adventure diary: egypt

before i went on my recent trip to turkey and egypt, i painted a bunch of pages in a new art journal. then each day i’d collect my tickets stubs, receipts and various little treasures and stick them into my travel journal and write about what i did that day. i really enjoyed this process of travel journaling. it helped me to absorb the many amazing experiences i was having. 

now that i am back, it also helps me to remember the details of my trip more clearly. i am sharing those journal pages here, along with some of my photographs and stories of my adventures. i have been sharing my adventure diaries here -  day one, day two, day three and days four and five.  now we’re onto days six, seven, eight and nine – egypt.

arriving in cairo was a bit stressful.  cairo is a big city with an entirely different culture.  i’m kind of surprised that we did find our way to the hotel we’d booked from istanbul.  the taxi let us out on a busy street and gestured at us to go into a courtyard.  we went through a narrow opening with shops and restaurants and stalls all around into a cool, dark, shady courtyard where, sure enough, we found our hotel.  the hotel felt like something out of a movie – complete with odd characters everywhere we looked.  we didn’t quite understand anything that was happening. 

sitting in the hotel room, looking at our travel books, we realised – getting around in cairo was going to be a challenge. 

our room had a really wonderful balcony.  looking outside looked like this photo – only with streets going off in all directions.  no neat little grids.  and the street signs were in arabic and the streets were labeled with english words in our maps.  it was a bit of an adventure just to figure out where we were.  but we made a good guess about where we were in relation to the egyptian museum (the only thing we could walk to that we would recognize) and so we set out and we actually found it! 

and from there we could figure out how to get other places. while in cairo we walked everywhere (like 8-10 hours a day of walking) except to the pyramids, which are too far from downtown cairo to walk to.  it is such an interesting city to walk in.  the next morning we went back to the egyptian musem and went inside (they confiscated our cameras at the entrance so no photos but WOW that is an amazing place) and then we went for a walk down the nile. 

there is a beautiful walkway along the nile and along some parts of it are these amazing trees. 

there are also gardens and parks. 

we did stop a lot to just sit down and enjoy being there. 

i can’t remember what these trees are.  they flowers smell like heaven and are heavy heavy heavy.  they would fall to the ground with a “thud”. 

we walked for a few hours and then got to old cairo. 

lots of narrow little winding streets.  we were very obviously not from there, and any time we made a turn that would lead us to somewhere we wouldn’t want to go, people would yell and gesture at us to go a different way.  not in a rude way, but in a friendly and helpful way.  and they were right as we did end up right where we wanted to go – coptic cairo. 

and on the way home we got to watch the sun set over the nile.  gorgeous. 

the next day we went to the pyramids. 

we rented a taxi for the day and the driver took us to 4 different sites.  after a long drive through cairo and into giza (a suburb) we came across this sign and i knew we must be close. 

along the edge of the city is lush lush green. 

and then it just turns to desert. 

we saw many pyramids and even climbed this one: 

and here i am, with my friend i was traveling with.  the taxi driver took this picture, when he asked me to hold my hand out like that, i didn’t realise what he was doing. 

when we arrived at the great pyramids, we didn’t go up to the main entrance.  we rented camels and rode them through the desert up to the pyramids.  this sounded so awesome and ended up being so awkward.  camels are hard to ride. 

and here are the great pyramids: 

but to get a sense of the size: 

there are tons more photos in my cairo/giza set on flickr. 

our last day in cairo: 

ended up being a lot longer than anticipated.  there was some confusion and we ended up missing our flight back to istanbul.  we missed it while sitting in the airport in the area where security told us to be.  we bought tickets for the next flight and had a long long wait in the airport.  it made for a very long day – we wanted 12 hours in the airport and then had a 3am flight, and arrived in istanbul just in time to catch a flight to cappadocia, turkey. 

cappadacia, turkey is paradise.  i will share more about that soon. 

 

andrea schroeder creates creativity workshops,  downloadable creativity kits, art and guided meditations to support you in knowing and remembering that you are a creative being and you can create anything.

If you like this post, you may also like:

• adventure diary: days four and five
• adventure diary: day three
• adventure diary: day two
• Taking that first step…
• Fairy Walk

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Tagged as: adventure, egypt, travel journal