I had to travel to
Egypt for a
flight simulator conference. An interesting thing about Egypt is that it is the oldest civilization that we know of and yet Egypt itself struggles to "prove itself" today. There are 30 million people here, mostly in Cairo. The conference I went to was in Cairo. I got to visit the
Egyptian Museum (also known as the museum of antiquities). At this museum are King Tut artifacts and lots of other OLD things. My favorite thing to look at here were the old tools that the craftsmen of the day used to build things. I also visited a pharmacy to get some antibiotics to nurse a sore throat on the same day I visited the museum.
I went to the Pyramids one night for a
sound and light show. This show was underwhelming but the chance to get out at night and see what the city looks like in the late evening was interesting. The Egyptian people seem to come out to play after dark and stay up very late. On my final day I went to visit the Pyramids and closed out my trip with a
Nile river dinner cruise, complete with music and dancing with a 'whirling dervish" show.
The traffic in Cairo is horrible. There small black and white cabs everywhere that are either old Peugeot or Fiat. There is little in the way of rules on the road, other than to randomly blast your horn. One thing that struck me as odd was the auto parts store I drove by. In the window you could not only see alternators, antifreeze, and tires, but also STACKS of pistons. Who in the world changes pistons? (Evidently Egyptians do).
One other thing that struck me was my neighbor's roof dwellers. The guy had some livestock living up there.
