Egypt summer 2011 LUXOR part 2

The next morning we left to see the West bank side and the Valley of the Kings and Queens. We had asked about the trip from our hostel but it was way too expensive what they asked for, so we had decided to do it by ourselves with Marc. We had made sure to him that this was the last day travelling with him and that he needed to continue his trip on his own. He really tried to ask our plans and which cities we were going next and stuff what we made things up and lied to him.

We walked to the bank of the river and took a boat across after, of course, haggling the price down. There we were offered many car rides for crazy prices to our destination! It took quite a while before the driver really understood that we weren't going to give up on our price and ended up getting a nice airconditioned car with a nice driver with a good price. It just took a bit patience.

Walking to the Valley of the Kings

First it was time to see the famous Valley of The Kings. Kurt had told us a good tip that we don't have to pay an entrance ticket because it just allows you to go to three tombs were is nothing to see. He also told us that there is this small tourist minitrain going up right in front of the valley gates (taxis and buses have to leave you further away) but it only takes less than 5 minutes or so to walk there without paying anything. So, we only bought tickets to the tomb of Tutankhamon and Ramses the 6th (I think it was 6th..). They cost us 50 (6,8€) and 25 pounds for students. The guy at the entrance really tried to get us to buy the entrance tickets but I was really strict to him and just told him that we know we don't have to have it and walked past him. 

The tomb of Tutankhamon was really small. When we got the small steps down and underground on the left side was the mommy of King Tutankhamon resting in his tomb. It gave me chills. On the right side was his burial chamber with walls painted with hieroglyphs. It was really breathtaking that something like that has been preserved for so long. It felt so real. And greepy. The tomb of Ramses the 6th (not entirely sure it was this one 'cause there are so many different Ramses tombs) was huge, it was like this long corridor with walls and roof full of hieroglyphs and the corridor lead to some room. It was quite impressive with all the colours and little detailed drawings on the walls and on the roof also.

After we were done with the tombs Marc secrectly wanted to climb to one of the sandhills surrounding the valley. First I was like no way, there are guards with guns and it's not allowed. When I saw him climbing there my inner competitive me woke up and I thought that we only be young ones (well at least some of us were young..) and the rebel me started climbing there after him with flipflops on.. The view to the Valley of the Kings was quite something! It was also a bit challenge to get down from there. It was much easier to get up. But we managed to do that by no one seeing us (except couple of young guys trying to sell us something while they climbed after us and told us not to go there).

Next we headed to Al-Deir Al-Bahari (also many other names) it is a complex of mortuary temples and tombs. There was a temple of Hatsepsutin which I had seen in history books several times. It cost us 15 pounds (2€) and we had to past couple of shops and the men were really annoying! When we came back we hopped over the fence 'cause we didn't want to walk past them again. The temple was really nice looking from far away but in my opinion there wasn't anything to see inside it. The view was nice. :)

The temple of Hatsepsutin

The Valley of the Queens

The last sight was the Valley of the Queens and we visited tombs 52,55 and 44. It was 20 pounds for students. The tombs were smaller and but the colours were magnificent. We were really exhausted! We could barely walk with Saija after seeing the last tomb. Our really nice driver drove us back to the river and we took a boat cross and went to take a nap. On every sight there were only few tourists with us. On the Valley of the Queens we were actually the only ones there! No one else.

After the nap we took a shower and left to eat by the River Nile and to drink some beer at the local restaurant which sold beer. It was so relaxing just to sit and watch the river even though Marc was with us. I had so much fun teasing Marc without him even knowing. I asked him difficult questions like what year did you graduate and that way he had to carefully count the years because he was still lying is his age. We bought beers to go and quickly stopped by at the internet cafe and after that we went back to our hostel were me and Saija watched King Kong from tv. After having enough of it we went to the hostel roof to smoke some strawberry Shisha (again, not a good idea.) Where we were joined with one local guy who didn't speak english and we had no idea who he was. He just sat with us smoking our Shisha. :D Nice evening! :)

At the restaurant drinking Stella

Saija smoking Shisha and the random guy at the roof of the hostel

Egypt summer 2011 LUXOR part 1

The next morning we woke up at 7 am. Before we left from the hostel one of the staff members asked us about yesterday night and what we had been talking about. He told us that in order for us to be safe he wants to tell us Marc's real age. We was born in May 1972, so at the time he was 39-years-old. He had lied to everyone his age by ten years! We were a bit shocked but we kind of already knew that he had lied to us.

