We flew in from NYC on a direct flight on Egypt Air. Maybe the roughest first couple of hours I can remember on any flight in many years. The next 9 hours were just fine. Got a reasonable nights sleep and decent food. On landing it took almost an hour for our luggage to come down the carousel. Then  our first venture into Cairo traffic. Our transfer guide suggested that any painted line markings were strictly for decoration.It proved so, even our driver was straddling lines most of the way. We arrived safely at the Cairo Marriott and found a  nice room waiting for us. 

We wandered around and met Caroline Fayez , our OAT Tour Leader, who gave  us some suggestions of places to wander if we felt up to it. Our first challenge was finding our way out of the hotel onto the street we wanted to see “26th of July” the day Mubarak was turned out of office in the beginning of the revolution in 2011.  Later we joined up with 12 of the remaining 14 of our group for an orientation walk in the area. On the way back Carol and I stopped at Thomases Pizza, a highly recommended pizza place not more than 5 minutes walk from the hotel.

In the morning we did our first touring at the Egyptian Museum. This was a 2 1/2 hour guided tour by Caroline that really covered the highlights of the collection. We had another hour to explore on our own and get into the King Tut Room and the Jewelry Room as well as the Mummy Room. Clearly no pictures allowed in any of these and pictures in the main galleries, while permitted are poor as the lighting is inadequate to show any more than you can find on the web. The repeated comment on the museum is that the collection is incredible, wonderful, priceless and enormous. The museum is in lousy condition, the lightning is poor and the labeling approaches nonexistent, so it requires a knowledgeable guide to help understand what you are seeing. The new museum will open in 2020 plus unknown extensions. In the mean time they are putting nothing into the old even though they plan on keeping it open.

In our rest time we walked to a nearby (?) garden  where met several locals and then took a walk to the Cairo Tower. Someday I must write a blog about using Google Maps in a foreign city with no wifi and a tired brain trying to get around. We hired a taxi for the last lap to the garden and then Google maps took us to the closest point of the grounds of the Tower while failing to note there was no access from that spot. We had to walk around 3 blocks to get to the entrance. It was worth it. The pictures from the top – some 62 stories above ground – would be magnificent if the sky were not cloudy with vapor and pollution.  

In the morning we head fro Giza and the Great Pyramid, the first we will see on this trip.