My Egyptian Experience / mi experiencia en Egipto

During part of Semana Santa (Holy Week) in Spain, I journeyed to a childhood dream country, Egypt. I have always been fascinated with this magical land. In fact, most of my elementary school projects were on King Tut and ancient Egyptian history. So, finally scratching this off my bucket list, I can say my experience was everything but ordinary. It was incredible – the food, the people, and the sites.

If you decide to ever travel to Egypt, I highly recommend that you use a tourist group or, if you’re fortunate to have friends there like me, have them guide you around. I stayed with my friend Leila and her family in Cairo, who are literally the nicest people I’ve ever met in my life. How did I meet Leila, you may be asking? I met her through a program that I worked for last summer at Saint Mary’s called Study of the United States Institute on Women and Leadership which hosted twenty women from Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Tunisia, Iraq, and Kurdistan. I could write a whole post about how much I loved that job. Anyways, I left on Friday afternoon practically spending the rest of the day getting to Egypt. I arrived late at night where Leila picked me up, and rather than being tired, I was full of energy because, duh, I WAS IN EGYPT. We just ate dinner at her apartment that first night and went to sleep, although it was hard for me to fall asleep because, again, I realized that I WAS IN EGYPT.

The first day we went straight to Giza to see the beautiful pyramidddddssss as well as the Sphinx. The Sphinx was smaller than I imagined it would be, meanwhile the pyramids were quite large and grand. There were a ton of tourists there. Leila and I roamed around on horse carriages and took pit stops to ride camels as well as just regular old horses. Look at me, just chilling on my horse next to one of the coolest and greatest man-made structures in the world. Looking at the pyramids, you just wonder, “How?” How did the ancient Egyptians pull this off? (lol shout out to Reanna who said it had to be aliens responsible for all of this). Apart from the pyramids, we went to Sakkara (or Saqqara) which was the necropolis, a cemetery basically, for the ancient Egyptian capital of Memphis (today the capital is Cairo). No mummies were present, but we did see some interesting hieroglyphics. After a well-spent day in the desert parts of Egypt, we returned to Cairo exhausted.

On a side note, I must add how CRAZY the roads are in Egypt. I thought Spanish drivers drove crazily, but Egyptian drivers are on a whole other level. Nothing will ever be as frightening as driving in a tuk-tuk or trying to cross the street in Egypt. They drive incredibly fast there, and there are not really any traffic signals whatsoever. There are no crosswalks either.

The second day I got to see my other friend from Egypt, Sandy. Together, Leila, Sandy, her friend Mark, and I went to the Cairo Museum. The Cairo Museum is huge and, again, I was gleaming with anticipation at the thought of seeing my home boy, King Tut, finally. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take any pictures of that part of the exhibit, but here’s a picture from online of the golden case. We also saw two out of three sarcophagi (the coffin-like cases that people were buried in). Apart from that, we saw mummies of other important Egyptian pharaohs like Ramses II, Nefertiti, etc. Afterwards, we explored some of downtown Cairo where we hung out near the Nile River. Then, we rose up to the top of Cairo Tower, which has a stunning view of Cairo. At night, we took a chill (in the ambience sense as well as the cold sense) boat ride along the river. It was one of those magical moments where I felt completely satisfied with my life, making this dream of mine actually come true. I never imagined a few years ago that I would be doing this.

The following day, Leila, Sandy, and I explored Coptic Christian churches, a few mosques, and ended at the Al-Hussain Mosque which is considered one of the holiest Islamic sites in Egypt. Around there, we explored the markets, got henna, and ate in a café afterwards. My final full day in Egypt, I spent it exploring the Great Mosque of Muhammad Ali Pasha, which is also a citadel. After, we went to a jumpy house and ate ice cream.

In the late evenings, I would spend time with Leila’s family. It was a little difficult to communicate because they all don’t speak a lot of English, and I don’t speak Arabic. Honestly, while I had so much fun looking at the sites, the most fun I had was when I was with Leila’s family.

A week in Egypt was certainly not enough time to explore, and I promise to return in the future.