At the airport we called Mohammed like we had earlier promised to him. He came to meet us with three other airport segurity guys. We put our backpacks to the cargo hold and we were escorted to the check in with our own bodyguards. We felt like celebrities. We were really early at the airport so we had much time. Mohammed and his friend Ahmed (called BakkarBeko) had a 12-hour work day and they had two hours of per swift and they took the two hours to hang around with us. We had a good time talking with them at the airport. They walked us all the way to the gate and made sure we got to the airport bus going to the plane. Mohammed wrote a note to his friend who had a shift on a plane and I had to give the note to him (Eslam). On every EgyptAir flight there is one segurity guy on board. We had our own guard on the plane also. Eslam came to ask from us if we were fine or if we needed anything. During the flight I was a bit nervous about the Marc situation and how we were going to act around him.

Saija at Luxor airport

At the Luxor airport there are no local buses going anywhere so we were forced to take a taxi to get out from the airport. The longer we postponed to accept the prices they offered the lower the prices finally got. We got of from the taxi at the Luxor temple and tried to find our hostel. Immediatelly we noticed that it was much much hotter in Luxor than it had been in Cairo! We found a way to our hostel by accident. We were trying to look some map on the corner of the street (in the end it wasn't even a map..) when this man asked us if we needed help. We were a bit rude to him at first. He didn't give up and finally he said that he's the owner of Bob Marley house hostel, the same hostel we were trying to find.. He wanted to take us there with his scooter. He, me and Saija and two huge backpacks on one scooter.

The narrow street to our hostel

The hostel was situated at the end of this narrow alley (in my opinion you can't even call that a street). The place was super hippie and it was covered with Bob Marleys face on walls, wallpapers, carpets etc. We noticed Marc immediately reading his book on one of the couches. He was so into his book that he didn't hear us at all. At first. When he finally got his eyes and ears of the book we told him really rudely that we want to get our backpacks to our own room (we had our own room with Saija) and then we were going to eat something. He looked a bit stunned. However, we promised to him that we could go together to the Luxor temple later on the same day. 

Common Room

Reception

Outside the hostel "door"

From in front of the temple

Luxor temple looked nice but at this point it started to look like every other sight we had seen. We paid something to get in to the temple area. It was an old ruined temple with huge statues inside the temple. It also had hieroglyphs inside the walls. With Marc we behaved pretty nicely but tried to be more distance from him that we had been. And we really avoided taking pictures with him. We first walked though the temple and it was still sunny but when the sun got down so quickly Saija wanted to go around it another time because it looked a bit different with all the lights on.

Inside the temple

After the Luxor temple we thought about going the see the Karnak temple near but me and Saija had seen enough temples for the day and were too tired. Later we heard that we missed something for not seeing the place. Well maybe we did but at that point we didn't want to go there and we really don't know or we're not that interested in about history, so I think for us it would have been just an other temple with statues. Instead we took a horse garriage ride and Saija absolutely loved it sitting on the front seat with the driver. I got stuck with Marc on the back seat.. Thank god it wasn't that long time. After the horse ride we walked through the Old Market Street where we tried to look for something to buy but the men were too irritating. I bought only one bracelet from there. Oh, and now I have to say that where ever we went with Marc or walked with him either Saija or myself were thought of being Marc's wife. Or that Marc had two wifes! "Lucky man with two wives!!" or the best one and the most embarrasing one for Marc was when people thought that he was our father! :D Me and Saija were constantly thought of being sisters.

Old Marker Street

We found an internet cafe where we found out that Kurt and Greg had sent me an inbox in facebook asking if we were still alive and how it had gone with Marc. That was a really nice thing from them to do. We answered them that yes, we are still alive but Marc and we were the only ones in the hostel of maybe 100 beds..!

