Egypt - Day 2 Fagnoon Art school and Saqarra

Having breakfast and doing homework in the common room at the guest house

The boys woke up at 5.30am as we are still completely jet-lagged. After a simple breakfast at the hotel followed by 1 hour of homework (The 2 older boys are working on French and handwriting skills and Stephan is still trying to get his 1,2,and 3s right!) , we headed out on our little adventure. The taxis in cairo are really in a bad state; Old Peugeot 405s without air-conditioning or seat-belts!

The 1st stop was to Fagnoon Art school which is a great place for children. The boys did pottery and some sand paint art-work. We were covered in mud after that but it was super-fun. Think we will be giving away some pottery to our new friends in Cairo since there is no way I am lugging those things around Egypt.

Tired and without lunch, we decided to attack Saqarra pyramids. There is much more to see here than at the Giza pyramids. Saqarra pyramid, the 1st pyramid, was built for the pharaoh Zoser by chief architect Imhothep. It is in fact the 1st ever stone structure and was built in step form. (we keep debating whether it is 5 or 6 steps. The books say 6 but Niv counted 5!) The area around was extremely interesting. We went into a few of the tombs and actually descended into the Pyramid of Teti. The kids took quite a lot of coaxing before they agreed to go in though……. I do not know what those chickens expected to find in there!! The heliography and inscriptions on the walls were beautiful but I was too cheap skate to pay for a guide so we have no idea what was on them…….. (nah, I wasn't cheap, but the kids were being a pain and we pretty much ran through everything because they were tired and hungry.) Guess I'll have to do some post-visit reads to find out more.

The most spectacular of all the tombs was that of Mereku, son-in-law and most senior of Teti's overseers. There was even an intact statue of Mereku in one of the chambers!

Day ended with shwarmas, falafel, pizzas and sheesha downstairs. ( We have eaten in the same place 3 times in a row!!!)