So, we realize we showed you this yesterday… but we just can’t get over it! This is what we saw when we woke up, opened the curtains, and looked outside. So excited!

And then we went upstairs for our breakfast. Can you guess what we’re eating and what we’re looking at?

So, you may have guessed just how close everything is to the pyramids, or you may just know… but we think this picture sums it up pretty well. 

We hammer this home because we are aware that it is one of the biggest complaints that tourists give about visiting the pyramids. Many people think that the Pyramids of Giza are in the middle of the desert or something, but that’s just not the case. The city of Giza goes right up to the border of the pyramids. But… we knew this so it wasn’t a disappointment for us. 

We go back downstairs and get ready. As we’re leaving the hotel we’re asked what we will do today. We say the pyramids and they get excited, but warn us that it will be hell if we don’t go with an Egyptian. They ask if we want a guide, but we decline, we just want to walk around on our own. Apparently that’s not acceptable. The young guy that took us around for food and cash yesterday will go with us. Okay… we guess…. We leave!

This is the walk to the pyramids for us. These are the streets around us. Very lively. 

There are a lot of things going on in this picture; you can see the security presence, lots of people, public transit (which we don’t know how to use), and stores. It’s a very, very touristy area. But just at the end of this street (where the trees are) is the entrance to the pyramids. We’re there in no time at all. 

We don’t have a picture of it… but the entrance is full pandemonium. So many people all trying to get in. There’s a clear line (which we get into with our hotel person), but no one seems to care, haha. People just cut ahead. We ask our guy if we can do the same, but he doesn’t want to. We wait. We even see other tourists just go in front of the line and get in faster than us. But whatever, it’s fine. We get close to the front and the hotel guy asks us for our cash so he can pay. We’re hesitant, but agree. We stress to him that we would like all of the tickets.

The above picture is actually from another day, but here you can see the breakdown of what you can enter and the prices. We obviously want everything. He assures us that he gets it all, even though the math doesn’t make sense. But whatever, he must know, he works in tourism right beside the pyramids after all. We go through security with no issues. And, it seems that having an Egyptian with you is helpful. People come up to “help us” but our “guide” tells them to leave and they do. On the other side of security we are welcomed to the Giza Plateau. 

Can you see it all? Lots of people, cars, busses, and THREE pyramids! AND the sphinx! Wow wow wow! 

We’re in absolute shock. This is so, so cool! We just want to take it all in!

Our “guide” just wants to keep walking. We move a bit further along. 

We don’t even have time for a proper selfie! Although, the “guide” does make my travel partner pose for some pictures himself, haha. My partner isn’t used to that, hehe. 

So this is all an uphill walk to get to the pyramids along the roadway you saw when we had just entered. Along the sides it’s fiiiiiilled with people asking if you want a camel, horse, or carriage tour of the pyramids. We say no, and just keep walking. But you can see some people taking these tours here. 

A word of note… the price of all of these riding tours are set by the government. As you cross through security (at the entrance) there’s a big sign saying how much you pay and for how long. We suggest taking a picture of this so that you know the appropriate price, just in case.  

So, the above pyramid is the Khafre pyramid. Epic. The other HUGE pyramid is the Khufu pyramid. This is the Great Pyramid of Giza!! 

A-mazing!

Well… we just muuuust keep walking. We round the Khafre pyramid to keep walking towards the Menkaure pyramid. As we’re walking around the Khafre pyramid and admiring the immensity of the pyramids our “guide” finds one of his friends who is working with some horses. They both ask us if we’d like a horse ride, we say no. “Okay okay”. Then they insist. We say no thank you. “Okay okay”. They keep insisting and we keep saying no. Then the horse friend tells our “guide” that he can take our pictures. We say “no thank you”. But they’re both so insistent. “He knows all of the pictures”. Fiiiiine. Finally we say “only pictures, nothing else”. 

