No sky in Cairo

I've spent the last three days in Cairo, and I think I might hate it.  To be fair to Cairo, I did take a brief red-eye here, and isn't that the worst kind of red-eye?  You really need at least 6 hours to get a semblance of a decent night's rest.  But I have been getting terrible headaches ever since I arrived, and my first day here summoned up a migraine that put me to bed at 7:30pm.  There is no sky here. 
It's a yellowish-gray cloud that obscures the shapes of minarets just a few blocks away.  A friend I made, Salaan, tried to tell me that it was a sandstorm that blew through but no one else backs him up.  Breathing burns your noise.  Honking is incessant, and that's actually the least annoying feature of the prevailing driving culture.  The Caironese will fit 5 lanes of cars in 4 marked lanes of traffic. They seemingly think that you have to pay a fine if you stop at a red light - no one ever does it.  All my gasps and whimpers are countered with "There are very few accidents here."  I don't believe it.  And honking is a friendly reminder that if you don't move, you're about to get mowed down.

On my ride from the airport, the radio was blaring "My Sharona," my driver, Kareem, had those air fresheners shaped like Christmas trees with the scent of "Black Ice," whatever that smell is, and out of nowhere he asked me how old I was.  I thought it was a little odd, but I'm a never-know, maybe that's a very usual question.  But I got it again from some young men at the Egyptian museum yesterday, and this time I showed my age by dodging the question and telling them that that is a rude question where I come from.  I'm a coy old maid when I want to be.

Today, I went to Giza, Saqqara, and Memphis.  We did Giza first, while the tour groups weren't too thick and the schoolchildren were arriving as we left.  The pyramids are impressive, but I was not tempted to go in.  It's apparently very steep, and you spend large parts of the climb bent over due to the low height of the passageway.  All that and surrounded by my fellow tourists?  It sounds terrible!   So Dennis, who I met at my hostel, and I walked around and fended off the camel ride sellers.  But the pyramids are huge, and Cheops, the biggest and first of the three, was the tallest man-made structure until the Eiffel Tower came along.  That's a long standing record.  Then, it was off to Saqqara, which is more interesting if you're into pyramidal history, but I was having serious heat and headache issues, so I couldn't fully appreciate it.  However, I can regurgitate some facts for you.  Saqqara, close to the site of Memphis, which was the capital of ancient Egypt for many dynasties, was the burial ground for the high and mighty for over 3500 hundred years.  It houses the Step Pyramid, which looks like how it sounds, and that was the first pyramid built.  An architect Imhotep designed the pyramid as well as a collonaded receiving hall in front of it, most of which has disappeared but enough remains to give you a sense of its grandeur.  There are lots of other pyramids around.  It was basically the pyramid prototype workshop of ancient Egypt.  And when they had perfected the business, they took it to Giza.  There's no Memphis anymore, whatever remained was abandoned and destroyed in the latter stages of Islamic conquest.  But they do have an open air sculpture museum with some pretty impressive statuary, including an alabaster sphynx in way better than condition than the one at Giza.  Oh, and it's incredibly hot there, even in March.  INCREDIBLY HOT. 

So I'm looking forward to an air conditioned train ride to Alexandria tomorrow, which I wasn't really planning on checking out, but that's where you catch the night bus to Siwa, so that's the plan.