Worthless and Weak

So I haven't updated in a few days... Anyway, to give a very quick summary of the past few days...

Alexandria was ok, I enjoyed the Fort and the Catacombs, and their museum is really great, other than that, not so much.

The Egyptian Museum was awesome, there is simply so much stuff there it's ridiculous. Over 10,000 items from Tutankhamen alone. Also, there was seriously a collection of 20 sided dice, which were from the Roman or Coptic periods.

The Pyramids were incredible, to describe them in a single word. All of them. Going down into them uses muscles that you really don't use at all, because you're climbing up and down weird inclines while hunched over, which is something people almost never do. Long story short, the fronts of my legs are still aching several days later. Moral of the story, stretch before you go into the pyramids.

The historical parts of Cairo itself is a bit underwhelming. I think the problem is that its really hard to wander around Cairo on foot (I wanted to wander around outside of the Citadel, but had a hard time doing it due to the traffic and stuff. The Coptic museum was nice, but like most museums in Egypt, doesn't do a great job at presentation.

Ranking the Museums in Egypt (I kind of feel like I've been to all of them) by presentation:

1. Nubian Museum
2. Alexandria Museum
3. Luxor Museum
4. Coptic Museum
5. Mummification Museum
6. Islamic Ceramics Museum
7. Egyptian Museum
8. Aswan Museum

Ranking them by content:

1. Egyptian Museum

2. Alexandria Museum
3. Luxor Museum
4. Nubian Museum
5. Islamic Ceramics Museum
6. Coptic Museum
7. Mummification Museum
8. Aswan Museum

I think overall, the best Museum was the Egyptian, and the worse (by far) was the Aswan Museum. But thats just me.

The best piece in the Egyptian Museum was innermost coffin of Tutankhamen, which was made of solid gold.

My favorite temple was tough to say, I liked Karnak, its really tough to accurately describe just how big the place is. I also liked the Luxor temple; that was awesome.

The valley of the Queens was probably the most underrated place I went, its almost as good ast he Valley of the Kings, but simply because it's not on the standard tour, probably had about 5% as many tourists there. There were simply no lines and both tombs were easily accessible.

Thats the same with Dahshur, the pyramids were very impressive, but there weren't too many people there, and going inside the pyramid was very easy.

My least favorite temple were the ones at Fayoum, which don't really count because they're hardly temples in the first place (no remaining hieroglyphs if they had any in the first place).

Other than that my least favorite was Kalabsha, which for some reason I was the only person there, which means I had uninvited tour guides with AK-47s following me around (and then of course asking for bakeesh)!

The one thing I wish I could have done was gone to Dendera, especially after I wasn't that impressed with the temple of Horus at Edfu.

If I were to rank the temples...

1. Karnak
2. Abu Simbel (counting both temples as one, as they are quite similar)
3. Luxor
4. Medina Habu
5. Temple of Hatshetshut
6. Horus @ Edfu
7. Ramesseum
8. Kom Ombo
9. Philae
9. Kalabsha

Big gap between Luxor and Medina Habu, another big gap after Kom Ombo.

Of the four cities I went to, I would rank as following:

4. Alexandria. Nice city, very big, but there isn't that much tourist stuff to do. Unless you plan on diving, it can be done as a day trip from Cairo. I did everything there in one day. I loved my hotel though

3. Cairo. Big city. Very very very big. It is nearly impossible to get from one area to another by walking, and sometimes seems impossible to do so by car as well. Absolutely insane.

2. Luxor. Everybody, and I mean everybody, will treat you as a walking pocketbook. You will be approached by strangers multiple times, even if you're just walking a short distance. They are very very aggressive in what ammounts to begging at times.

1. Aswan. Small city, not too much there, much cleaner than Luxor, so the people were much much less aggressive (at least as far as I found). While you will be asked if you want a Feluca or a taxi, a simple no will usually suffice to get them to stop. The vegetation on the islands at Aswan is simply stunning, (both Elephantine Island and more impressively Kitchner's Island). With the backdrop of the gigantic sand dunes on the West bank, Aswan is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen.

Labels: Egypt, vacation