Comments on: Why long-distance day trips are a bad thing

By: Gail

Gail — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 23:41:33 +0000

I made the day trip from Paphos to Cairo with my 15 year old son April 07,booked 2 days previous to travel,cost £200. Started 06.00 returning midnight, no doubting I did the tourist gaze. 1st Saladins Mosque,then Citadel, spent time talking to school children and other people from different parts of the world.Pyramids,haggled for gifts, Sphinx. Watched changing scenes of Giza and Cairo. Then papyrus museum, gold factory then a few hours at Cairo museum. The museum had recalled all their relics back and we saw all of Tutenkhamuns relics, PRICELESS,lastly sunset trip down the nile.I would rate this as one of the most unbelievable,exciting and exhilarating days of my life. I am well aware I did not see Egypt nor experience the life and culture of Cairo and its people but it was like interacting with the first book you read as a child on the ancient Egyptians, it was simply thrilling and I have memories that will last a life time. Incidentally later that year London Museum aquired some of Tutenkhamuns relics and it would have cost me more to fly from where I live to spend the day in London and see them. I think I got value for money, would you agree?

By: Umm Ahmed

Umm Ahmed — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 16:22:28 +0000

What really bugs me is that they never concentrate on any of the Islamic sites and their are so many in Cairo . You have the islamic museum , you have the Citadel and all the old mosques and madrasses and just to womder round the old city is a pleasure but best to avoid the summer heat.

By: Thersites

Thersites — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 03:15:55 +0000

“they are just monuments to the egos of the idiotic kings who had them built, who could not think of anything more beneficial to leave their people (and posterity generally).”

Well, at least posteriry knows that they- and their people- were there. The benefit to posterity and the virtue of the leaver are often unconnected. Mad King Ludwig of Bavaria was deposed because of the amount he spent building castle’s and Wagner’s opera House at Beyreuth but they have probably given more pleasure- and profit- to people since then than any more immediately practically beneficial project would have.

There’s also a certain hypocrisy in criticising people who fly to Cairo from Cyprus for a day- presumably they flew to Cyprus too- and extolling the virtues of driving over the South Downs when you lokk at the damage done to the South Dpwns by the roads that make it so easy for people to drive there. A case of “Four wheels good, two wings bad.”, perhaps.

By: imuslim.wordpress.com

imuslim.wordpress.com — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 22:38:21 +0000

“Am I the only one who is left cold by the pyramids?”

Nope… I’m not into Egyptology. Watching Stargate is about as close as I got to being excited about ancient Egypt.