The first two nights we planned to stay on the East bank side of Luxor and one night in the West bank side since we almost immediatelly found that the city was really "empty" or that we would have nothing to do to spend six days there. East bank side is the side were the two temples are located and where the majority of hotels/hostels and tourist facilities can be found. It's where all the tourists stay at. We found the city being very simple. The Luxor temple is in the middle of everything and we could walk everywhere. The West bank is the place where The Valley of the Kings and Queens are located and it's more countryside than the other side of River Nile and also most of the locals stay on the West.

Outside the hostel

Learnt in Luxor:

• most of the men were wearing the Dishdashah; a long sleeved one piece dress that covers the whole body which helps to cool the body in long hot summer days. Men didn't wear those that much in Cairo.

•  much hotter than in Cairo

• East Bank = tourists, West Bank = locals

• Haggle the prices! The prices could go down from 230 to 30 pounds. They test are you dumb enough the pay the crazy prices. 

• Don't trust anyone, people try to make business and use you.

Egypt summer 2011, CAIRO part 4

The view from our hostel to the other direction

In the morning of second of June me and Saija left out to shop around the famous Talaat Harb square which was very near our hostel. I don't even know its history and why its famous but that's what we were told. Talaat Harb square is also very big traffic circle with many streets aparting to different directions from the sq. So lots and lots of streets to shop and to get lost into. First we tried to wander around looking for postcards, stamps and a mailbox. When this man called Kimo started talking with us and offered to help us. I was a bit cautious 'cause I somehow automatically thought that he would want something like money from us for helping us out. He offered to show us were to get what we were looking for. He seemed like a really nice guy. After getting what we had been looking for he showed us a nice juice place, where we had mango and some other fruit juices. Egyptians drank a lot of mango and other juices that were self made from the real fruits. 

From Cairo Inn-hotel. Talaat Harb sq behind us

Then he offered to show us the place he worked at, Cairo Inn hotel. That started to be a bit distressing and when we were introduced to his boss who started to show his hotel to us we both had fake smiles on and promised to tell about the hotel to our friends.. When we got back to the street they told us that the hotel also had a shop with papyrus papers and upstairs was this bottled parfume shop. Kimo got us upstairs and the boss came there also and Kimo left and the boss started to sell us parfumes.. I felt really uneasy there! I felt like they trciked us there which they had done! Saija wasn't that worried and offered to buy something from the man for us to get out from there! That was the first and the only time we were kind of fooled.

After the incidentwe started shopping but didn't find that much stuff to buy. I bought couple of shirts and Saija also bought some clothes. "We don't desing clothes, we desing dreams" was the name of one clothes shop. It took us some time to find the right familiar street to get to our hostel but first we went to eat at the same koshary place we had already been at before. Then it was a nap time and after that we left for the light show to Giza.

Me, Greg, Marc and Kurt

We had our own driver from the hostel that took us to Giza to see the light show. There were seats and seats of empty space there. It was like watching a movie outdoors. They reflected lights and hieroglyphs to the walls of the pyramids. It told a story about the construction of the pyramids and also other stuff too. On our way back we drove through the Tahrir sq and in the evening it was a bit more exciting than it had been before.

The light show

Tahrir square

Zoora

Back at the hostel we went out to buy some water from the nearest kiosk when these young shy girls came to shake hands with us. We were shocked. Their mother saw us on the streets and called for the girls who came running to us. They had obviously wanted to talk with us and had been watchind us. Their mom was this egyptian woman wearing the gown and the niqab. I really don't know the real term for the clothes. Her daughters were Fatima 9-year-old and Shoora 16-year-old. The didn't speak english at all. It all happened so quicly. Suddenly they had carried chairs for us to sit with them next to the street. Their mom looked so happy. We had an old translator man who had been studying in England many years ago. Shoora was the most real and beuatiful young woman I've ever met! She was so full of life that it was unbelievable. Shoora told us that we were the most beautiful women from the westerner countries she had ever seen. Turned out that she had watched us walk past the street almost everytime we had past it. Children gathered around us and wanted to shake hands with us and get a smile from us. Shoora and her little sister wanted to take photos with us. She was so beautiful we couldn't get our eyes of from her. Her father had passed away so she had had to drop out from school and get a job to help her family. She made this arm bracelets for living that she sold on some small bazaar. The place she worked at was already clossed and we really would have wanted to buy stuff from her to support her. All of the people there hugged us when we said we needed to go. The children walked us to the front door of our hostel. 

