A trip back to the capital of Egypt, the Cairo city

Here we are, back to the famous capital of Egypt.

 

The first day

After so many years, a case takes us back to Egypt, just going through the main gates, Cairo, but this time with their children.
The real object of the holiday is another country, but a cheaper flight allows us a call for almost 3 days and then decide to take this opportunity to get to know something of this country for the guys, it's most authentic city Plastic built on the beautiful Red Sea.
I remembered with some anxiety the broad measures of the city and the way in which so many desperate to beset you propionate all have a bakshish or imaginary grounds, for which, even in order to maximize the limited time available, I tried to program everything from home and, above all to find someone to escort us.
After several contacts, very expensive and "Eastern" in the ways and offers (papyrus factory, very little direct ways and full of salaams, restaurant with belly dancing, only they have special permits, etc..), Is once again been the case to find me Saladin, an Egyptologist who speak our language with ease and sophistication that rivals, well-educated, too honest and ... very little Egyptian.
An acquaintance of mine had gone to Egypt in April and had to guide him, because he was a friend of the brother in law: I had spoken well and so we organized.
Back to us: at 16.15, on time, we landed with Alitalia, leaving the plane a powerful running hot, it stops and seems to push back, we are in Africa!
We go down and go at once to change a bit 'of money and buy a visa for passports, which cost 12 euro or 15 dollori.Già plane had completed a card entry personnel and was the first of an endless string and a real bore , since I do not really know why, I'm always the owner of certain Rogne and because throughout the holiday, which also includes Syria and Lebanon, and we came out in these 3 countries and over again!
Vabbhè!
With documents in place, we enter officially in Egypt, collect your luggage and go out looking for a taxi.Contrariamente my expectations, we are not attacked by any crowd of taxi drivers, but in return, the only one who hardly find ourselves, we shoot however a reduced price (110 pounds, when I know that 80 should be the right amount and maximum acceptable), but as time passes and it is already late .. so we begin on the wrong foot by accepting the figure for the holiday as despair ... always with these people.
We arrive at Novotel Zamalek after 45 minutes, hot and already with the sense of this city appiccicume sultry and very dirty you can give and, after another argument with the taxi driver, who is not happy with the theft that has just done, go to hotel.
More time for the formalities and then finally in the room, where, now at 18.30 Saladin phone immediately to see if he was still willing to carry around, although I had not called first.
Fortunately, yes, it gives us half an hour and come directly to the hotel by metro, taxi in which we move toward the Islamic Cairo, and I Simon 17 years ago we had visited, having opted for the Citadel.
Saladin was told that it has a terrific culture and is a "particular", a term that we then summarized to be: a man who lives in an environment that loves and hates, and hopelessly ill with total awareness.
The old Islamic part of Cairo is very beautiful, we visit a mosque, the famous Khan El Khalili souk, which dates from the middle ages and walks a lot less touristy streets and very nice, until you reach a door along the outer walls of the ancient city old.
Then we have dinner together and finally we leave you with the arrangements for the next morning: he comes home with us on the metro and a taxi driver who we care again, because when we must give the rest of the amount agreed with Saladin, obviously did not make 'ha.
For me, this is bleak feeling of always being ripped off by these things because I also, contrary to what seems to think these people, I do very influenced and simply decide that that country or that city ... I do not see more until after other 17.
Finally to sleep ... even if I personally spend the night in white ... perhaps too much excitement, maybe because I have not yet said, but after so many years of absence from this city, I found a substantial difference and unexpected .. almost no women had no velo.Inquietante, also because it is a secular state and why Saladin will tell us that in fact the people are moving further away from Islam.
So that means that the substance ..?... decreases but increases the form?
This will be my haunting leitmotif of 14 days of travel ... and to follow.

