Cairo Museum and Farewell to Egypt!!

After our early 5:00am wake-up call we all had to be in the lobby to get breakfast boxes by 5:30am.  These boxes were not as nice as the first ones but had guava juice, a few pastries, and a hard-boiled egg.  Then we all headed to the airport for our 7:40am flight to Cairo.  The flight was almost an hour and a half and I slept a little but it was hard because I was so sad to be leaving Egypt!

After arriving in Cairo we went straight to the Egyptian Archeological Museum.  This was an incredible museum and we only had 2 hours there but as our guide said, if you spent just 1 minute on every item in the museum it would take you 3 months to see it.  The first floor is dedicated to statues and the second floor is all for the treasures from King Tut’s tomb.  Muhammad took us to some of the highlights on the first floor.  I’m not going to lie, a lot of it looked the same but it was really nice to have Muhammad to explain to us why certain statues were special and unique.  Then we went up to the second floor which was one of the coolest things I have ever seen.  All of King Tut’s treasures were INCREDIBLE!!  There is a special room that has all his jewelry, the famous mask, and 2 of his coffins.  One of the teachers on our trip started crying a little bit when she was looking at the mask because it really was an incredible sight to see in person.  The coffins were almost even more impressive than the mask because they are just as detailed as the mask but the full size of the coffin.  It was really crazy to think about how much stuff there was in his tomb because he was such a young king who didn’t even really do much for Egypt.  The only reason he is so famous is because he had the only tomb ever discovered that hadn’t been looted by thieves already.  If his stuff could take up a full floor of a museum then I can’t even imagine how much stuff there must have been in the other tombs like Ramses II.

After seeing all the amazing treasures from the second floor we had about 30 min to see anything else from the museum that we wanted.  It was an extra charge, but I really wanted to go into the Hall of Royal Mummies.  This was just one room but it had about 10 mummies.  They were all various kings and Queen Hatshepsut.  This was definitely the freakiest thing I have ever seen in my life and I definitely gagged a little bit when looking at some of them.  Ramses II had the creepiest mummy because it was like reddish in color and his face was just in an awkward position and he still had lots of hair on his head.  Most of the mummies were black and their heads and feet were always unwrapped and some of them had their arms unwrapped.  It was so crazy how these people have been preserved since the BC era and lots of them still even had fingernails!  Anyway, it’s kind of hard to describe but was definitely pretty disgusting yet fascinating at the same time.

After the museum we headed back to the Meridien Pyramids hotel for lunch.  This was the same hotel that we had lunch at on the first day that was right by the pyramids.  They had the band playing again as we all walked in which was pretty funny.  It was our last grand buffet of Egypt so everyone was filling up (especially on the dessert!)  It was really nice that we got to drive by the pyramids one more time because it felt like the trip really came full circle (as cliché as it sounds).  After lunch we all boarded the buses and started the 3 hour drive back to the ship in Alexandria.

It is so difficult to try to sum up the 5 days I spent in Egypt because it really was one of the greatest experiences ever.  I spent the time with a great group of people and had the best tour guide ever.  I also learned so much about Ancient Egypt that I cannot even believe it!  All of the sites were places that you really need to visit in person to experience the awesomeness that I cannot possibly convey through my descriptions.  Basically, I have the best parents ever for letting me go on this trip and giving me the best present I could ever have!!