Our second day in Cairo was spent on the Giza Plateau, 15 miles southwest of Cairo, and the site of the brand new Grand Egyptian Museum, the Great Pyramids of Giza, and the Great Sphinx.

The museum took decades of planning and construction, and over $1 billion. My favorite museums, up to this point, have been The Louvre and the Musee d’Orsay in Paris, and the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam. But now I must place the GEM in the top four. It is truly spectacular.

Gem.eg

You haven’t even entered the museum yet as you make your way up the grand staircase. It was designed on a scale befitting the pharaohs. The gods and goddesses line the stairs and guide you to the top.

At the top of the staircase, once inside, you are greeted with spectacles ranging from antiquity to present day high technology. There are ancient carvings, perfume bottles, and a room that depicts hieroglyphics in motion.

One entire gallery is filled with the treasures removed from Tutankhamun’s tomb, discovered in 1922 by Howard Carter and his team. My sister and I had the privilege of viewing the traveling exhibit in Seattle in 1978. Now 48 years later we are able to experience even more of the treasures in their home country.

You could spend days in the museum. We had four hours. The building next door houses the oldest wooden ship, 4000 years old, which beats out the Viking boats and the Vasa for oldest ship!

After touring the GEM and enjoying a gelato in one of the restaurants on site, we drove the short distance to the Great Pyramids of Giza.

We did the tourist thing of a very short camel ride for a photo op. The camels seemed to be in good shape and it was fun.

We drove to the base of the pyramids and you get to wander around for about 30 minutes. We did not go inside.

It was a very short distance to the Great Sphinx, the body of a lion and the head of a man, which faces east. It is believed that the head is that of Pharaoh Khafre.

It was terribly crowded and there is really only one good viewing area. We fought our way through the crowd to get the picture, and then quickly retreated. It was a bit overwhelming and the end of the day. It looked like there was some ongoing construction, which is needed.

As we made our way back to the bus, we experienced the true Giza traffic jam.

It was on the bus headed back to our hotel when we first heard that our cruise was in jeopardy. We were told we would get more information later in the evening.