Last day of our tour, and last full day in Egypt.
We said goodbye to the ship and her lovely crew early this morning and were on the bus before 7, heading to Luxor airport for our 8:55 flight.
Check in took forever but we finally arrived at the gate just in time – to see that our departure had been postponed by an hour. It’s just a small airport so there wasn’t much to do to while away the time. You couldn’t even get wifi. Finally our flight was called, we got on and it was then smooth sailing all the way to Cairo.
We had three visits planned for the day – the museum, a mosque, and the grand bazaar – so it was quite a full schedule, even before a 90 minute delay. We even had to wait to leave the airport – you have to get approval from security to leave the building and get on your bus, and then to drive away. They certainly take security seriously.
We visited the mosque first, it’s in a place called the citadel built by Mohammed Ali two hundred years ago. Not the boxer, but his namesake. The Citadel was built from bits of the limestone outer layers of the great pyramids that had fallen off. The plan in earlier centuries had actually been to dismantle the pyramids entirely to build a wall around the city. Luckily that plan was never actioned. The mosque is beautiful, with alabaster on the outside (which started to degrade almost immediately and had to be stripped off the upper levels) and in.
Our next stop was the Egyptian museum. Not the flash new one that was meant to be completed a number of years ago and is still not done – the old one. It’s certainly looking it’s age – it doesn’t even have air conditioning – but it’s stuffed to the gunnels with priceless artifacts. I took loads of pictures but the most famous bits – like the treasures from Tutenkhamen’s tomb, such as his death mask (remember all that was left for us to see there was his body) – you aren’t allowed to photograph. I can tell you it was fabulous, I’ve never seen so much gold in one place.
It was after four by the time we finished there, we had one more planned stop on our itinerary and we had no choice but to do it. Simon and I stayed in the bus as it circled the block while everyone else got out to see the grand bazaar. We’re both done with Egyptian markets.
The journey back to our hotel was interminable. The president held a rally in town today and the traffic was in complete chaos. A trip that should have taken 25 minutes took two hours. Exhausting.
When we got to the hotel we only had time to say a rushed farewell to Wael, check in, take our bags up to our rooms and then join the rest of the group for dinner.
There were two American couples on the tour who were the “cool kids” that everyone wanted to hang out with. They always sat together for meals. Somehow, Simon and I spent less time with them than anyone, so while everyone else had WhatsApp groups and planned future trips together, we weren’t included. They were very nice people to talk to, we just hadn’t been able to get to know them so we were on the outer. I’m quite jealous actually, and I feel a bit sick about it – it’s just like high school. The fact that everyone else on the tour apart from we four are in their sixties and seventies makes no difference. Is this what my life will be like in the future, the unpopular girl in a retirement village? The feeling was so familiar to me, it reminded me how lucky I was to find an excellent group of friends at med school. Not the cool kids – better. Thanks guys!