Been a long time since I updated this so Im just going to upload what I can without overthinking it and add more in the following days!
Since our hotel,
The Le Meridian, was right by the Pyramids, it was a short drive to get there. I davened on our balcony with the Pyramids in view and shortly after went downstairs to meet our tour guide and driver.
Driving up to the Giza Pyramid Complex, the height of the pyramids as you get closer is really just breathtaking.
Some pictures for scale:
We first went into the main and largest of the 3 pyramids. It belonged to Pharaoh Khufu and it was a really cool experience to go through. I believe it cost around $10 USD a person to enter the Pyramid and since it was an extra I don’t recall the tour guide covering that. We were able to walk (pretty much had to crouch the whole way up because the king wanted those who enter to be bowing in respect throughout or something like that) through the pyramid to be able to see where the sarcophagus was kept/found.
After exiting that pyramid we then walked by the other pyramids
And then took a camel ride by a viewpoint that shows the pyramids from a distance.
Our teenage camel walker guide thought this would make a great picture.
After that we briefly headed to see the sphinx which was really amazing to see.
It’s at this point my driver happens to divulge that he has a Wi-Fi hotspot device and it is included in the tour package! You can imagine just how happy as well as confused that they didn’t mention this earlier. Regardless, I started making phone calls during our hour drive to the Museum of Antiquities.
First I called the Merril travel number, to which they tell me they can’t do anything and I would have to wait for a supervisor to arrive in 4 hours. I HUCA’d a couple times (sometimes by choice and sometimes because the phone call dropped :/). Then I tried Emirates and they also could not change anything. I didn’t really expect for either of them to change it but I guess I was hoping for a miracle. Which in a way I guess happened when I found out that my fare booked with Merril happened to be fully refundable fare. [Something I noticed with all the flights I booked was that when I booked it through a portal like chase or Merril the fare is usually refundable by default. Not sure if that is well known or not but definitely something to keep in mind!].
Unfortunately I had already checked in earlier that day meaning they could not refund my flight. BUT, a quick phone call to Emirates had them remove my checkin in. But, of course their systems were down as I called in. They asked me to call back again in and hour and so I did. They were finally able to remove my check in status.
While driving it's hard not to notice how poor some of the infrastructure of Cairo was. The buildings were just missing floors and there were stray dirty looking dogs throughout.
Regardless, what the city has to offer in terms of history is unmatched and I would love to return to see different parts of Egypt.
After breezing through the Museum of Antiquities in about 45 minutes (an activity that the guide had planned 2:30 hours for) we decided to end our stay in Cairo early and go to the airport to sort things out. The Museum was amazing and there was so much material that they simply had no room to store anymore artifacts. Therefore, there were some left outside surrounding the building. Since the museum can no longer house any more artifacts they have seized excavations until they finish building their new museum. Which has been years in the making. As I am writing this TR in 2020 I still don't think its finished.
There were truly brilliant things to see here. Some of the notable few are (bear in mind that in some of the areas of the museum one is not allowed to take pictures and therefore there are pictures that might be of worse quality. Also, feel free to skip these pictures if it doesn't interest you as I couldn't narrow down which are notable and am just uploading a bunch
):
Mummified Humans & Animals:
On the way to the airport I toyed around with several flight options which had either had me meeting my wife in AUH for our connection or just meeting in MLE as well as countless other flight routes of which I cannot recall. I wish it would have been as simple to just rebook her on the same flight but that EK flight was completely booked and they could/would not open up any seats. I waited to cancel my flight on the slight chance that perhaps someone at the Emirates counter would be able to help me. Since the Airport had no wifi I asked my tour guide to wait outside while I use the hotspot device inside. She kindly waited outside for a little over an hour while I sorted everything out. Of course, Emirates couldn’t help me and so I was left with not many options. I called Merril and cancelled my flight. I wasn’t ever going to actually send my wife alone on these flights so we found a suitable EY flight that leaves 7 hours later then planned.
This ruined my plan to try to get to MLE as early as possible to take advantage of my time at the St. Regis Maldives. It was really a shame because I have yet to fly on EK and was looking forward to it. Our flight didn’t ticket immediately through the chase portal and so I called chase and asked them to expedite the ticketing process. I made friends with the counter agent and got his WhatsApp number so he could contact me when our flight gets ticketed while we walked to the nearby Le Meridian hotel that is connected to the airport.
I can’t even count the amount of times we went through the whole baggage check process with all our luggages throughout our stay in Egypt. Whether it was to go in our out of the airport or in and out of the hotel it was a massive pain in the a** . For the next 7 hours we relaxed on the couches at the LM and my wife slept while I planned the rest of our trip details and made phone calls on their free guest Wi-FI. Although we got some weird glances from the staff, surprisingly, no one kicked us out. We then walked with all our bags uphill back to the airport (PITA) and went through baggage check to enter the check in area for the third time. One of the baggage helpers took our bags forcefully from us and loaded it on to the security belt (something I could have easily done) and then demanded payment for it. I gave him $1. It was also pretty clear throughout the whole trip that you could literally bribe anyone. This was later confirmed by our tour guide who encouraged us to do so if we wanted something to go our way.
The rude airport employee who’s job it was to look at the screen scanning the luggages decided to put our food luggage aside to inspect, despite having gone through this specific scanner several times with no issues that day, he asked us to open the bag. We tried to explain that we are kosher and this was our food for our trip the next 3 weeks but he seemed to not care at all. He then took one of my wrapped meals and opened it and stuck his fingers in there asked us to close it back up and let us go.
Once passing security, the EY employee we dealt with earlier was no longer there, and as the airport had no Wi-Fi I could not reach out through whatsapp, but to our surprise he informed the employee checking us in to just give us free checked bags (which were substantially over weight) and also assigned us seats with extra legroom. I tried to give him some money for his kindness but he would not accept. We walked quite a bit to our gate and bribed some cafe employee who was closing up for the Wi-Fi code. After about an hour we started boarding the plane and took off to AUH! (This woman was putting great use to her Hijab).
We landed during a beautiful Sunrise and as we were flying in Y we were meant to wait in this crazy long line. But, it was clear no one was checking so we just said we were flying in J and got through in a matter of minutes (we continued to do this for the next two times we came through AUH and got the idea from when we flew in flying Biz no one checked our ticket to verify anything). The employees supposed to be watching the luggage scanner didn’t seem to care and were just chatting with other employees.
After a 4.5 hour flight we were FINALLY in the Maldives!
That concludes our EGYPT part of the trip!