The horse friend gets my travel partner to pose in so many ways. Like he’s holding a big rock up (why?), like he’s leaning on the pyramid, like he’s holding the tip of the pyramid, gets him to jump, then repeat it all on the horse. My partner says “no thank you” but they’re insistent. “No money” they assure us, “just photos”. Fine… my partner is starting to get annoyed cause he hates taking touristy pictures (unless it’s of me, of course). Finally he gets off the horse and says “shukran” and then our guide says “you need to pay him now”. And we were both shocked. They had even said there wasn’t any money involved…. How do we get out of this one…? We don’t. We pay 100 Egyptian pounds. This is why we said to take a picture of the sign at security, we think that 15 minutes on the horse would’ve been around that price…. (It’s not a lot of money, just the feeling of getting scammed after agreeing to no money). We continue and complain a bit to our “guide”. They had explicitly told us to come with an Egyptian so that this didn’t happen. He is not bothered. We continue. 

Look at how absolutely HUGE this is. WOW. And let us make a “righteous” comment. We don’t get the people that climb up the pyramids to get pictures. It’s not allowed and may damage them. Every so often a security guard would come around and yell at people to get down. 

And then we come out at the far end of the pyramid. And this is to show you what we’re dealing with. 

This is the pyramid and our “guide”. He’s not interested at all, even though only exactly 30 minutes have passed since we’ve been here. This could be a long day… but whatever. We continue!

It’s also hard to communicate just how “weird” or “curious” my travel partner is. You see those things above? Who knows what they are. We sure didn’t, and no one else was interested in them. But, that’s where we went next! Haha. My partner just haaaaaad to look. And our “guide” was even like “why are you even going there?” Hehe. Well… we can’t tell you what they are… but we can show you this!

We know, we know, it’s not that crazy, but we were both excited. Our first hieroglyphs! Our “guide” didn’t care one bit, haha. We hope you can see the person’s feet and bottom of their clothing. 

Then it was on to the last of the great pyramids, Menkaure’s Pyramid. 

This pyramid is completely closed off, but it seems like it was open at some point. Why is it closed? We have no idea. But, that doesn’t stop us from walking around it and looking out over Giza. 

And investigating some ruins around the area. Is this like what we were complaining about people climbing the pyramids? We hope not. We didn’t touch anything and it’s been clearly explored beforehand. 

And then we make our “guide” walk across the sand, hehe. We saw a platform off in the distance, so of course we head there. Our “guide” is pretty much dragging his feet behind us, haha. But we get there! Only to find out it’s a private cafe and we can’t stay there, haha. But, we don’t leave fast enough to not get this picture!

Well… we’ve been told to move on from one panoramic vista, but we see another. Where? Up there! Let’s go!

Our “guide” then decides that he wants a photoshoot with my partner’s phone, haha. So strange, but of course we don’t say no. Maybe he will use it for his next rap album cover (this isn’t a joke, he showed us that he’s a rapper!). We get to the top, and this must be the alignment point (or very close to it). 

Super cool! You can see the three large pyramids, but also some of the smaller ones. We believe that there are 12 pyramids at this site of varying sizes. You can also see just how close Giza is to the pyramids, again. Just as we’re about to leave, a pack of tourists on camels shows up (we had been there completely alone). And what do they do? The classic tourist poses! Haha. 

That’s the end of our “desert adventure” and we start walking back towards the pyramids. Still as mesmerized as ever. 

We hope you’re not getting tired of pictures of the pyramids. Or that you won’t get tired, cause we’re not done yet! Haha. But we walk straight by the pyramids up to some construction/cafe. Outside they have a beautiful sign that has the pyramids, the sphinx, and “The Pyramids of Giza”. We walk over and I get my picture taken. And then, guess what!! The owner comes out and tells us not to take pictures of it…. Specifically not with me…. What…? The man must be a little crazy. And, it’s a little crazy that he can trademark “The Pyramids of Giza”. But… not to give any advertising to someone like that, we won’t show you the nice logo, hehe. 

We return to the pyramids. 

