Ancient Wonder Indeed...

Tuesday, January 2, 2006
(yesterday, January 1...)
So the thing about jetlag...have I mentioned how much it can mess with your body clock? Bharat and I did admittedly go to bed a little later NYE - around 2am - but I don't think that alone can account for the fact that we didn't get out of bed yesterday until 2pm. I do think that a part of it was that we did serious touring the day before. Our bodies were tired and our minds were at rest because we had seen 90% of what we had planned to see in Luxor - and so I think we both just allowed ourselves to sleep without guilt. When we finally got up we packed and checked out before grabbing a bite to eat at the outside cafe along the Nile. Our only agenda item was the Luxor museum, which was only about 10 minutes away by cab.

I'm not a huge museum fan, and so the only thing that I found to be really interesting were the two mummies that the museum housed. We spend about 1.5 hours walking around and then spent the rest of the evening continuing our exploration from the night before. We found a big late evening market to meander through and did a bit of shopping. Finally we grabbed a taxi and went back to the hotel to get our luggage. We had a late (11:55pm) flight from LXR - CAI that got us into Cairo a little after 1am.

(today, January 2...)
Today was our trip to Giza to see the Pyramids and the Spinx. Like so many of the ruins that we've seen the pyramids are spectacular, but some of their beauty does seem to be lost by the urban sprawl that now encroaches upon the desert. Standing and facing the pyramids one can only see the openness of the desert with the sun shining down on the massive structures that were built so many years ago. But when you turn to smile for a picture with the pyramids in the backround you are actually looking out at the city that stops only a few hundred feet away. It is hard not to notice the large KFC/Pizza Hut signs staring at you while the last surving wonder of the ancient world looms behind you, leaving you somewhat trapped between the two worlds.