There's a Pizza Hut at the pyramids. The view from the second floor window is like a postcard... the Sphynx dwarfed by three giant stone pyramids. We took a taxi directly from downtown Cairo to the front door of said Pizza Hut.

Looking out over Giza while munching on Stuffed Crust pepperoni and mushrooms, we noted what most tourists to Egypt probably note. The sphynx is so much smaller than it looks in photos. We took the requisite photos eating pizza in front of pyramids and the Pizza Hut logo before venturing past the ceaseless calls of "Camel ride? know how much? I give you good brice."

"Cloudy and a bit chilly."
The weather was not exactly as I've always imagined. It had rained the night before and was cloudy and a bit chilly. We wandered around the sphynx, which starts to seem a bit bigger once you're right under it, and on to the two giant pyramids. If you're like me and know next to nothing about Egyptian history, it may come as a surprise that there are only three big pyramids at Giza... and only two of them are very impressive. The one called the "Great Pyramid" actually looks a bit smaller than its neighbor, which retains at its top a bit of the limestone covering that used to give all three a smoother look.

It would be our luck that the only pyramid open for tourists to go inside was the smallest... pyramid three. But it was only about a dollar so in we went, with some worry on my part over my severe claustrophobia. But while a little cramped and hot, it was nothing like the nasty experience in the pyramid at Chichen Itza. But while I never had a panic attack, it wasn't as impressive inside either. Where Chichen Itza had some impressive artifacts left intact inside the pyramid, this one was bare and gave little reason to linger.

"We went running for the shelter of a small temple."
Then it started raining. Cold and biting, it was the first wintry feeling we've had since South Africa. We went running for the shelter of a small temple beside the Great Pyramid. When the skies cleared for a bit, we dodged more camel drivers, postcard hawkers and heavily armed police to hop in a taxi back into the city.

In the steady rain it came to our attention that our taxi had no windshield wipers. From his vantage point in the front seat, Matt reported that it seemed the vehicle had never had any. I suppose the ancient car had originally been meant for some desert country with no precipitation. Now in temperate Cairo its driver must occasionally pull to the side of the road and wipe down half the windshield with a nasty rag.

Tomorrow morning we're on the bus to the Sinai Peninsula. Matt and our British friend Dan will spend a few days in the beach town of Dahab while I hurry into Jordan long enough to see the rock-carved city of Petra. Then back to Cairo to fly out a week from Saturday.

When Moses was alive, these pyramids were a thousand years old. Here began the history of architecture. Here people learned to measure time by a calendar, to plot the stars by astronomy and chart the earth by geometry. And here they developed that most awesome of all ideas - the idea of eternity.
-Walter Cronkite