Egypt, Day 2: Sakkara & the Cairo Tower

Our tour this morning was with Mohammed and, since we had done much of what was scheduled, we renegotiated what we wanted to see. Mohammed took us to Sakkara, where the bench pyramids are located and are the predecessors of the step pyramids we’d seen the day earlier.
The columns were representative of reed bundles that had been used in these pyramids.
Getting a diagram of the ruins we're about to see. Mohammed gave us A LOT of infomation - I felt like I needed to take notes the entire trip - and would pause with questions and Ramon and I would both be wondering,"Are we supposed to answer?"

These are buildings to represent what had been in the pharaoh's castle but these were built and filled with detritus instead of being open. An awful lot of work, if you ask me. Some Egyptian school kids on a field trip:
I really enjoyed this site - it was really interesting and we got to go into a collapsed pyramid. The shaft to get in was three feet high – uncomfortable enough for me and a nightmare for Ramon!

Inside was amazing – all of the walls were covered with hieroglyphics and the ceiling was carved with stars since the people believed the pharaoh would join the night sky when he went to the afterlife. Then we went inside the son-in-law’s crypt where all of the walls were covered with carvings of offerings to the kind and the animals of the Nile. I wished I could have taken pictures because it was unbelievable.

We had lunch again at Andrea and then Mohammed took us to Coptic Cairo; however, the day was the Festival of the Cheese and Water (yeah, we wondered too) and many were closed. This was a good example though of how the city has built up over centuries – many inches of sand are deposited each year so we were able to look down into one of the buildings were it had been excavated into the original buildings. Something like 30 meters down.

Our last stop was the Cairo Tower built in the 80s. It’s 186 meters high and I went up but I didn’t go out on the walkway. I could see the city just fine from the doorway, thank you very much. See? You can see enough from the doorway: Ramon and Mohammed walked around and Mohammed did his best trying to get me out there. Seriously, you get a good view from here: