Cairo Egypt: Wowing the toursits for 4000 years and counting

Here’s the picture that we’ve been waiting six months, four days and six hours to post on our blog. Actually, we’ve waited a lifetime to take it, since no other sight in the world has motivated so many (including ourselves) to get up off the couch and take in the wonders of the world. The Great Pyramids of Giza, just off the freeway southwest of downtown Cairo Egypt!


In addition to the pyramids, we’ve strolled in the oldest parts of Cairo, the Coptic Christian neighborhood, where the holy family stayed when they escaped Judea,

and admired a Greek cemetery festooned with laundry from the people living in the crypts.

We are kept agog staring at the ancient, so brashly colliding with the modern, like the guy pulling his donkey driven cart and chatting on his cell phone, or the huge dingy apartment blocks all topped with huge satellite dishes.

What keeps us shaking our heads is how familiar this world seems to us, even in its foreign-ness, perhaps because we are entering the ancient lands of Western civilization, which so much of our mythology, psychology and history are built upon.

It doesn’t hurt at all that the incredible warmth and friendliness of the Egyptians is also making us feel welcomed. For the first time on this trip, Dylan is seen as a novelty. In fact, a touring group of Muslim school girls made more of a fuss about her--squealing, gathering around and pinching her cheeks--than they did for the 1300-year-old church we had all come thousands of miles to see.