Egypt Day Three: Pyramids and the Sphinx

Today (Monday) was "cultural" day, where we visited the Pyramids, the Sphinx, and a beautiful garden in Central Cairo called Al Azhar Park. The Great Pyramids are in Giza, about an hour bus ride south east from Cairo and across the Nile River. We arrived about 8:30am and it was already quite hot. There were lots of souvenir vendors and people with camels offering rides. They were very agressive and would even grab you and try to put you on a camel and then insist that you pay them a bunch of money. It really got to be annoying. We spent about a half hour at each pyramid, then a half hour at the Sphinx, which is only about a 1/4 mile away.

As you can see the smooth stucco finish is all but worn off, except for the top of one of the pyramids.

This is a pan shot of the Sphinx. You don't appreciate the scale until the end of the first pass when you can see some horses in the background and a guy's head.

This is a mosque taken from Al Azhar Park where we had dinner.

Just at the moment when the sun slipped below the horizon, there was this racket all over the city that was louder than New Years. It was all of the calls for prayer from all of the mosques and minarets. It went on for maybe ten or fifteen minutes and then stopped.

I actually took this picture tonight at our closing ceremonies at the Pyramids (more about that in the next post), but I stuck it in here. Our desert stage was surrounded by armed security guards on camels. I couldn't resist taking this picture!

This is the building where we had our dinner. There are over 800 students, judges, mentors and staff attending this event.

This is the folk music that was playing when we arrived at the park for dinner