Egypt. Day 1.

The previous day we flew in to Egypt and took a walk in the afternoon after checking into our hotel. 5 hour flight to JFK in New York, then 11 hours to Cairo International Airport... epic. The President of Algeria was flying in that day so there were guards and red carpet everywhere.









We went for a walk that night and found some crazy egyptian pizza that was amazingly good.


























This is for someone's funeral.








The first real day... woke up at about 5am due to jetlag and couldn't sleep anymore. We eat in the hotel buffet and Harry, my brother, spills syrup everywhere when the lid comes off the syrup bottle while he has it completely inverted and is squeezing...

Then we head off to the pyramids. It was a crazy day, tons of people trying to hustle you, and/or just get free money from you for nothing, asking for "tips". Nobody wants us to walk there (they want us to pay them for a taxi ride) and they tell us it's very far, but it turns out to only be a 10 minute walk. We get there and we're told you can't walk up the street to the entrance, that it's for cars only. You have to rent a horse or camel from them in order to get up there... lies, and we kept walking up.


















The pyramids themselves were amazing to see and just to try to imagine how they were built and how genius it all is. Sad to say nobody really takes care of them... lots of garbage strewn about in the sand around them, saw people throw their empty soda cans over the fence into the Sphinx's area right in front of everyone around them, and there are ropes around the pyramids to keep people off of them but the guards around the ropes will hold them down and tell you to come across them in order to take photos on the pyramids and then they want tips for letting you cross the line. Overall it was sad to see, considering it's the last remaining wonder of the original 7 wonders of the world.

This says that anyone who enters will die...
















We took a tour around on horses and our guides heckled us for more money constantly. We stopped and got up on a camel to have our pictures taken, a tourist trap, and the guy there was super energetic and kept calling me mustache. They want money for doing this too, though you already payed for the tour. Then instead of taking us to the Sphinx they tried to take us shopping... we walked away from the tour with them desperately trying to convince us to come back, then when they gave up on us they still asked for tips before they left.








this guy was sketchy and got way pissed when I refused to give him 20 dollars when he asked...


























cornball
















We see the Sphinx and are harassed by more people. They come up and try to fix your head scarf that they give you when you enter. I had mine around my neck and had to literally grab a guy's wrists and shove him away hard in order to get him to stop... so insistent on helping you arrange it and then they want money for doing so.












The camel we got up on kept grunting and making constant funny noises.


























Overall it was a beautiful day and lots of great sights, but overwhelming amounts of people trying take advantage of us.