Back at the hostel in our room we started talking with Kurt, a man called Greg from Canada and with Alain. Kurt started to conversation asking what did we think about Marc? (He had already left to the city of Luxor to the same hotel we were supposed to arrive the next day.) We looked at each other with Saija and started laughing.. We spent almost three hours talking about him. They started talking how weird and glingy the Einstein was. He didn't want to do anything on his own and wanted always someone to come with him. The guys also said that he could be really manipulative. The australian guys had been trying to avoid him and had been glab since he had spent so much time with me and Saija. The boys had been watching our face expressions and gestures when Marc had been present and the way we had acted around him had been really cold. When me and Saija had left out with Mohammed Marc had said to the guys: hopefully he doesn't steal my girlfriend! Like what a fuck?! :D Or at the Citadel fortification he had somewhere asked from Kurt if he taught that he had a chance with me?! At this point I was really disgusted. Gross. The conversation went on and we started thinking about his stomach and his age. He just couldn't be 29 with a stomach like that. Then it hit me! He had once shown me his passport but he covered his details and I even joked about it to him like are you hiding your real name or your age.. The guys one by one went to the reception to ask around if the guy was 29 or not. They of course couldn't tell anything at the reception but to nod or something. Turned out that he was over 35-years-old! We were freaking out with Saija! The boys started teasing us about Marc being a serial killer who kills girls all over the world. That wasn't funny since we knew that he would be waiting for us at the next city. Boys told us not to go there but we didn't want to change our plans because of one crazy man. Afterall we knew that he was not dangerous or anything, just a bit nuts. We went to bed around 3 am.

Learnt in Cairo:

• traffic is insane
• all the women don't wear the scarf and other covering clothes. 
• the head scarf can be worn in many different ways. It's part of the fashion. It can be matched with nails or other clothes with colour etc.
• people are really friendly
• you must haggle the prices. It's the way they do business.
• women are really fashioned, they smile a lot and are friendly.
• Alcohol is not drinken. But people do drink it anyways. especially young people.
• Shisha
• to drive a car you need to be 18 but we saw much younger drivers also.
• donkeys, camels, horses and oxes are on the street. especially at the countryside.

Oh, and we met a man at the hostel who is married to a finnish girl named Johanna and they've been on the finnish tv show called Satuhäät. Is the world small or what? 

Egypt summer 2011, CAIRO part 3

Around 10am we left to see the Salah El Citadel fortification (it has also many other names like Cairo Citadel, The Saladin Citadel etc.) with Marc (we also named him Einstein because of his hair..). We were supposed to leave alone with Saija because Marc had made plans with some guys to go to the city of  Alexandria. 10 minutes before they were about to leave he made up his mind that there is nothing to see in Alexandria and that he wants to come with us instead.. We were really pissed of! We took a metro and a taxi to get near the famous fortification with Mohammed Ali's mosque there also (in the pic). At there we collided into the australian guys from the hostel and we were really happy that we didn't have to be alone with Marc. The place was the only place were our finnish student cards weren't valid. They were really strict that you had to have the interanational student card there. Salah El Citadel was enourmous and we took many pictures of the picturesque Cairo. The fortification overlooks to the part of Old Cairo. We went inside to the mosque and I had to wear this gown because my own clothes were too revealing..

