Date: Fri, November 26, 2010 10:18:05 PM
Subject: In the Old Kingdom, which later became the Middle Kingdom, New Kingdom, Greece, Rome, Persia, Ottoman empire, British empire, and finally Egypt. (I'm sure I missed a few in between)
Masa' al-khayr,
Greetings from the land of the Pharaohs! I've been here a little less than 24
hours, and will be here for a little more than 24 hours from now. I've been to a
lot of old tombs today, and I'm dead tired!
My flight was from San Jose-Los Angeles-London-Cairo from Wednesday afternoon to
late Thursday night. The LA-London flight was flying over Greenland when I woke
up from a deep sleep, and when it got over Iceland, I opened my window to look
down. I've probably flown over Iceland 10-15 times so far, but never actually
seen it from the air. Yesterday I was lucky enough and the clouds parted for
just enough time to allow me my first views of that gorgeous country! I
definitely want to make a trip there too sometime!!
London airport and the British Airways flight to Cairo were both uneventful,
with pretty good views over Cairo as we were approaching for landing -- there
are some huge mosques in the city (hoping to see one of those tomorrow), and
they're all very clearly visible from a plane coming in for a landing... It was
gorgeous, but I always like seeing the city lights when landing in a big city at
night! We parked out on the tarmac (I don't think Cairo has any jet bridges), so
it took a while to get off the plane. Then it took longer to find the window
where I was supposed to buy my Egyptian entry visa ($15 USD). Once that was
taken care of (12:20am) I took a cab to my hotel next to the Giza Plateau, about
an hour from the airport. My first-ever crossing of the Mighty Nile was at
12:50am. It's a BEAUTIFUL river through downtown, at least at night... when all
the lights are glimmering in the water!
Finally reached my hotel (pyramids view from the lounge) and went to sleep at
2am, only to wake up at 4am. It's now a little past 10pm and I've had a very
active day today going to all the "obvious places". I'll write about those in
the next email, maybe tomorrow! :-)
Maa as-salaamah,
-me.
Video
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