The Pyramids (Finally)

The other day, the subject of Disneyland came up.  When Kathleen asked why we were never going to take her to Disneyland, I explained that Disneyland wasn't much more than somewhere that had a lot of pretend places from around the world.  And why would we want to see the pretend pyramids, when we've seen the real ones?

"But I haven't!!" she protested, "why haven't you taken me to see the real pyramids?"  I blame Bill and Pete Go Down the Nile for her knowing what the pyramids actually are.

So, this past Saturday, we bowed to popular dissent and finally took our children to see the pyramids.  We still have the use of our friends' car, and so I navigated through Cairo traffic with nary a mishap (and that's my story and I'm sticking to it).

We arrived early on purpose to avoid the crowds, which worked somewhat nicely.  Not one person asked to take our children's pictures, but we were followed by every carriage, camel, and horse-man that saw us from a half-mile off. 

After seeing the Great Pyramid and the other one, we made it up to the Menakaufre pyramid, where we had tickets to go inside.  They wouldn't let us take the backpack with our camera inside, and I wasn't about to leave the backpack with them, so I took Sophia and Brandon took Kathleen.

Sophia, although a little nervous with the steep descent, decided that the inside of a pyramid was pretty interesting and not a bit scary.  Kathleen took her turn with Brandon, determined to be just like Jack and Annie and see the inside.  She saw about three feet inside before breaking down into screaming fits and Brandon saw the inside all by himself.  Edwin will have to wait until he can come back on his own dime to see the inside of any pyramid.

By this point, we had walked quite a bit over sand and stone, and I didn't have much faith in the ability of Kathleen and Sophia to stick it out all of the way back down to the Sphinx, and was eyeing the camels waiting outside the pyramid.  Brandon flatly refused, not wanting to give in to the man, but after promising him that I would take all responsibility and do all of the bargaining, he consented.

The children all loved being so high above everyone, and Brandon declared at the end that it was a good idea.  I'm sure they'll remember the ride most of all. 

We finished with a very quick visit to the Sphinx and made our way back to the car, relieved to have finally done our duty by our children.