After the mosque, we returned to central Cairo to visit the Egyptian Museum with its famous Royal Mummy Room and the Tutankhamun Galleries. The museum was packed with visitors. Having a guide comes in extremely handy. We had the same guide in Cairo for the two days (Ayman) and he provided a wealth of information about each place we visited. It appears that most visitors come with guides -- either in large groups or small groups. I am not certain, but it may not be possible to visit Egypt without a guide or organized tour. The mummies were great and included Tuthmosis II, Seti I, and Ramses II. The Tutankhamun Galleries displays the findings of King Tutankhamun's tomb in the Valley of the Kings. His tomb was the only tomb that was not stripped bare by robbers over the centuries. The jewels, gold and artifacts are astounding -- including the famous life-size gold mask of Tutankhamun.
After visiting the museum, our guide wanted to bring us to a perfume factory. Yesterday, we had also visited a papyrus factory and carpet school. Though not in the orginal agenda, this is another way for the guides to make money by bringing potential purchasers to these stores. The carpet school was very interesting because there were young girls (my girls age and younger) who wove the carpets. The children were supposedly there to learn a trade and came to the carpet school after their regular schooling during the day. It was difficult to know what my girls thought about this as they didn't say much about it. But we were all impressed watching the speed with which these girls wove the threads by hand.
Travelling by private van was interesting. We had a driver and our guide with us at all times. Our guide iterated in the beginning how he was for these two days, our friend, our instructor, and our bodyguard. Unbeknownst to me beforehand, we also had a police escort most everywhere we went with two tourist police following us in a police car. Our guides were suppose to let the tourist police know our schedules at least a day in advance so that they could be prepared to follow us. This was pretty strange in our view. Ayman, our guide, told us that for certain nationalities, the Egyptian goverment felt this was necessary.
On the way to the perfume factory, we got stuck in terrible traffic for more than an hour. It was quite hot outside (probably close to 35 C/ 100 F). We had the air conditioner running in the van the entire time. Just as we were coming out of the traffic and making a left turn across the 4 lane highway, our van died in the median strip and smoke started pouring out of the dashboard. We all jumped out of the van and stood in the middle of the road between 4 lanes of crazy Cairo traffic. And surprise, surprise, our police escort must have ditched us early on in the traffic jam. We were not far from the perfume factory, a few blocks, so we figured we would just cross the street and walk there. But how to get across? Another set of tourist police saw our van blocking traffic and came over to see what the problem was. When they heard we were Americans, they walked out and stopped the traffic so that we could cross, and then insisted that we could not walk the few blocks. Instead, they commandeered a private van (that is used for public transport) and had this person drive us up the road. Very bizaar.
