We woke up and were out of the hotel by 10am to try and leave ourselves enough time for the remaining sites. We found a place for breakfast (I had another Egyptian veggie pizza), then grabbed a cab to Pompey's Pillar.
The pillar was misnamed, but is very famous indeed. It is rumoured to have once hosted a party of 22 on it's capital, and apparently Louis XIV wanted to take it home to put a statue of himself on the top of it. That didn't happen, though, as it still sits in its original home, surrounded by ruins of baths and sanctuaries (used for ceremonial sacred cleansing, it's thought). Entrance was supposed to be 10LE each, according to the guidebook, but was 20LE each.
From there, we walked up a tiny street to the Catacombs of Kom Ash-Suqqafa (also supposed to be 10LE each). When we arrived at the ticket booth, they wanted 35LE each. We were not prepared to pay that, and decided to say "no, thank you." We walked around the side of the site to see what we could see above ground, and a very large opening in the wall (big enough for 2 or 3 busses to fit though) basically welcomed us in. We wandered around the small grounds, and down one set of stairs, which led to a large open room of square holes in the sides for coffins. When we exited there, I saw another entrance, to what appeared to be the catacombs themselves. There was no one there, so we went down and looked around for about ten minutes. We were even taking pictures until someone told us we weren't allowed to. It was very hot and humid down there, but quite interesting. Lots of burial chambers in Greco-Roman-Egyptian style. We made our way back to the surface of the staircase that spirals around a well, and headed to the same exit (the same way we entered). We were almost out when a slightly overweight and intimidated cop came and asked us for our tickets. We obviously didn't have them, and Martin just kept walking so we followed behind him. The cop called for backup, but no one really came. When Martin spotted a taxi, we all ran towards it, and were out of the compound. We made it out without getting in trouble, but it was definitely cause for some fast-beating little hearts!
We took a cab down to the corniche (road along the harbour), and were walking towards a mosque when we saw our carriage driver, Mimi "Jimmy". Apparently we tipped him well the last ride, because he offered to take us to the mosque for free.
Again, Alice and I had to enter separately, and were in a small space where we couldn't see much. The boys had much better views and photo ops, so the pics were taken by them. When we left, Jimmy took us to our hotel to grab our things, then we stopped for food on the way to the train station. We had bought our tickets the day before, and had no problems finding our car (although some guy asked for our tickets, offered his help, then wanted tips).
We had an uneventful train ride back to Cairo. Alice and Martin were trying to buy 2nd class tickets to Aswan (because we learned that they actually recline a lot farther, and are half as expensive - 45LE vs. 90LE). They were sold out, however, and when they discovered there were also no 1st class tickets, they decided to just get a cab to the airport and hop a flight. We all said goodbye, then G and I got a cab to our hostel area, bought tickets to Ethiopia, and headed to bed.
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