Holy Land Pilgrimage - Day Four

Thursday, March 5th:

We got up around 6:15 a.m. again and met for breakfast at 7:00 a.m. Brenda and I stopped in the Golf Pro Shop before boarding the bus. We were looking for shirts for our hubbies. At 8:00 a.m. the bus left the hotel for the day. Because of where we were heading today, we had a security man traveling with us.

Our first stop was Old Cairo. We toured The Church of Saints Sergius and Bacchus (Abu Serga), a 4th century church. Today it is considered to be the oldest of Cairo's Christian churches. It is dedicated to two early martyrs and traditionally believed to have been built on the spot where the Holy Family, Joseph, Mary and the infant Christ, rested at the end of their journey into Egypt. They supposedly hid here until Herod died. There was a lot of security.

On the way to Memphis:

Memphis was the capital of ancient Egypt during the Old Kingdom (c. 2575–c. 2130 bc). The ruins of ancient Memphis have yielded a large number of sculptures representing the pharaoh Rameses II. Within the museum in Memphis is a giant statue of the pharaoh carved of monumental limestone, about 10 metres in length. It was discovered in 1820 near the southern gate of the temple of Ptah. The beauty of this statue lies in its flawless detail of the complex and subtle forms of human anatomy. The pharaoh wears the white crown of Upper Egypt.

Our next stop was Saqqara to see ruins from 4750 years ago. The Pyramid of Djoser (Zoser), or step pyramid is an archeological remain in the Saqqara necropolis, Egypt, northwest of the city of Memphis. It was built for the burial of Pharaoh Djoser by his vizier Imhotep, during the 27th century B.C. It is the central feature of a vast mortuary complex in an enormous courtyard surrounded by ceremonial structures and decoration. The Djoser complex is surrounded by a wall of light Tura limestone 10.5m high. The roofed colonnade led from the enclosure wall to the south of the complex. A passageway with a limestone ceiling constructed to look as though it was made from whole tree trunks led to a massive stone imitation of two open doors. Beyond this portal was a hall with twenty pairs of limestone columns composed of drum shaped segments built to look like bundles of plant stems and reaching a height of 6.6 m. The columns were not free-standing, but were attached to the wall by masonry projections.

This building is supposedly the oldest building in the world. Someone has spent years trying to put it back together.

They are still doing some excavating:

We stopped at a carpet institute after leaving Saqqara. We got to see how Egyptian rugs are made - it was quite fascinating! The one thing most of us did not like was that they use young children as their labor. But the children only work 2 1/2 hours 2 days a week. That way they are still able to finish their education. All education in Egypt is free- from kindergarten to college. The children making the carpets work very very fast - it was a little creepy watching them. They have a pattern to follow but mostly do it from memory. The carpets were very expensive so needless to say I didn't even buy a tiny one!



Time for lunch (finally). We ate at the same place as yesterday. Love those felafels!!

We stopped by the Merit Bazaar so we could pick up our jewelry order. One thing I didn't mention in my last post about shopping at the bazaar: they assign each of us a salesperson who follows you around the store - kinda creepy, you couldn't just browse slowly, you felt you had to move it along... We had two guards watching us and our bus while there. They were there for our safetly but none of us felt unsafe.

We went to the basement of the Bazaar and they gave us a demonstration on how to make paprus paper. It was pretty cool!

Then we went back to our hotel to get packed up and rest a bit. We had about 2 hours. We won't get back this evening until 11:00 p.m. We had to have our bags outside our door at 5:00 a.m. the next morning and be on the bus by 5:20 a.m. We are going to cross the Sinai Desert and must be in Taba at the Israel border by 11:00 a.m. because at noon they close the border for 2 hours for prayers.

They don't appear to have trash pick up... they just throw their trash out anywhere. The "canals" are full of trash - pretty nasty!

At 6:30 p.m. we met at the bus to head into town for a dinner cruise on the Nile River. It took 1 1/4 hours to reach the boat. In Egypt, they have Friday and Saturday as their "weekend". So Thursday nights they all like to get out and stay out very late. The traffic congestion was awful. There were people everywhere. They even stop along the bridges to get out and visit with friends! Also, anytime during the week if someone is waiting for a ride from someone, they just stand alongside the road, anywhere they want. They also cram as many people as possible in their vehicles: such as 25 people crammed in a van!The dinner cruise was nice. It was a buffet dinner with a gal and guy singing while we ate- the singers were not very good (had to keep from laughing). After dinner, Brenda and I walked out on the deck for a few minutes and then went back inside for the main entertainment: a belly dancer and whirly dirvish (The dance is an invention of a branch of Islam known as the Sufi, and its history dates back some 700 years; a display by men wearing long, large skirts who twirl around performing some interesting formations- they just spin around and around for at least 15 minutes). They were pretty good and got the audience involved. The cruise was 1 1/2 hours long. By the time we got back to the hotel it was 11:15 p.m. We went to our rooms and crashed!