Egypt Day 8: The Great Pyramids of Giza and Saqqara

About halfway through our trip someone asked me on Facebook if I had a favorite day so far and at the time I said I couldn't pick. But then Day 8 happened and it was my favorite of all.

I don't want to bury the lede: WE WALKED AROUND THE GREAT PYRAMIDS! We rode camels! We saw the oldest complete stone structure IN THE WORLD! We ate Egyptian food for 3 delicious meals! It was the best damn day.

We woke up early (of course! 5:30 am! one of our later alarms!) at The Conrad to a bountiful buffet breakfast- Landon's favorite thing in the whole world, and said hello again to our Cairo guide (Mohamed), Egyptologist (Ayman), and driver (different Mohamed), all of whom we had met during our half day in Cairo at the start of the trip.

We piled in our van and headed out to Giza, which is part of Cairo, but thanks to the insane Cairo traffic, takes about 45 minutes to get to. The weather was cold and windy- we were clearly not in Aswan anymore and I was underdressed, but standing before us was one of the wonders of the world, the Great Pyramids, so it was okay. I loaned Cora my jacket because she was freezing and I was feeling generous and brave while faced with such human achievement.

There are so many facts and so much history behind these structures, but in short: it took 100,000 workers a year for 20 years to build one pyramid.

A single large pyramid contains 2.3 million blocks of stone, weighing between 3.5 - 17,000 tons each.

The pyramids used to have a completely smooth layer over all the blocks and scientists debate what it was made of and how they did it, but it was destroyed with time and earthquakes so only the blocks underneath remain.

It’s impossible to feel the scale of the pyramids in pictures but they are HUGE and we are small and I don’t know how they could have been built 4,000+ years ago. Simply amazing.

Though competing for the sheer amazingness of pyramids: dogs! It was hard to tear the girls away.

(Look how tiny the people are compared to that pyramid!)

After wandering around the pyramids and listening to lots of stories from our guide, we got back in our van and drove to Panorama Point where you can see all 9 pyramids before you. There are lots of vendors offering camel rides and the whole scene is pretty chaotic.

Our guide knew a man who owned his own four camels and took good care of them, so he waded into the insane morass of people, yelling to his buddy in Arabic. We waited around a bit and then suddenly it was our turn on the camels! They looked healthy and content, so we all climbed aboard- with Cora and I sharing a camel and everyone else getting their own.

My camel was the tallest and very proud of himself, Claire and Landon’s camels were very smiley, and James’s camel preferred not to be touched on his head. They were awesome and so were the views.

Insane to be riding a camel and have a bunch of pyramids photobomb your selfie behind you.

Camels don't move particularly fast and the ride is MUCH more uneven than it looks from afar, but we really enjoyed getting to ride on them and experience travel over that smooth fine sand. It was SO windy- my dress literally could not have been a worse thing to wear- but truly nothing could dull how happy I felt experiencing the pyramids. >

Next up was a papyrus shop where we learned how it’s made (very cool) and bought a piece for the house that's now hanging in our entryway. Then it was lunch buffet at a private club that used to be an extravagant personal residence and had many locals dancing to music around the pool. “Welcome to Alaska!” everyone kept saying when they greeted us (it was 55 degrees out). The pool was beautiful, but definitely no one was swimming.

Finally we drove to Saqqara Necropolis to see the Pyramid of Djoser, or Step Pyramid, which is the oldest complete stone complex in the world. It was built before the smoother ones we saw that morning. Apparently the pharaoh had an idea to build it an basically left it to everyone else to figure out how.

The Great Sphinx, also a giant miraculous structure, guards it well.

The Step Pyramid has some ancillary buildings you can walk through. It was interesting to compare the surrounding temples to those we saw along the Nile. The much older one in Saqqara had no hieroglyphs, no paints or colors, no etchings… just flat columns and smooth walls. The tools and techniques of the elaborate temples in the south hadn’t been developed yet. It's crazy to think the ancient structures were were in just days before were "new" by comparison.

We had a few other stops and a great dinner at the hotel followed by bed time at 9 pm because we were WIPED. It was such a cool day, I remain in awe these wonders exist and we got to see them!