tut and these animals were enough. Mummies are kind of gross.

There were statues galore, ranging from little toy soldier size pieces found upstairs to giant pieces taken from the New Kingdom Temples downstairs. Upstairs there were rooms displaying papyrus, cloth, jewelry, pottery, tools, and just about everything else you can think of that is associated with life in the ancient times.

We found the Greco-Roman section downstairs to be particularly interesting. The two styles of art are very different, yet some attempts had been made to marry the two styles. There were many pieces on display that were clearly Egyptian hieroglyphics with Greek words underneath.

Upstairs there was an entire wing displaying things found in King Tut’s tomb, the most popular exhibit. In the photos from when they first opened the tomb, you would think it was someone’s storage shed packed floor to ceiling with junk. Even seeing how tightly packed the goods were in the photo, it is still mind-blowing that they were able to get so much stuff into that tiny tomb. And not all of it is here. Many of the pieces are on exhibit in other places. There was a wide variety of stuff in the tomb for use in afterlife, such as furniture, pottery, hunting gear, model ships for crossing bodies of water, etc. We mentioned that the granite sarcophagus one of the inner sarcophagi was on display in the tomb. Here there is the famous solid gold innermost sarcophagus, as well as the famous golden burial mask. If such a minor pharaoh gets this much stuff, what must a great pharaoh have gotten? One also has to wonder if King Tut is gloating in the afterlife somewhere because so many years later he is the most famous of all the Egyptian pharaohs.

Overall, we enjoyed the museum very much, though we found it to be a little overwhelming.

From there we headed back to Suez City, driving through downtown Cairo. Today’s downtown definitely has an urban, cosmopolitan feel to it, more so than the Islamic area. Most of the buildings are high rises, and look like they were built in the 20’s and 30’s. Many of the buildings have a lot of character and were nice when they were new, but most look pretty run down these days. The city is bustling. All the buildings have shops on the first floor, there were lots of pedestrians out, and there was a lot of car traffic. We were moving slow in the traffic, so we were able to take in the scenery here a little better than we could in Islamic Cairo.

Back in Suez, we asked to be taken to a restaurant with good food. The guide instructed the driver to head to downtown about a mile or so away from the yacht club, turn down a few side streets, and drop us off at a fast food counter. The streets are narrow, there was no where to park, and he was blocking traffic, so the driver said he’d go around the block and be back in 5 minutes. The restaurant was literally a tiny storefront with a kitchen and a counter to order at. No place to sit at all. Te signs were in Arabic. Our guide ordered a couple schwarma sandwiches for us, and the total came to USD$2.00. The sandwiches were ready in the allotted 5 minutes, but no driver.

Forty minutes and several angry calls to his cell phone later, he brought the three of us our stuff and told us to take a cab back to the yacht club. Bizarre. We were worried that he had run off with our stuff, so we were relieved when he came back. And the sandwiches were quite large and really good.

In the interim, we did a lot of people watching. It seemed like everyone in the entire town was out, simply walking around enjoying the balmy night, from teenagers hanging out with their friends, to whole families with younger kids, to couples of all ages, from late teens to old age. There were a lot of cars on the road, and every parking space seemed to be taken. Almost all the men wore western style clothing, all with long pants, most with a button down shirt. Only a couple men wore the traditional pajama dresses. The women’s clothing varied wildly. There were women in the black robes, black head scarves and face cover and there were women in little, racy dresses worn atop a tight fitting, high necked, long sleeve blouse and leggings, and everything in between. Most women tended to wear brightly colored, cheerful clothing. Most all the women wore the headscarf, and we wondered if the few that didn’t were Christians or simply rebellious.

Most everybody stared at us, but no one approached us except for a boy of about 10. We didn’t walk around, but what we could see of the streets around us were rows of tall, narrow, blocky apartment buildings set close together with shops on the first flood. All signs were in Arabic.

We got our ride back to Kosmos, and retired from a busy day.