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Saqquara and Giza Pyramids

The Egyptian pyramids are one of the world’s most known and visited sights. Today we went on a day tour from Cairo to discover them. Our visit started at the Saqquara pyramids (shown on today’s picture) which are the oldest stone buildings in the world. It is really hard to imagine how they actually were build more than 3.000 years ago. Quite a number of people must have spent their lifetime just to build one of those tombs. At Saqquara you can visit a number of non-royal tombs which I actually found much more interesting than the royal ones since the walls of the tombs are painted and you can learn a lot about the former life of the owner from these paintings.

Next we went to Memphis were we visited the ruins of this ancient capital. Most impressive was the giant statue of Ramses II. In the afternoon we visited the Great Pyramid of Giza and the Sphinx which is an amazing but quite touristy place. I went with Marek, a fellow traveler from Poland / Canada, into the Great Pyramid. It costs an additional 100 Egyptian Pounds (17 USD) to go inside but it’s not actually worth it. You walk up a long wooden stair and end up in the small room with an empty tomb. There are no paintings on the walls and nothing really special to see.

Tomorrow we will get up early and leave the civilization of Cairo to head off to South Egypt. Next night we will be camping in an oasis so it might take a couple of days until I update this blog the next time…