Discovering ancient Egypt

It was with great expectations I left a little over a week ago to Cairo for a one week trip to Egypt. With tourism starting to increase again to this ancient country – this time was a perfect time to go visit.

I was a part of a delegation of 34 people from Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland that was offered to come visit Egypt as part of boosting their tourism. It is by no doubt that the country have felt the downfall of visitor these last four years since the Egyptian revolution and are only now seeing the numbers slowly, very slowly climbing.

After a late night touchdown and getting settled in at Cairo Mariott hotel, monday was all about the pyramids of Giza. How I have longed for this visit. This is really my third time trying to get to see them. And boy did I do.

We were getting no less then 10-15 minutes at each pyramid – talk about getting stressed. Fortunately as a part of the tourism being still down, this means less people at site and you can walk pretty much alone and there is no lines. Do keep in mind the salesmen though. They are still there trying to hassle you with – all for free kind of rides – Don’t ever believe them, they end up costing quite a lot of money, even if you do get a good picture or two. And keep in mind that you have to pay both the camel owner and the guy taking a photo with your own god damn camera!!

Bussing all 30+ people both journalist and bloggers can be quite the challenge and then put in an not so experienced tour guide who also happens to talk very badly english – tip top combination.

I already knew the pyramid would be closely located to the city of Cairo but was not expecting them to be this close. They are right there along side the city outline. City on one side, desert on the other. All three pyramid of Giza are connected with a road,

so instead of walking in-between them we were driven from sight to sight just minutes apart.

One more thing I can now cross of my list of thing to do. I have seen the pyramid and the Sphinx.

It was great finally getting to see theme in real life but I felt their power to be even bigger when looking at them from down in the city of Cairo. For me that feeling was unreal, only regret is not having seen them lit up at night time. That would have been a truly awesome experience. To be continued…

This post was brought to you in partnership with Egypt Travel. The opinions and text are all mine.