Today was our last day in Cairo before heading to Luxor that evening. The first stop of the day was the train station to purchase our tickets for the overnight train to Luxor, Egypt. You cannot purchase tickets early, you can only get them on the day of travel.
After getting train tickets, we started our sightseeing adventure within Cairo. The Cairo Museum was stop numero uno! This place is huge!! It is astounding how many priceless artifacts it has... so many that some are just sitting behind others or placed on makeshift shelves. Museums all over the world would give and arm and a leg (and then some) to have just a few of these pieces. But no, they are just hanging out in corners and under stair wells here! Cameras were not allowed within the museum, so I only have pictures of the outside of the museum.
Next and final stop of the day was the Citadel and Mosque of Mohammad Ali. The Citadel sits atop a hill and can be seen from a distance. It is home to a number of museums, ancient mosques, and other sites. It is situated on limestone brought from Moqatta Hills by quarrying. The Citadel is one of the world's greatest monuments to medieval warfare, as well as a highly visible landmark on Cairo's eastern skyline. Here are a few pictures of the outside of the Citadel as well as inside the mosque.
After visiting The Cairo Museum and The Citadel, our taxi driver took us back to our hotel to grab our bags and head for the train station.
The tickets we received were hand written and in Arabic, so needless to say, we were heading into this train ride blind in a sense. We headed for our car, which we thought was number 8. We soon learned an interesting fact about the train... which was that out of the whole entire train, my guess would be around 30 cars, tourists were only allowed to travel in the first car, and if that car was full, a tourist would have to wait for the next train. The reason for this is that the first priority for Egyptians is to protect tourists (the people who provide them pretty much their entire economy). The tourist train car is more comfortable and equipped with 5+ guards with guns!!
So we shortly found out that we were in the wrong place... and would have to travel across 7 cars to get to the tourist car. Now, the train was moving at this point... I'm talking pretty high speed! It is hard to explain through text, but the cars were not connected, in order to pass from one to the next you had to walk outside, across a small platform connecting each car. This platform moved each time the train moved (which was constantly), so I decided jumping for car to car would be the safest bet! Talk about feeling like I was in some sort of James Bond/Indiana Jones movie!!
We finally made it to our correct seats, and quickly made friends with the three other travelers in our room... Here is a picture of the inside of our 6 person cabin!
Next stop Luxor!
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