Egypt Trip: Day 2

Day 2: We visited the first Pyramid made, Saqqara, Memphis, and a Carpet School (a.k.a cheap child labor). Luckily for me it was Eric's turn to haul Keenan around.

We had to walk up several steps to the Pyramid before descending a long way into another steep tight tunnel. This is Eric and Keenan coming down into the Pyramid.
The inside had a strong ammonia smell, apparently it used to be slightly bat infested and the ammonia was used to clean it.
Here's Keenan with Boppa and Gramma. I'm very glad we didn't go in the middle of summer as it was warm and stuffy down inside the Pyramids as well as slightly claustrophobic.

Here's me and Keenan in front of the bent Pyramid.
This is at Memphis, the first capital ever. This large statue was truely amazing and beautiful. Keenan wanted to see how his fist measured up.


My parents had both lined up and taken their pictures in front of this statue. Soon as they were done Keenan walked over to the statue and posed just like Boppa and Gramma did, I guess he figured we were going to make him anyways.

This was an old wheat grinder.
Next up, Step Pyramid of Djoser, as you can see Keenan is over touring and listening to our tour guide. At this point he just wanted to play and dig in the dirt.
By the end of this tour he was covered in dirt, but mostly happy. I thought this was totally cute, here's Keenan just chilling, playing in the dirt with an ancient Pyramid behind him.
This day we drove through lots of farm land. It seemed that every available inch was covered in some type of crop. All the crops are hand harvested. We saw lots of donkeys pulling wagons, camels, goats, and what seemed to us as a whole lot of poverty.

We also stopped by a carpet school. We saw many signs for different carpet schools, they seem to be popular. When we walked in we saw lots of young children sitting on small stools infront of the carpet looms. All the carpets were handmade and quite beautiful. Most of them were oriental style, some were camel hair. The guide at the Carpet school told us the kids did get lots of breaks, still I felt bad for them. The beautiful carpets did come with a hefty price and after a lot of bargaining Eric and I walked away with a pretty camel hair carpet that looks perfect in our livingroom.

Our tour guide then took us to an outdoor restaurant for a typical Egyptian meal of meat kababs, pita bread and different dips for the bread. First we got to see how the pita like bread was made. Ahmed informed us that the bread is quite popular and a main staple, it is cheap and readily available everywhere. Driving around we did see several stands selling the bread by the bagful. My mom and I got to try our hand at throwing the dough into the oven... it was a lot harder than it looked.

That night we were supposed to go to a light show at the Giza Pyramids but we were all feeling exhausted. My parents treated Eric and I to a quiet dinner alone. They took Keenan while we ate. Having my parents along was very nice. Not only did I get to spend time with them, they also helped out a lot with Keenan. Keenan loved pointing at my Dad and yelling "Boppa Boppa!" But, if I was around he wasn't too sure about being held my him. Of course soon as Eric and I were out of sight Keenan was perfectly fine being toted around by Gramma or Grampa.

I have so many pictures that I love and want to share, hopefully I'll get a link set up so if anybody wants to they can check them all out.