Cairo trip continued

Our next stop with the tour was on a riverboat on the Nile. We enjoyed a nice buffet lunch, not unlike something we would have in the states. But, we also had some great entertainment. We first enjoyed a traditional belly dancer. Next we watched a male dancer in a spectacular costume do a dance that involved constant spinning and twirling the layers of colorful fabric of which his outfit was made Following the dance and lunch, we went out on deck and enjoyed the scenery as we cruised the Nile for about an hour. One of the things I found so interesting both within site of the Nile and all over both Cairo and Alexandria was the large number of mosques. Distinctive by the dome and minarets adorning each one, the size varied from quite small to amazingly large, and the amount of decoration from minimal to quite vast.

 

One of our next stops was the largest mosque in Cairo, the Mohammed Ali Pasha Mosque and castle. The inside of the mosque was huge, ornate, and consisted of multiple domes and minarets. While it is no longer used on a daily basis as a place of prayer, it is closed for tours on Friday afternoon’s for holy day prayers. Distinctive of the mosque is that as the last in the line of Egyptian kings, his tomb is there in the mosque.

The final stop on within our trip to Cairo was a stop at a Papyrus Institute where the process of making papyrus thousands of years ago was explained, and how real papyrus is still made today. Then we had an opportunity to buy a piece of papyrus with artwork from the very simple and inexpensive to some very intricate and pricey. Following this stop, we fell back into the bus for the two and a half hour ride back to our ship in Alexandria. What an amazing day!