View to the Old Cairo

 We left from the fortification and took a taxi after the guys had really made business with several drives compering prices and haggling the prices down. We had the easy role with Saija just to follow the guys or especially Kurt while he was having fun. I think that it was a really good thing to hang with other more experienced travellers the first days, we learnt a lot from them. Kurt gave us really good tips how to act in differrent scenarios, what to pay and where to go to. All the backpackers really looked after each other. Anyway after Kurt got the price he was happy with we started making our way to the biggest and the most famous bazaar in Cairo, Khan El Khalili. When the taxi went really slowly forward among the traffic, Kurt shaked hands with egyptians and made statements like welcome to egypt from the open window. :D 

At the bazaar we decided to split up to boys and girls. That way we got rid of Marc.. The australians gave us be-safe and don't-pay-too-much tips. We agreed on seeing them back at the hostel. :) The Khan El Khalili was an interesting experience for sure! I could describe it with words like exotic, friendly, overwhelming and chaotic! There were so many people going to every directions on the narrow allies full of booths! They sold herbs, spices, scarves and other islamic women's clothes, Egypt and Cairo souveniers, watches, water pipes, lamps, perfume bottles, jewellery etc. Mostly it was that one shop only sold for example lamps and the different  booths were one after the other and then the same shops started again.. Even Saija who absolutely loves shopping in different open air markets or bazaars felt a bit uneasy there. Now, however,  I have to say that not once did we feel like we were in danger or pressured into buying anything we didn't want to. Yes, the men can be really discusting shouting after you and trying to convinse you buying something but if you're strict and say no and keep on walking they'll give up. Before the trip I was a bit worried about people trying to cheat us because we can't haggle the prices and end up paying way too much. We ended up being really good at haggling and I started enjoying it (not everywhere, the tourist places/destinations were the worst)! And in the end you have to remember that it is their culture you're in and it's the way they have made business for centuries. It's all about being firm about what you are willing to pay, compare the prices but the best trick was to have a great sense of humour. If you are friendly and go into their "game" they'll probably lower the price for you if they're also having fun. We tend to buy stuff from people who didn't obtrude us to buy anything and who looked like an honest fella. You also have to keep in mind that you're probably haggling over one or two LE (egyptian pounds) and one pound is 0.14 euros..

After walking through some part of the bazaar we arrived next to this big road. We had absolutely NO idea where we were. We had no map. First 20 minutes we just walked to where our intuition told us to. That didn't work, surprisingly. It wasn't difficult to ask help 'cause every one was already watching us. I don't know how long we walked untill we found our way to the Ataba metro station. I think it was easily more than 60 minutes. People were really kind to us all the time especially when we had to cross this big road and run between the cars. The metro ride went easily and quickly but when we got of at our stop and walked to the day light then the difficult part started. We were standing in a crossroad with maybe six streets meeting and at every corner you could entry and exit the metro. Again, we had no idea which way to go. When we at last made it to our hostel the guys were asking us where have you been?! They had been back from the bazaaar for many hours ago..

Me and Saija left to eat to some local place near our hostel. It was a four storeyd place called Abou Tarek and later back in Finland we found out that it's the most famous koshari place in the whole Cairo. Koshari (also koshary, kushari, kosheri) is a very popular dish in Egypt. It's really cheap, healty and delicious. The meal consists of a strange combination of macaroni, spaghetti, rice, black lentils, chick peas, garlic sauce and a spicy tomato chili sauce, all topped with fried onions. You can have to chili sauce either spicy or not. For a small plate which was so big I couldn't even finish it every time (and I eat a lot) we paid around 1€.

The same morning we had sent a thank you text message to Mohammed and agreed to go out with him the same night. He promised us to show Cairo from the eyes of a local. First, back at the hotel I was hanging in the common room after waking up from the nap when Saija was still sleeping. There was Kurt and Marc with me also. Kurt was talking to his friend through skype and Marc suggested that he can show me his travel pictures. Suddenly he tried to make a move on me and I was totally in shock!! I was trying to stammer something in response to his action. After squirming out from the situation I went to wake up Saija and told her what had happened! She promised not to leave me alone with him anywhere.

