Traveling Adventures Hi! Welcome to my travel journal. I created this so friends and family can keep track of me on my adventures. I'll update this when I can.

yesterday was our first full day with our tour group. it has been hard to get used to in cairo where we spent so much time on our own exploring and what not, but it is definitely getting better. we got up first thing yesterday and headed out to the pyramids which are actually right in cairo (giza is a suburb of cairo) and therefore surrounded by city which was sort of strange. the tourism and antiquities police have built a wall around the area to keep it somewhat protected and unspoiled. this wall is guarded by police on camel-back. haha so egyptian. i took pictures of course. the pyramids are actually smaller than i expected, but this didnt diminish their impressiveness in any way. the blocks used to build them are as tall as me and the structures are 4500 years old! amazing. there were 3 great pyramids and 3 smaller queen's pyramids where the pharoh's wives were burried. shannon went inside one of them and said it was so stuffy she couldnt breathe. one of our tour members apparently barely made it out. needless to say i didnt go in them when i found out the walkway tunnels were 3'x3'. we were able to walk out into the desert to get a great picture of 4 or 5 of the pyramids together without the city so they look like they're in the middle of the desert. there were lots of camels and donkeys around too so they made it in most of my pictures. mon, marshall and i went to look at a boat from the same time period made of lebanese cedar. it was something the kings would have used to travel on the nile when they were alive and 5 were buried around the great pyramid, altho only this one was found intact. i had an american idiot moment while inside the museum. we were above the boat looking down on it and i leaned over the railing to get a better look and down went my sunglasses onto part of the boat. my sunglasses fell on a 4500 yr old boat. i had to go down to security and act out what had just happened with hand gestures and a few english words (either they didnt speak english or just wanted to see me acting like a fool). 10 mins later one of the guards came upstairs with a pole and wire hook he fashioned out of a clothes hanger. he was able to rescue my glasses and then said "you are american right?". i guess i am an idiot tourist like the rest of them. i laughed with the guard for a bit and thanked him with a tip (you tip EVERYONE here). after this, we headed down to the sphinx, also much smaller than i expected, but still really really cool. so much detail in the ears and face. oh and contrary to popular belief, the sphinx's nose was not cut off by some western power or destroyed by islamic conquerors, but was simply wind-eroded away. after the sphinx and lunch we went back into the main part of cairo to the egyptian museum. you could spend days and days there. marshall said that if you spent 1 min at every artefact it would take you 9 months to see everything. that's a lot of stuff! one highlight was a 4000 year old painting of some ducks on the nile that literally looked like it had been painted yesterday. it was really detailed and very anatomically accurate. it is so incredible that something like that could last so long! the major highlight tho was tutankamen's treasure. the gold mask, the gold coffin, so much jewelry. there were five golden plates found on his chest that were engraved as incredibly detailed vultures (a protector of the upper kingdom of egypt). each feather was individually engraved even. they also had a fan that still had intact ostrich feathers. we also saw some mummified animals including a huge nile crocodile and a dog that still had fur! after about an hour and half of this we were completely overwhelmed so we decided to head back to the hotel with detours for pomegranate juice (we can't get enough!) and egyptian pastries. at 7:45 we met to drive to the train station to catch our sleeper train. oh a random fact i found out...there are tons of residential buildings on the outskirts of cairo that are unfinished and look abandonned. apparently if you dont paint your house, it isnt finished and then you dont have to pay taxes. thus most of cairo's citizens try to live in unpainted houses. haha loop holes.