The Great Pyramids and Sphinx of Giza

This morning we started off to visit the Great Pyramids in Giza. Giza and Cairo are just next to each other, divided by the Nile. You cross the bridge and there you are in another city. And the river is not that wide.

For Egyptians, this is probably nothing as they do see them each day. For foreigners like us, it was long waited and finally they were there in front of us. The surrounding areas were bare, no trees, all sand and dusty. Each pyramid looked impressive from far away. And then when you got up close, you realized how big they truly were. In one of the pictures below, our group of five fitted nicely into just one block of rock out of thousands to make up the pyramids. Most of the pictures were taken in front of the biggest pyramids out of the three there. We couldn’t go inside this one as the government limited it to only 300 entrants per day. And I was certain those were grabbed up by the higher end tour company.

Our next stop was to an area where we could see all three pyramids in a row, meant we had to back further out of a bit. And we could also hire camels to ride toward the pyramids. It was an experience we talked our mom into. At least we were able to fit two people on a camel. Those four couldn’t wait and got onto two camels and left me behind!!! While I waited for my camel to come, I took out the long lens for some far away shots of my four family members who left me….The camels are tall animals. I guess mom wasn’t expecting that, she was a bit in shock when the camel started to raise up on its legs…look for funny picture here too…

Inside tip: Bring chewing gums. The kids love them, may even love them more than $1 bill. Not sure why but they certainly get really excited. And when the camel guide asked if you were happy, that meant he wanted a good tip. Don’t do what I did, I thought I was paying him the fee to ride the camel, but I shouldn’t have because our escorted tour guide supposed to do that. But the camel guide “pretended” he didn’t know. So I got cheated for $10 US. That’s a huge tip for a camel guide…oh well, at least he took a great picture of me with the camel, I would have pay at least $25 per picture if this was on a cruise ship!!!

After the camel ride, we stopped for a brief visit at the famous Sphinx. There were many visitors here. We were not given sufficient time to get too close to the Sphinx. We just took a bunch more pictures. It was way too crowded too by then.