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Trafalgar Tour - Best of Egypt

Day 9 - The Pyramids!

Egypt

The Step Pyramid

The Sphinx

The blocks of the great pyramid

Our wake up call today was at 6:30am. We had another excellent breakfast at the Ramses Hilton, and then met our group in the lobby at 7:30am. Our first stop was at a small museum called Mit-Rahina. It had a large statue of Ramses II inside. Otherwise, that museum was disappointing. There were police officers there that were bothersome, and I had to give one of them some money so he would leave me alone.

Our next stop was at The Step Pyramid in Saqqara. I really enjoyed that stop - the step pyramid was larger than I thought, and it was neat to see this first attempt at a pyramid. Everybody here wanted to give you a camel ride, and the sales people were very annoying.

We had a very short tour from our tour guide, then we had some free time to look around and see the pyramid. After spending some time there, we went back on the bus, and went to visit an Egyptian Cotton store. The sheets and clothes at the store were quite nice, but they were also expensive. Costco had cheaper products (and that's unusual for Egypt - almost everything else in Egypt was very, very cheap).

We then took the bus to the Giza Pyramids. We went to the pyramids, first. Our tour guide advised us to leave our cameras on the bus if we wanted to go inside the pyramids, and then we could come back and collect them (since no cameras were permitted inside the pyramids). We paid 25 LE each to go inside Khafre's pyramid (the middle one). Going inside the pyramids was an incredible experience! After walking around and taking some pictures, the bus took us to a nearby lookout point where the tour guide offered to arrange camel rides for people (for an additional charge). The sales people here were also very aggressive. They tried to get in your picture, and then asked for money if you took a picture with them in it. After 20-25 minutes at the lookout point, we went to see The Sphinx.

After visiting the Sphinx, the bus took us back to the hotel. It was lunchtime, and we decided to try and find Felfela, a local Egyptian fast food restaurant. We got lost and ended up in someones family store some distance away from where we wanted to be. The adventure cost us 25 LE, but we eventually made it to the Felfela, and back safely to our hotel. Don't trust any of the locals! Everyone wants to take your money from you.

We had a larger lunch from Rendez Vous - a fast food restaurant in the annex of the hotel. It had some pretty good food for great prices.

We had signed up for the Dinner Cruise Optional Excursion, so at 7:00pm, a Trafalgar representative picked us up and took us to the boat. I wouldn't recommend that optional excursion, but every other excursion that we went on was quite good. We arrived back at the hotel around 10:30pm.