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Egypt Journal

已有 5016 次阅读 2008-3-25 03:37 |个人分类:生活点滴|系统分类:海外观察

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Egypt Journal (3/16-4/1/2008)

A group of Chinese Americans in the Boston area decided to organize a tour to visit Egypt and the Nile- a civilization with history older than China. We decided to join the group since it was a place we always wanted to visit. In fact we were scheduled to go years ago but canceled due to fear of terrorists attacking tourists in the 90s.

Day one – The flight from New York city to Cairo was late taking off. However, the prevailing jet stream made up for lost time so that we landed in Cairo on time after a 12 hour non stop flight.

Airport procedures were both efficient and inefficient in the sense that many ways of doing things are antiquated (because this is always how they have done things and no one has bothered to suggest that times have changed). But on the other hand, bending rules to make things work are quite common. For example, waiving tourist group through metal detectors even though they have given off alarms. This seems very typical of old civilizations.

By the time we checked into the hotel and had our orientation meeting with the tour guide. It was time for dinner and early to bed since we have to get up early the next day and we have lost six hours due to time zone change.

Day two – We started early and spent the entire day visiting

A museum in the village of Memphis where there is a giant stature of Ramsey II (recently discovered),
The famed stepped pyramid which is the oldest surviving men made stone structure completed 4827 years ago,
A carpet making school,
The pyramids of Giza,
The Sphinx. Probably because of the impressions left by the James Bond Movie “the Spy who loved me” and other photos often seen in advertisements or tour books, I was surprised to find that the pyramids are much larger and the Sphinx smaller than I imagined. The engineering of the pyramids are really incredible when you think that the Egyptians did them more than 46 centuries ago without modern technology. The efforts on the Chinese Great Wall dwarf by comparison. I’ll let some photos to speak for themselves below:
:

· The Oldest Pyramid at Saqqara (completed 4827 years ago)

· Recently unearthed stature of Ramsey II at Memphis museum

· The Sphinx

· Group picture at the Valley of the Pyramids (with the three pyramids in the background.