Then we get back to the Khafre pyramid, the first pyramid we can enter. Or… so we thought…. As we stressed above (and you may have caught on) we asked our “guide” to buy aaaaaaall of the tickets necessary for the pyramids. Well… as you can guess… he did not. We don’t have the ticket to enter. My partner is not happy. He had already been annoyed at being rushed around the site, and now this. He tells the “guide” as much.. and the “guide” seems to get very nervous. He goes and speaks to the attendant at the front of the entrance. At first they don’t let us in, but our “guide” talks and talks (we understand nothing, it’s all in Arabic of course) until finally our “guide” tells us to please pay the attendant. We end up paying more than if we would’ve gotten the tickets at the entrance… and we have to pay for our “guide”…. As you can imagine, my partner was not pleased one bit. But! We’re into a pyramid! 

So… it’s incredibly cramped. It’s not a problem for me, of course, but humans have a really hard time moving in and out of the pyramids, hehe. 

My partner isn’t sure what to do with himself. He has a backpack on, so it scrapes the top of the pathway, so he ducks lower, but that’s not possible. Eventually he sorts out to walk sort of sideways, reaching as far down as possible with each step. AND!!! There’s only the one way in and out. So we press ourselves against the walls as people try to squeeze by that are on their way out. (It’s only fair since they are going up a pretty steep incline). If we’re painting a claustrophobic picture… it was fine for us, hehe. But, there was a group that had to turn around. They couldn’t handle how closed everything was. 

The path itself is pretty steep down, a flat area, and then steeply back up into the heart of the pyramid. 

There are paths that go off of the main one, but these are fenced over and off limits. What wonders must lie over there…? Eventually the walkway opens up and humans can walk upright again. 

And then it opens up to a room. This is where the pharaoh was buried. It is now pretty much completely bare. There’s a wooden box, a sign that says “scoperia da c. Belzoni 2 Mar 1818” which records when this tomb was “discovered”, and then the empty sarcophagus (the outermost one, made of stone). 

Then it was the same process back out. The parts where my partner could walk upright aren’t worth talking about again, but the final exit was pretty funny/fun. As you can see below, the tunnels going up are quite short, and quite steep. 

And this is the actual walkway upwards. 

So, you can see how “normal” people go up and down. Doesn’t that look completely uncomfortable? Well, my partner literally crawled out. It’s more like climbing a ladder, but that made him the appropriate height and made him very fast. People even commented that they would now do the same, hehe. If only people were my size, they wouldn’t have any problems at all, hehe. 

Well, that’s the end of our first pyramid! We take one last picture of the steps that climb up the pyramid. Maybe these went to a false entrance that the pyramids are famous for? 

So now we just walk around the Khufu pyramid. And this is when my partner’s last straw was broken with our “guide”. He starts asking us if we’re done and want to go eat something. We say no. We walk a few more steps, he asks again. We obviously didn’t change our answer in just a few steps… and then our “guide” starts telling us that he didn’t eat breakfast so that he could go to the pyramids with us. … . We were not impressed. My partner told him that we didn’t ask for him to join us, he hadn’t helped us, and he could leave to eat if he wanted to but we would stay. He told us that he wanted to stay with “his friend”. But he didn’t stop asking if we were ready to leave… we continue walking around the Khufu pyramid! 

Around us there are a bunch of “ruins”. 

We believe that this is the “western cemetery”, but that’s just based off of a map.

Either way, here are a bunch of well preserved hieroglyphs. Sooooo cool. Why aren’t more people staring at this like us??

Some are obviously more clear than others, but all of our pictures should be of the best ones. Incredible, simply incredible. We love all of these little things. And these are the things that our “guide” wants to rush and skip over.

A bit further we see all of the people going up into Khufu’s pyramid complex. 

Oh how we wish that was us. We obviously don’t have a ticket… again, my partner gets annoyed at the “guide” and tells him that he has made our visit worse than it should’ve been and that we will now have to return. He offers to come back with us, but there’s no way that that’s happening. We continue walking, but my partner veers off into a random direction and all of a sudden there are a lot less people around us. 

Very beautiful. It’s just a bit past another site that we can’t enter without tickets… and then we find the boat pits. 