We stopped to admire the Nile river

At 7 pm we got ready and went out to wait for Mohammed to pick us up with a car. He asked us if we wanted to visit the Tahrir square and of course we wanted to! The square was not scary at all! There were families sitting around and having a picnic. We drove around and he showed us places. We saw thiese HUGE seven star hotels! We thought that five was the maximum but apparently not.. :D We saw numerous big mosques but we didn't quite get the names of them. The ride was interesting in many ways: we got to listen to arabic music, we heard about the revolution from some one who has been there while it started and still goes on and experience the crazy traffic. We for example drove pass some crossroad we were supposed to go. So our driver decided to drive backwards against the traffic on a HIGHWAY! Mohammed took us to see the Cairo Tower which we had seen from our hostel windows.

The Cairo Tower is 187 metres high and one of Cairo's well-known landmarks. It cost 70 pounds / person to get in (10€). Mohammed paid us in, he didn't allow us to pay. The view was amazing!! All the city lights. We got our first young admirer from a local 10-year old boy who was brave enough to come and talk with us. Her parents took a picture of  us with the boy. :) 

me, Mohammed and Saija

After the Cairo Tower he took us to eat at this local area with only egyptians there. He told us before hand that it's an expensive but not so elegant place and its very popular among the locals. We don't know the name of the place. There was mostly men in the restaurant, most of them sitting outside and there were couple of tables inside also. When we entered the restaurant ALL of the people there including the staff stopped and stared at us. We went to sit inside to get a bit shelter from the people staring at us. All the menus were in arabic and Mohammed offered something for us. The plates just kept coming to our table non-stop. We were like idiots in the restaurant for the first time. We had no idea how to act there, whether we were supposed to eat from the common plates or gather food to our own plates. We tasted some green soup (don't know and don't want to know what that was), liver, some beef (called banana) and many many other things! We fell in love with the local rice!! It was so good! Mohammed introduced us to his cousin (also working at the airport) Rami. Mohammed paid also our food! 

Rami, me and Mohammed at Mokattam

Next they wanted to take us to this famous Mokattam hill from where we could see the whole Cairo. Right at the edge of the hill there were tables and chairs were people could sit and watch the city while drinking the local tea and smoke Shisha. We talked about stuff and had a good time there drinking the local tea. For the first time in Cairo I had cold because we were so high and there was windy up there. At 1 am the boys took us back to our hostel and we were really happy and had a great evening. We had seen the Cairo in a very unique way! The boys at the hostel were jealous to us. :D Oh, and we went to the big bathroom to wash our faces at night and got stuck there! There wasn't a handle on the door and we laughed so much and tried quietly to shout someone to help us until we finally figured it out how the door opens up..

We heard a lot of history during the night. We also got a better perception of the revolution. And it's a bit sad that the media only shows one side of it. So far we had learnt to speak arabic: (don't know how to write them)

• Ählän = welcome
• Ähläm = dream
• E or Is Zaijak? = how are you?
• El hamd lele = thanks to Allah i'm good
• Afwan = you're welcome
• Shokran = thank you
• LA SHOKRAN = no thank you

Egypt summer 2011, CAIRO part 2

I woke up around 3am to hear some arabic language being wafted from the nearest mosque through the open window. It was really loud and I didn't understand why it was so loud in the middle of the night. Muslims are supposed to pray five times a day, but all the younger people we got to know to didn't pray not even once a day, maybe just on fridays or sundays. Well, anyway we woke up before the clock alarmed and we were really excited to see the pyramids. We ate breakfast at the hostel (it was made to us!) and left with Marc and our driver HiSun towards the first pyramid which was the farest away. We got HiSun to be our driver for the whole day through our hostel to which we paid to and they paid it to HiSun. It cost us together 250 egyptian pounds (35€). 

