Day 3 in Egypt (Last day)

We woke up feeling very refreshed after a nice long sleep.  We didn't have to meet our guide until 10:30 which was a nice change of pace.  We ate breakfast leisurely and then met Mohammed to have him take us to our tour of the Pharonic Village

View from the pool.  We didn't actually use the pool because it was a bit too cold out.  Still great views of the pyramids as the backdrop. 

Arrival at the Pharonic Village

So, as I said, we were to visit the Pharonic Village that day.  We hadn't heard much about it but once Mohammed told us that we were going to a "recreation" of how Egyptian life use to be.  We felt like this would be a let down because we were in Egypt and there was no reason to "recreate" life how it was, we had already seen so many artifacts about it, why see something fake?   We went against our better judgement and went to the village.  Mohammed told us he'd be back in 2.5 hours.    We waited in the gift shop for our boat ride to the village.  My parents bought more papyrus which had their names printed in hyroglyfics while we were waiting.   Once we arrived at the island, made the best of it, listening to our guide and trying to learn. 

View from the boat

Some of the "sights"

Yes, they actually wrote this 

 By this point, we were really just so sick of the whole village and started laughing. . . and even more so when we saw this sign. . . it was an advertisement for weddings here!

Eric's wondering if we should have skipped our Wainwright affair and gotten married here?
Maybe for a 5 year "re-new our vows" ceremony :) 

 So this next part was the worst . . . while we were walking towards this "farm" area, we heard someone feverishly blowing a whistle.  Seconds later we saw many of the people dressed in costume (the actors) get into position. . . Most of them were sitting on a few benches about 50 meters from us.  It was absolutely ridiculous to watch them all scurry to re-inact the way life used to be.  At this point, we were totally done.  We stayed for another 5 minutes until it was a break time.  We found someone who had a cell phone that worked and called Mohammed to come pick us us.  We skipped right through the snack area and tried to find our way off this island.  We finally found the boats and were lucky enough to catch a boat right before it was leaving with employees.  No one questioned our presence on the short boat ride.  

Before we found the boat, my mom is saying,  "get me off this island!"

A building we were looking at while waiting for Mohammed.  It is sad how truly dirty it was. 
Next stop, The Four Seasons Giza!  We were in desperate need of a good lunch, a clean bathroom and just some R and R. . . we got just what we needed!   

From here it was off to the airport.  Luckily, the company we hired also had someone take us through the entire airport up until customs.  It was a very confusing process and definitely needed someone to walk us through it.  It was crowded and people were rough. 

While we waited for our plane, we found a Starbucks and were able to buy another one of our collector's series mugs for Egypt that we all collect (Eric's parents too). 

It was a short trip but we really enjoyed the history and learning about the current and past culture of Cairo and Giza.  We are all so relieved we went when we did as now the current situation is a bit too tumultous.   I didn't post this before but during much of our trip, our guide gave us much insight to the situation in Egypt (up until early January 2011).  From what he told us and what we witnessed, we knew a revolt of some kind was coming at some point, however we did not know how imminent!  It is just so sad to see how some of the inhabitants of the country were living.  There was a large discrepancy between the classes.  Never would we have imagine it would come to such measures.  We are hoping and praying for the people of Egypt and arrival of a democracy.