Wow, wow, wow. We overhear a real guide telling their group that entire boats were constructed and buried here to help the pharaoh cross the great river into the afterlife. (Some other theories exist online, without any real consensus among them). Incredible. They’re so big. It’s impressive. Well, if we’re honest, the whole place is impressive. Incredible what humans are capable of building. Even more so all of those years ago. 

And, we guess this is as good a place as any to talk a bit about the Egyptians and what they think of the pyramids. Throughout our trip in Egypt and walking around the pyramids we heard parts of people talking about and explaining the pyramids. They all reject the aliens theory because they say that that takes away from all of the work that their ancestors did. And, it’s important to stress that word “work”. The latest theories (and what the Egyptian guides kept repeating to groups we walked by) suggest that the people that built the pyramids were not slaves and/or forced to build the pyramids. Instead, they kept saying that it was a sign of religious devotion to the pharaoh and the gods (who the pharaoh was directly linked to). Isn’t it great to speak more than one language and being able to eavesdrop on multiple guided tours here and there? Hehe. 

We randomly keep walking around this end of the site.

So… we can’t explain much of what we saw, so we will just dump a few pictures for you. 

We eventually reach the edge of the plateau and turn around. 

Our “guide” is hanging wayyyy back now. And he keeps asking us to leave by calling or waving, but we just ask if we’re not allowed to go back here or not. When he says that he doesn’t know, we continue exploring. Eventually we’re about to leave and we see an entrance into something. It’s closed off but you can see hieroglyphs above it. You can also see that this is apparently people’s washroom… unfortunately…

And then we’re back at the pyramids. 

And our final area that we weren’t allowed to enter… we believe that this was the tomb of the architect, but could be wrong. 

There were some nice statues around as well, and of course more hieroglyphs.

And then we started walking back towards the exit. We saw a little entryway here, and we took a picture, but got yelled at to leave…

We “weren’t allowed in there”. Why? Well, we didn’t immediately know. But then, of course, we realized. It’s where one of the vendors was hiding his things to sell, haha. So he just didn’t want us to rob him. He came, stocked up, and then went back to keep selling. So we took our chance to take some more pictures. 

Now it’s back to the sphinx. 

We walk around the front to the entrance for the better look at the sphinx, and of course we have to take plenty of pictures. 

And then we enter Khafre’s valley temple. 

Super cool. But most people just walk straight through it to get a better view of the sphinx. Which is entirely worth it. Luckily we didn’t need a separate ticket for this. 

Well… that’s it! We get ready to leave and get one last picture. 

Well… we thought it would be the last picture. When leaving you have to leave through a sort of market where there are even more souvenirs on sale. Whatever you can think of. And the sellers are speaking every language you can think of, and are willing to accept any currency, haha. You can see what we walked through from a picture we took from the pyramids earlier.

We don’t buy anything, but just take our final look at the pyramids from inside the complex. So cool. 

Well… that’s the end of our pyramid adventure! We stop at a convenience store where we get a drink and a snack. Our “guide” insists that we give him the money so that he can pay or else we will get ripped off. We say okay, we don’t want to deal with him anymore, and he pays. (In defence of the store keepers… we returned later on our own and it was all the same price, we weren’t getting ripped off). 

We walk back towards the hotel and our “guide” asks if we want to get an actual meal. We say no, we will eat later, and he tells us again that he didn’t have breakfast (it’s now around 5 pm). We again tell him that we didn’t ask him to tag along, and that he should go get food. Then he tells us that he used the last of his money last night………. So, we finally get to the truth. He wants us to buy him food. We don’t feel like eating yet and want to be on our own, so we just give him some money so we can go back to the hotel in peace. What a day with our “guide”… highly do not recommend.

We go back to the hotel and just relax on our own for a bit. We eventually do get up and go out for a walk in the neighbourhood, but as you can see it’s much later. 

Well… turns out you don’t have to leave the neighbourhood for food, haha. We didn’t have to walk to the far away garage. Just around the corner there are a lot of restaurants. None of them have prices written, but whatever. They don’t quote us high prices (for us, maybe for Egyptians it’s expensive) and we get a nice meal. You can see that it’s a good-sized meal. We’re excited, and it tastes great! Goodnight from Cairo!