May 2: Pyramids

It would be weird to look out your bedroom window and see the only remaining Wonder of the Ancient World, but that’s what it’s like for residents of Giza. The Pyramids and Sphinx are awe-inspiring up close, similar to Uluru in that kind of “I-can’t-believe-it’s-in-front-of-us” way.

We are doing Egypt as part of a package tour (gasp, independent travellers) of two, something we hadn’t counted on when we booked it. So without encumberment of the elderly or Americans, we have been given a very intimate insight into some of these amazing monuments, and into Egypt itself, by today’s guide, a rather wealthy archaeology graduate.

Some facts:

• Cairo is the third largest city in the world.
• Many inhabited buildings are left incomplete because incomplete structures are not subject to land tax.
• There are five Egyptians employed in the tourism industry for every one tourist to Egypt.
• The Mamluks used the Sphinx’s nose as target practice for cannons.
• Egyptians consider themselves friendly and “tricky”.
• Egyptians claim that theirs is the only nation where Muslims, Christians and Jews live alongside one another in perfect harmony.
• About 90% of Cairo’s unemployed are university graduates.
• Egypt has been occupied by Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, the French and the British.

Other highlights today include the step pyramids of Saqqara, and the incredible statue of Ramses II at Memphis.

The trip also has its first lowlight: the Pyramids sound-and-laser-light show, where with the miracle of technology the Sphinx narrates Pharaonic history with the voice of what sounds like Charlton Heston in the Ten Commandments. There is high cheese factor. Limmy grumbles for most of the show and falls asleep a quarter of the way through it, then later lies to the tour guide (who has probably gone to some length to organise this) and says, “It was really good.”