We Missed Charleton Heston So Much, We Just Had to Go to Egypt

For a timely pre-Pesach vacation we decided to take a short trip across the border into Egypt. A five-hour bus ride from Jerusalem left us in Eilat, Israel's southernmost city, where we spent the afternoon relaxing in the sun and feasting on Middle Eastern meat skewers (the last non-peanut butter protein for the rest of the trip).

At five a.m. we caught a cab to the border, which was as quiet as one would expect such a place to be at such an hour (especially since in Egypt it was only 4 a.m.). We walked through Israel's customs and taxes, then across a parking lot and through Egypt's customs and taxes, and were soon met by one of our two guides, Walid. Once in the air conditioned van we promptly fell asleep for most of the five hour trip to Cairo.

In Cairo we were given a short driving tour of some of the monstrously huge city (22 million residents!), highlights of which included the President's house, the Nile river, and many, many mosques (Cairo is known as the city of one thousand minarets). We disembarked at the Egyptian Museum, a massive building that houses artifacts from hundreds of sites covering thousands of years of history. We met up with the second of our two guides, Heba, and began a three hour tour (a three hour tour). According to the Lonely Planet Guide if you spent only 1 minute at each exhibit it would take more than 9 months to see the whole museum. Unlike museums in Israel, that are all glamour and interactivity, or museums in North America, that are assembled in a rational way, with plaques explaining what is behind the glass, touring the Egyptian Museum is like walking through the recently discovered attic of a rich relative - there were thousands of shiny, mysterious objects haphazardly strewn about and impossible to understand without a University degree. Luckily Heba had exactly that, and has been leading tours of the museum for quite some time, and so capably guided us through the basics of ancient Egyptian religion and politics, and pointed out some of the museum's highlights. By far the most impressive section was that containing the treasures found in King Tut's tomb, including his golden sarcophagi and fantastic burial mask. Pictures don't do justice to the beauty of these functional works of art - which is o.k., because photography was prohibited.

After the museum we stopped at the Papyrus Institute, one of many businesses that keeps the art of making papyrus alive primarily in order to sell to visitors. The explanation and demonstration of the paper making was interesting - the art for sale not so much. Very tired, we then made our way to our hotel for the evening, the Meridian, where we found the our hotel room had a view of the pyramids. Awesome. Some strolling and swimming closed out the day.

The next morning we met Heba at the front desk, and then drove to the pyramids of Giza. The heat was excessive (36 celsius) but we spent hours walking around the amazing structures, and even got to descend through the original passageways and into the burial chamber inside one of them, where the King's sarcophagus still sits. The many locals hawking cheap souvenirs and camel rides to nowhere were annoying, but could not detract from the experience of standing so close to the only remaining wonders of the ancient world. The magnitude and mystery of the three (nine if you count the six baby buildings for the womenfolk) pyramids was fantastic. We closed out this part of the trip with a visit to the Sphinx, where once again pictures fail to do the subject justice. To stand in the presence of an artifact so magnificent and so ancient was quite an experience.

We moved from the ancient to the relatively recent with a visit to Coptic Cairo, an area of the city once inhabited by the Christian Arabs who built beautiful churches such as the 'hanging church'. Also in that area we toured the Ben Ezra synagogue (which was converted from a church into a shul), a now-defunct house of worship dating back hundreds of years. Both types of buildings were very interesting in that the designers and artisans clearly worked very hard to marry their disparate faiths to the indigenous Arab culture tastes, with a lot of tile work and mosque-like architecture and coloring.

The last part of this day was a quick look at Cairo's bazaar, very similar in scope, scenery, and smell to those in Morocco. On our way to St. Catherines, our destination for the next day, we got to see more of Cairo. Perhaps the oddest areas seen were the Cities of the Dead, massive cemeteries that also serve as neighborhoods for the city's poorest residents.

A six hour trip got us to our hotel at 10:30pm, where we had two hours to nap before our trip to Mount Sinai (or so they claim). At the base of the mountain we and what seemed like hundreds of other pilgrims made the trek up to the summit past vendors and camels, and after three hours of climbing made it to the summit just in time for sunrise. While the dubious identity of the mountain made it something less than a religious experience, the hike itself was great and the view of the Sinai desert was beautiful. We hiked down the opposite side of the mountain, on a path known as the 3,000 Steps of Repentance, and wound up at the Monastery of St. Catherine, a white walled fortress and series of green gardens nestled in between some of the regions highest peaks. The monastery is still operational, and when we toured it we saw Greek Orthodox pilgrims practicing their faith and worshipping the remains of the Saint's thumb, and at a well claimed to be the site where Moses met his wife, and a bush claimed to be the burning bush (although now safely extinguished).

The trip back took us past the Red Sea, which in Egypt is mostly resorts and beaches, and as we crossed the border in Eilat early we got to relax on the beach with a beer before heading home to Jerusalem. Our tour through Egypt was rushed, but we got to see thousands of years of history and culture, and monuments to religions both long dead and still living. A culture and a place entirely different from any other we've ever seen or experienced, Egypt is a place we're both glad to have taken the time to visit (especially without the slavery, murder of children, and bloody doorposts and Nile).

Happy Pesach!