The pharaonic city

22 the morning after a hearty breakfast, at 8.30, as agreed, we meet with Saladin and a van with driver in front of the hotel. We face a long day.
The first step is Saqqara, 30 km from the little town center.
Leaving the city, drive along one of the many channels arising from the Nile: something smelly and full of waste, where there is even a fisherman and that still makes all that is green in prossimità.
Through the usual 3 or 4 checkpoints, even in the midst of fast roads in the city and the true meaning of which I do not want to investigate, but as usual, I am not a little disturbing.
We arrive at Saqqara in less than an hour, we were not here and I Simone.Nel site are practically the first and only tourists at the end they will reach many more caravans and cruise vacationers like us.
It's hot and cook the salt also is really the idea of the desert.
Indeed, this is the desert, running toward the boundless Libya.
From a distance, like a mirage, you see the pyramids on the plains of Ghiza, those in our imagination, are the pyramids, but really .. what about where we are now? Pyramids with steps, as the oldest of Zoser, and shaped like a prism, there are plenty of them here, as in so many mirages .. just look around!
The pyramids are seen only from outside, but we visit a temple and many powerful mastaba and underground tombs of noble character with the tall and beautiful bas-reliefs, the frescoes are the envy of the royal tombs of the Valley of the Kings in Luxor.
Very nice.
Calmly back in town, where, in almost its offshoots are the Pyramids, those of our imagination.
The site has been reorganized and no stress you too much, and what counts most is that we have Simon and I reconciled with this site: no disappointment this time, we have caught the spirit maggiormante grand and magnificent.
We are not entered into, because I remember that not worth the effort, but we walker around, we saw the various perspectives and then we went to visit the Solar Boat. This is a boat with 4600 years of age, found buried at the foot of the Pyramid of Cheops and 1224 ... split into pieces, put back together in 14 years of work.
Archaeologists have since renamed the Solar Boat in ancient Egypt, it was believed that the soul of the pharaoh would have been transported to heaven to join the Sun God, but this would take place through the use of a solar boat.
Indeed looks like vessels present in the ancient paintings on papyrus or tomb, where the Sun God made his trip through the skies. So, not 'clear whether the boat' was buried as a gift to the Sun god to Pharaoh, or left for his heavenly journey. The solar boat 'in cedar wood, the wood shows signs of using them in real water before being buried, may have been the funerary boat harbor' the body
Pharaoh Khufu from Memphis to Giza.
43 long, 3 meters wide, 5, 1 9 m deep, 48 m estimate of 45 tons in weight, with a central cabin of 9 meters, has more than five oars on each side 'features with 2 aft rudders in short, something grandiose, like everything in this plan.
In fact, let's move then to "greet" the Sphinx.
The Sphinx of Giza is the largest monolithic statue in the world is about 74 meters long, about 20 meters high and 6 meters wide, of which only the head is 4 feet, was built about 4,500 years ago and depicts a mythological figure with the face human body of a lion crouching. The monument was probably taken from an outcrop of rock during the construction of the pyramids of Giza. Strangely, the Great Sphinx is an isolated monument, when, in fact, the sphinxes were later placed in pairs to protect the entrance of a building, however its magnitude is proportional to its role: to protect the plane and watch for the light the sun enters each morning.
One of the mysteries of the Sphinx, powered by the popular legends, is certainly the presence of hidden passages in it, there are at least three, of which only one known source.
After this dive deep into the past, we are exhausted, both in time and because we drank too poco.Per that, we go to a grocery store out of the flat to buy water, which is why we have postponed the second Saladin would cost too much e. .. on the plane with his great disappointment, we pay too much in store!
At this point, our driver, who has always waited for sleeping with his mouth wide open, leads us to the Egyptian Museum and deposited there.
Let's go eat some horrible fast food fried in Kentucky and American Fries .. Something not to lose time and then go to the museum.
This has remained the same dusty museum that we saw, eternally waiting to be replaced by a new building under construction for years, but contains wonderful things on which stands one of the most beautiful, fascinating, exciting, beautiful and moving that I 've ever seen: the golden mask and several sarcophagi Thut-Ankh-Amon.

Also this time, I left the room crying and just talk about it now upsets me.
Sorry if I seem stupid, but we must try to believe.

After the museum, where of course, we did not have time nor energy, nor even to look good all the rooms, we said goodbye and we reached the hotel in10 minutes.
In a moment we were down in the pool, the only of our whole trip, where we were to freshen up and absorb the many emotions of the day til that have not closed. We had dinner in the hotel restaurant and then we went almost straight to bed.

The last day

This morning we wanted to spend a tour of the City of the Dead: places where the dead and the living live together, sharing the space. But there is not time, because at 11 we have to take a taxi to the airport, so that Saladin, alternatively proposes a visit to the Coptic Church.
Only Irene wakes up with nausea and stomach ache, so just go with Saladin boys.
I'm back before 11 met and escorted by our friend who came to the hotel to greet me on purpose.
It 'been a pleasure to know this man, which hit us all, and most importantly my son. If you needed a guide, let me know!
Also makes us leave Egypt with the hope that this country is not inhabited exclusively by robbers, as desperate: his pay officially is 21 € per day and he even wants to give us this morning!
But we do not accept and give much more, with effort and with the excuse that we want to find a compromise between the cost of a guide in Egypt and one in Italy.
Even the taxi driver leaves us with this hope: he asks us 55 pounds, a kind of intermediary in front of the hotel intrudes asking twice, but this time I am, that very little say NO Islamically, it is too, fed up with these pimps treat us as idiots and I'm going imperiously, followed by my family.
Fortunately, the tactic did not want to be a tactic, it works and it also follows the taxi, on which we climb on the fly, in spite of the Ombudsman.
Eventually, though, his humility and honesty will be rewarded, because we leave him 20 pounds more than we asked, and I say sciukran, thanks.
Thanks for starting us with the idea that there's honest people, however desperate, I think.
Finally we get a big smile, for the money and for that magical little word that her difficult language.
The airport is fresh, new and clean. After two hours we are flying to Syria and to many other cards to be filled.