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The great pyramids of Giza are even more amazing in person than in photographs....not only their mass and height (taller than a 50-story building, made of 3 million stone blocks each weighing some 20 tons), which is unbelievable, but their beautiful symmetry of geometrical perfection and their sheer simplicity. It is a shame that the government has allowed so much development (hotels, schools, stables for horses and camels, apartment buildings...) to encroach in such proximity. Nevertheless, once one is in close proximity to these structures, it is easy to feel oneself transported back to the date when they were built: 2750 BC, nearly five thousand years ago!!!!
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| Photo taken from a balcony on the fifth floor of the Meridien Hotel, where we stayed. One could almost reach out and touch the pyramids. |
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| Massive, indeed!!! This is Cheops, the largest and oldest of the Giza pyramids. |
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| Photo-op locations galore.... |
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| See, they really aren't SO high if Janet can touch the top with her index finger... |
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| And so can David.... |
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| See what I mean by MASSIVE???? |
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| We had lunch here on our last day in Cairo; what a view, eh? This is an Oberoi Hotel first opened here in 1890. |
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| This huge wooden boat is 2750 years old (literally!). Designed to sail the Pharaoh to the afterlife, it was found in 1952 buried in the sand just outside the Cheops pyramid, and painstakingly reconstructed. |
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| It's Egypt; even the police ride on camels. |
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