My Egyptian Odyssey Part 3: Touriffic
Cairo, Egypt. 01:15 6 Nov 2004
My second day in Cairo was tour-iffic. We took a taxi from Chris’ to Giza.
Our taxi let us out in this stable where locals tried to convince us the only
way to get to the pyramids is by camel. We knew this wasn’t the case, so we
went to a café to regroup. However, one of the guys followed us there, and sat
at our table. While drinking our Fanta, he continued to try and convince us we
needed to take a camel. Chris and I are in agreement that camels are filthy,
smelly, ill-mannered animals. After successfully ditching him, we found another
cab driver. This guy, Kamelle, was great. For 120 pounds, he drove us
everywhere all day. We went to the pyramid of Sakarra (the step pyramid).
There, I went into the Tomb of the Two Brothers. This is the
only tomb in Egypt in which two men were buried. Some archeologists think that they were gay
lovers. They were both overseers of the manicurists (even back then the queens
were in the grooming business) to the pharaoh and there is a hieroglyph of them
hugging in the burial chamber. After Sakarra, we went to the pyramids of Darshur,
where we saw the red pyramid and the bent pyramid.
The bent is pyramid is bent because they hand to change the
angle halfway through construction because of structural instability. The nerd
in me found this tidbit very interesting. Our next adventure led us to a carpet
school, where little boys and girls learn to weave. They had many beautiful,
handmade tapestries from silk, wool, and camel hair. After the carpet school,
we went to the papyrus museum where we learned how papyrus paper is made. Between
those two tourist traps, I spent 1800 pounds. Because Chris lives in Cairo and speaks Arabic, I paid less than 50% on all items. After dropping the cash,
we went to the pyramids of Giza,
where there are three large pyramids, nine small, and the Sphinx.
During Ramadan, all the bars are closed. Craving a drink,
with my alcoholism raging, Chris, his roommate Clark, his friend Jeff, and I,
decided to go to the Chile’s floating on the Nile. We figured an American
restaurant would serve booze; we were mistaken. I think it’s hilarious I flew
for 16 hours to eat at a Chile’s.
After the mission failure at Chiles’s
we finally wandered to the tea garden at the Marriot, which is a very cruisy
place for gay men, and I was able to get my margarita.
