Yesterday I jumped right into my day-long tour of Cairo with Egypt Fun Tours by showcasing my visit to the Pyramids of Giza and the Great Sphinx. Today let’s rewind a bit to how I got here.

I depart Istanbul VERY early in the morning to fly to Cairo.

I’m not sure what I expected to see flying in, but this intense greenery surprises me.

As we fly over the sprawling city of Cairo, I spot the tips of the Pyramids of Giza in the distance. Incredible! Later, I’ll post this (heavily filtered and zoomed in) photo on Instagram:

Mohammed, my tour guide from Egypt Fun Tours, greets me at the airport with our driver for the day. When I explain that I’ve been up since around 3am to catch my flight in Turkey, he insists we stop for coffee on the way to the Pyramids. I’m over-the-moon happy when we find this Starbucks so that I can get a soy beverage (since I have a pesky milk allergy). THANK YOU, MOHAMMED!!

Here’s our tour van, which I have all to myself:

As I detailed yesterday, our first stop of the day is the iconic Pyramids of Giza and Great Sphinx. It’s the only one of the original Seven Wonders of the World still standing and I’m blown away to experience it in person.

After spending around two hours here, we move on to the Papyrus Museum. This employee shows me how the ancient Egyptians made paper — i.e. papyrus — out of reeds.

He cuts off a section of the reed and then slices it length-wise. Next, he hammers and rolls the papyrus reed until it’s nearly paper-thin.

He does this with a few more sections of reed to demonstrate how each piece is laid out to make a sheet and then pressed together with the vice below. The result is a nearly indestructible, tightly-woven piece of ‘paper’ that is actually waterproof. And it’s erasable! He intentionally spells my name wrong and then uses water to ‘erase’ the error and re-write it the correct way.

While this demonstration is free (or perhaps there is a nominal charge; I can’t remember), they push their papyrus products.

Here’s the hieroglyphic alphabet, in case you’re curious how to spell your own name in Egyptian Hieroglyphs:

I surprise myself by purchasing a papyrus product for one of the hieroglyph artists to add my name:

Here it is, my name in hieroglyphs on the left — E R I C A, spelled from top to bottom — and the ancient Egyptian calendar on the right with my astrological sign in the middle. All on a piece of papyrus paper.

While it’s silly and will likely end up in the bottom of a souvenir box someday, I’m excited to take home a tiny (and personalized) piece of Egypt.

Next up we head to downtown Cairo for lunch. Our driver lets us out and Mohammed leads me around on foot — I’m glad to see part of Cairo this way, as opposed to through the glass of a backseat window.

We stop at a local joint for lunch and Mohammed suggests we try koshary, a dish with pasta, lentils, and chickpeas. We order it to go and head down the block to a coffee shop.

The coffee shop has small tables and stools for guests to sit. Mohammed orders a drink and we’re welcome to eat the food we brought along.

Here’s the koshary — it’s delicious and filling. As I said, it’s got pasta, lentils, and chickpeas, plus there’s a red sauce on top and they sprinkle it with fried onions. I’d eat it again in a heartbeat.

We walk near Tahrir Square (or Liberation Square) at the city center of Cairo. The only remnants of civil unrest are these tanks and barbed wire, which no one seems to be paying much attention to. There is a police presence around this area but all is calm as everyone goes about their day.

A few more shots of downtown Cairo as we make our way to the Cairo Museum:

Evidence of police presence around Cairo Museum, although all is calm today:

We spend a bulk of the afternoon at Cairo Museum, also known as the Egyptian Museum or the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities.

It’s one of the world’s greatest museums with around 120,000 items on display and hundreds of thousands of additional items in storage, occasionally rotated into exhibition. The only bummer is that it needs a facelift — the artifacts are poorly labeled and it feels rundown; it’s missing the top-teir treatment that a museum of this importance deserves. There are long-term plans to move it closer to the Pyramids of Giza so perhaps that will allow for an upgrade.

In a nutshell, if you have only time to visit one museum in Cairo, make it this one — it’s got an impressive collection of important historical artifacts and any Social Studies teacher would go nuts in here.

Mohammed kindly snaps more photos of me documenting the day:

So cameras are not allowed inside, which is my least favorite rule ever.

There’s a place to check cameras outside the museum, which is unfortunately necessary as you pass through more than one metal detector to get inside. (Trust me, if there was a way to sneak in my DSLR, I would’ve done it.)

But I’m still allowed to take in my iPhone… and since there are so few employees guarding the exhibits, it’s easy to surreptitiously snap photos. Here are a few from the general mummy area:

As you can see from above, the museum isn’t exactly overrun with tourists. We only bump into a few other people during our hour-long visit.

Below left is a statue of an Old Kingdom monarch, approximately 4,500 years old. Below right is part of the Great Sphinx’s face (either the nose or beard), and under that is a golden chariot that once belonged to a pharaoh.

Here are more photos from the mummification area — my favorite is the mummified dog below left, on the bottom. If I had lived around 2000 BC and believed that mummifying my dog would benefit it in the afterlife, of course I would’ve done it.

Also — there is another mummy exhibit that you can purchase an additional ticket to visit, but our time is limited (and the ticket is pricy) so we skip it. As it is, we’re the last ones out of the museum that day when they close the doors.

Mohammed points out that the statue below left was considered ahead of its time because of how realistically the features were presented.

The photos below right are from the special King Tutankhamun exhibit. His eponymous mask is on the bottom… and a guard catches me taking the photo. Whoops! I play the role of dumb tourist and dutifully put my iPhone back in my pocket after he chastises me.

After departing the Cairo Museum, we head towards the Bazaar — and I kindly request a photo stop when we spot the sun setting over the Nile River. Our driver pulls over and Mohammed and I cross several lanes of (slow-moving) traffic on foot to get towards the river.

Tomorrow I’ll share the final part of our day-long Cairo tour — a visit to the Bazaar. Here’s a sneak peek:

The next day I board a flight for the second and final bonus stop on my RTW trip… Dubai!

FYI… Qatar Airlines provides great meals and entertainment. Any airline that considers The I.T. Crowd to be “classic comedy” is A+ in my book.

Many thanks to Egypt Fun Tours for hosting my layover tour of Cairo. It was a privilege to experience this beautiful and ancient city with you! As always, opinions are my own.