A day among days

What a day! We left fairly early and met Dr. Vassil Dobrev at Saqqara. He has been excavating there for  years. He was so gracious, enthusiastic, and welcoming. We first went through some of the things in the museum there at Saqqara. Then we went to his site. We spoke of how he has been detecting arrangements of pyramids, and looking at elevations, and using the clusters and alignments of mastabas as he looks for the right places to excavate. Absolutely fascinating, and very well thought out. We so enjoyed this. It gave us some real things to think about regarding our pyramid at Seila.

Dr. Dobrev then took us through his 6^th and 8^th dynasty tombs. He has been finding fantastic things there. There was much that was so interesting. We could have spent hours there going through more and more of his finds. This was such a wonderful opportunity.

From there we met with an inspector that Zahi Hawass had arranged to take us through some of the more interesting parts of Saqqara. First we went to a monument we have always wanted to enter.. We just walked straight up and he unlocked the door and we went in. And thus a longtime dream was suddenly realized.  We had a thrilling time going through tunnels and caverns.

 

From there we went to some wonderful tombs and had a great time looking at the incredible artwork.

 Then we went to the Serapeum. It has been closed for years and years, so it was another thrill to be able to see it. Impressive. Amazing. Huge. What a place. 

Then we went to Unas’ tomb and enjoyed some time there. In particular we got to a hillside where we were able to look one way and see Giza and another and see Dashur. I counted 16 pyramids that could be seen there. 

From there we went out to some more places that are typically closed. But we went in, we saw great stuff, and we loved every minute of it.

From there we went to a favorite restaurant called Andea’s. The food was good. We were in two cars, and on the way home the car I was in, driven by Eric, got a bit lost. We ended up going through some very small backroads of Cairo, going on roads that were under construction  until we got onto a bridge that suddenly ended (fortunately we noticed this before we drove off), and then went in a few circles before we got to a road we recognized. I finally got on my iphone and used the gps map function to figure out where we were and where we should go. I was nervous a few times, but in the end we made it.

  

I was exhausted, but this was quite a day!