Egypt
After three days in Istanbul we flew to Cairo to start the actual "organized" part of our trip. A few shots from the business class (thanks Tony, thanks Keeto, thanks Ryan) lounge at the Istanbul airport. I am always amazed at the shitty lounges we have in Canada compared to the super modern and super well provisioned lounges we find in places like this.
That's an Italian restaurant at the right hand side...they'll make you custom pasta dishes, pizzas, etc. for no extra cost (although you already paid a bundle just to be able to get in here).
The salad bar was excellent.
A relaxed environment to wait for your flight.
A couple more shots of the interior of the new Istanbul airport.
So off we go flying to Cairo.
The shots below again show Istanbul and how freaking huge it is.
Soon we are approaching Cairo...it's a short flight.
The picture below is of just a few of towns of the Nile Delta. Flying over it I wasn't sure what I was seeing - there were so many small towns and so much farm land...only after we landed and I investigated by looking at a map of Egypt did I realize what we flew over.
Here's a cool picture I snagged from Wikipedia. It was taken from the ISS and shows the Nile Delta at night. The huge gob of light just above centre is Cairo.
Another shot from Google maps shows a different view.
Flying over Cairo I was again amazed at the size of the place. Wikipedia says Cairo is the 15th largest city in the world with a population of 9 million with another 9 million living near the city. Our guide explained that it is a matter of pride to own a car here so everyone of driving age owns one. Traffic was nutty. They had two lane traffic like everywhere else but always traffic was four cars wide. Drivers seemingly would do anything to gain a car length.
I've put a lot of pictures below showing Cairo from above. Just to show the sheer size of the place.
And it seems everyone lives in shitty apartment buildings like below.
Our hotel was decent - the Marriott Mena House - and at night there was a laser light show.
And we were right next to the Great Pyramid of Giza. Pretty impressive for a guy from the prairies.
That was it for our first day in Egypt.
Now I'm going to break out all the other days into separate web pages just to keep this blog more manageable. Each will be underlined as some content is added and an ellipses ... will be added when the page is finished.
Pyramids and Sphinx...
Karnak...
Valley of the Kings...
Hathor Temple...
Esna Temple and Sobek Temple...
Philae Temple and the Unfinished Obelisk...
Aswan...
Abu Simbel...
Cairo...
EGYPT IS DONE.