Video: on our way to the pyramids. Marc sitting in the front seat and he had no idea what the song was?! Come on who doesn't know that song?! He's from Canada from which the singer is also from..!! :D

Not too many tourist buses in Sakkala

Sakkara (or Saqqara) was the first pyramid area where we went and we were the only ones there. At Saqqara, the oldest complete stone building complex known in history was built there: Djoser's step pyramid (in the pic). On the whole Egypt trip we could see how few tourist there were and how the revolution had affected that people were too afraid to travel there. Tourists mostly were backpackers. We visited the museum in Sakkara and it cost us 30 pounds (around 4€) for student. There for the first time we saw a mummy! Then we drove a few hundreds of meters to the pyramid and it looked like a huge pile of sand! We got to go inside it and there was this creepy man who said to us that no pictures but he took Marc's camera and took around 20 pictures from us and tried to get us pay when we were about to leave. We didn't pay him, we just walked away even though we was a bit angry. Without Marc I think me and Saija wouldn't have paid to him because he was a bit scary..

Marc.. and me. Love the way he holds me (NOT!). In front of the pyramis of Unas which is nowadays ruined but you can still go inside it.

Saija and me walking up the Red pyramid

The next stop was at the area of Dashur. There were  two pyramids the Bent one (it's actually bent that's why the name) and the Red one which was one of my favourite! In the Red one we first climbed up the stairs (it was really hot even though the clock wasn't that much) and when we were in front of its entrance we saw that it was really small. The entry is only 0.91m high and 1.2m wide and the passage looked really steep and was 61m long! It was a student price for 15 pounds. It was a good exercise getting down the pyramid! We really had to keep our heads down and crouch your backs not to hit yourselves. Inside it looked amazing. I can't believe that people have built it without any machinery?! It was also really creepy there and the air was really bad inside it. We also climbed some stairs up inside it and I was really afraid that they'll collapse down. I think the stairs inside had been built later on but they looked really fragile and the whole staircase was skewed. We really needed to do some work climbing the stairs back up. We are in a good condition and we really were out of breath when we made it back up. After climbing the stairs first up (outside the pyramid), then down and up again me and Saija couldn't walk stairs maybe in 5 days because our calves were so jammed!! I don't ever remember having that sore calf muscles! It was terrible. Couple of days later we were in a restaurant and decided to go to upstairs, we almost couldn't get down from there. People stared at us and I came down the stairs backwards..

The stairs going inside the Red pyramid

Inside the Red and the fragile stairs..

The Bent pyramid

The next destination was Giza and we almost really were the only tourists there! The place was empty! That was a good thing but also a bad thing because all the men trying to sell something would walk behind us a long time. Or the men trying to buy me or Saija for camels.. We didn't want to ride them there 'cause it was too expensive (the tourist prices they asked were ridiculous) and camels and horses weren't threated too well either. It was a good thing that Marc was with us since he carried all of our water and told the men to get lost (we did that also by ourselves). The area of the pyramids was really big and you can't even realize it if you watch it from far away. We understood how big the pyramids were when we decided that we want to walk around the middle one. It really took us some time and it was really difficult to walk in the sand and me and Saija had to constantly put on some sun lotion (factor +50 for children..) for not to burn! 

The Great Pyramid if Giza and the Sphinx

We were back from the pyramids at 3 pm and went to buy some delicious pizzas from the street near our hostel. Most of the people in the hostel (the ones we hang with) slept during the day but I had a pieceful time writing our journal and watching the view from our hostel windows.

Tahrir square meets the Nile! Taken from our hostel window. U can also see how maniac the traffic was all the time

Spotted on our pyramid trip. A boy with his father trying to get honeydews sold

Alain, me, Marc, Kurt (with the cap on), older australian

In the evening we went out with the boys from the hostel. Me, Saija, Alain, Marc, Kurt and some older australian man travelling the world since his marriage had ended or something. We went to sit in some local place (it wasn't a bar or anything not even restaurant just some place on the street where people sat around and smoked water pipes =  Shisha (they did that all the time everywhere!). Guys also bought Shisha and I tasted it and coughed my lungs out. Not a good idea. We went to bed already around 10pm. Amazing day at the pyramids and getting a bit used to the men staring at us even though the first days we really tried to dress correctly and not to show skin too much! I even wore leggings and Saija had long trousers. One night outside our hostel we saw this egyptian woman wearing really revealing clothes and Saija stated that fuck this, I'm trying to be conservative and I'm wearing woollen sweater!..

Pyramids meet the city of Cairo