Goodbye Egypt!

;(

Day5-6

Last day in Egypt, really don't wan to leave this beautiful place.


Luxor A.K.A.  Thebes( ancient name of Luxor ) is a place full of history, it is at upper Egypt (yellow part on map). It was the capital of Egypt during the New Kingdom age, that explains why there are so many temples and burial grounds such as the valley of kings in this area.

After the Nile tour, we went to the  temple of Karnak, all the lights they placed at the temple fit the temple perfectly.

I spend the rest of the trip on activities like hot air balloon. Egypt is more beautiful when you look it from above.

Day4

Alexandria is one of the major ports and the second largest city in Egypt. They have really good seafood

According to the internet, the Library of Alexandria is one of the must go place in Alexandria. The amount of books and arts in the library is shocking. We attended a musical event, the event was really good.

This is Fort Qaitbey, a fort built by Sultan Qaitbey hundred years ago. Locals told us that this Fort is haunted and you can see ghosts in the fort. We didn't spend much time at the fort, so we didn't get a chance to find the ghosts. :(


We planned to go to a seafood restaurant near the fort, but we went to KFC ("Lexus") instead because we wanted to save it for dinner.



The aquarium is located next to Fort Qaitbey, so we decided to go there. The aquarium was decent, but not very impressive, just like all the aquariums around the world.

We went to a restaurant called Samakmak for dinner, a seafood restaurant near Fort Qaitbey. Samak is a type of salt water fish in Egypt, people usually grill the fish before eat. The restaurant is a really traditional house, the restaurant is trying to keep the place as traditional as possible.

Day 3

Today I went to Giza

The first place I went to was the grand Museum of Egypt, the museum is smaller than it looks. However, the museum has much more than I thought, precious things like King's collections are really common in the museum. Even though the museum needs to work on their decorations, but the pieces they hold are absolutely priceless. I admit this is one of the must visit places in Egypt.


We went to the falafel restaurant we went on day 1 for lunch.





Then we went to the Imax Americana plaza, a cinema/ mall sponsored by IMAX in Giza. This is an example of "the Lexus" in the book: "travel as a political act". They have a really good IMAX cinema in the building.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBtIM0DJ5YQ
we ended our tour with visiting the Giza pyramid. We saw some Egyptians live in the desert.

Egypt Day1

First Day in Cairo

Just had some Kabobs, taste great! My friend knows the owner of the shop, so we got some extra meats.

The traffic in Cairo is heavier than I expected, the city is fairly organized, but like all the big cities around the world, Cairo is way too populated in my opinion, and the population is as bad as Beijing's pollution. My friend says sometimes you can't even see things like 5 meters away.

Since we were short on time, we went to the Keops pyramid first, one of the must go place in Egypt. The pyramid's size surprised me, it's really hard to believe someone build this without any modern machines.

Then we went to the cave church at the "garbage town", at southeastern Cairo. The town is literally a garbage town, it is the base of garbage collectors, or Zabballeen. There are 7 churches in the mountain. The town's population is surprising, 85% are Christian and only 15% are Muslims, which is completely opposite from the rest of the country. The cave is astonishing, this is the most impressive thing I've seen in the city.

Then we ended our tour with a good falafel at a restaurant called Just Falafel in Cairo city.

Ticket