We had booked a private tour with Ahmed to visit Cairo, Geza, the pyramids, the sphinx and Memphis. But our ship was late docking, and it took forever to get on land, so our tour started way late, which was a bummer! And then there was the Egyptian security protocol, which wanted all the guests who were scheduled for a tour to be loaded onto the buses and be escorted out of Port Said. 30 buses and 20 minibuses later we were finally allowed to leave the port 😖

And we finally made it, we left Port Said and drove south towards Cairo; with a police escort in a long convoy. 3.5 hours later, we picked up Ahmed, our guide for the day, and headed to Memphis to visit a museum.

That statue was discovered in the mud of the Nile River, face down, and they built a museum around it, because transporting this enormous 67 foot long statue was impossible due to its weight!

Then we finally drove to the pyramids of Geza. This was in all our bucket lists for a while and we were impressed! What magnificent views, on a hilltop on the west banks of the Nile River. West was always associated with death, East with life. And because pyramids are always burial buildings, they had to be built west. Therefore the town of Geza is on the east side.

As you can see, we had fun taking photos 😀 before we went inside 😖

Entering this colossal building was not so much fun for me. It was a hot day, the entrance is tiny and the walkway up that narrow ramp ~3 stories up, was very claustrophobic! People going up and down the same ramp, it was sticky, dim, and not enough air! 😟

Now I know why Ahmed didn’t go in with us…

The Sphinx was next before we had to rush back. An enormous sculpture that was buried in sand when discovered. Only the upper part of the head showed above the sand – and look at it now (IT, not HIM or HER)

On the way back to the port, another 3.5 hour escorted bus convoy, we heard the horrible news that Israel was attacked by the terrorist Hamas group. What a horrendous act of war towards civilians! It breaks my heart…

And slowly the big uncertainty sets into our minds, that we are supposed to port in Ashdod, Israel tomorrow morning with an excursion to Jerusalem. The more we read about the attacks, the more we hope that we are not even landing in Israel. Thank whatsup and my family in Germany, we get more details and really hope to just skip Israel…

Back on the ship we hear the “good” news: Israel is cancelled, we’ll have an extra day at sea. Hopefully we can enjoy it and not think too much of what’s going on so close to where we are….. But, of course, our vacation mood is disappearing with every detail we hear…