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Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Cairo/Aswan, Egypt
We checked out of our Cairo hotel and set out for our day's excursions. The highlight of the day was a visit to the Egyptian Museum of Antiquities. Salah gave us an excellent guided tour for two hours showing us and explaining selected masterpieces in chronological order. The museum was started in 1902 and has more than 120,000 items on display with 150,000 items stored in the basement. Cairo is in the process of building a brand new museum on the Giza Plateau. The pride of the collection are the artifacts recovered from King Tut's tomb, but there are excellent pieces from every period from every period of ancient Egyptian history dating from around 3100 BC. Unfortunately we were not allowed to take photos and so I purchased a book of postcards showing the selected masterpieces.
In addition to all of the statues and gold pieces there were mummies and even mummies of animal that included baboons, dogs, crocodiles and more.
After leaving the museum we headed to a Lebanese restaurant for lunch located on the 6th floor of a high-rise that offered great views of the city.
On our way to the airport we made several photo stops in the Hieropolis District. We stopped first at the tomb and monument to Anwar Sadat. It was then onto the Baron's Palace. Built in 1910 this was Baron Empin's residence and for reasons unknown, he had it designed to resemble a Hindu temple. Its sandstone exterior is covered with carved animals. The final place on our list was a drive-by of the Uruba Palace the residence of the president of Egypt.
We stopped at an "On the Run" convenience store to buy what Pat and I call "feast food" for dinner. I got a package of cookies and a bag of chips. I also hound a box of teabags, which I was running low on.
We got our bags checked in at the Cairo airport. I was told that my carryon would not fit into the overhead and that I must check it. I took my computer out and just held it on my lap for the 1 ½ hour flight.
Our hotel in Aswan, the Basma, is not nearly as nice as the one in Cairo but it will do. The good news is that the Internet is free but mighty S-L-O-W.
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