February 24th, 2026

We are now on the Viking program which means early mornings. We were up at 6:30am and breakfast at 7 which is included. The hotel has a huge breakfast buffet. Again not as extensive as Bali but pretty good. We were in our orientation briefing at 8 and on our bus by 9am. We are on one of the smaller Viking Nile ships which only has 32 cabins so 64 passengers. Our boat has 2 buses and the Egyptologist that is on the bus and goes on all the tours with you will be with us the entire trip.

Our first stop was the Sakkara Step pyramid. This is a pyramid we have not been to before. The Step pyramid is not your typical pyramid since it has “steps” and is not smooth. The Step pyramid is the world’s oldest known stone building, older than Stonehenge! The Step pyramid is stacked upon a sarcophagus 75 feet underground. The Step pyramid is 203 feet tall.

To get to the Step pyramid you walk through the entrance colonnade which is over 5,000 years old and mostly intact. There are 40 columns and they are not individual columns but engaged columns connected to the stone wall by masonry.

We had great weather for the visit. Partly cloudy with highs in high 60s.

Next we visited the tomb of Kagemni and Mereruka from 2330BC (4,300 years ago). To get to one of the tombs you had a slanted tunnel that lead 30 feet down and you had to bend over to go down the tunnel. There were several rooms when you got to the bottom but to see the actual tomb they wanted extra money so we opted against it. After being in the under ground city in Cappdocia I have had enough underground visits for quite awhile. I did not take any pictures down in the tomb because there was nothing to take pictures of. The 2nd tomb had tons of hieroglyphics that are in amazing condition for being as old as they are. They depict the life of Vizier Mereruka, his wife, and son.

We were impressed at the detail and color and the fact that the drawing had a necklace on.

There were walls of intricate hieroglyphics.

They even depicted dancing in their hieroglyphics.

Our next stop was to a rug factory. Viking does this more for the bathroom stop than to actually purchase rugs. The demonstration was interesting and they call if a “carpet school”, one of 40 in this area. They have lots of young boys there learning how to tie the knots to make the rugs. Instead of going to regular school they are attending trade school. It was amazing to see how fast they tied the knots to create the rugs.

Kathy in the show room. The sales people were very low key and left us alone when we said we were not interested in buying at all. We did see 2 people purchase rugs. The big ones you see in the back ground run about $4,000 depending on the material. There were 3 different types, the cheapest was wool, then Egyptian cotton and then silk. The price included shipping and handling.

After the carpet visit we went to lunch at a local place. On the way we passed lots of rural villages that used burros and horses as modes of transport. It was not unusual to see a burro pulling a cart full of produce down the street or people riding the animals into the village centre.

Everyone was very friendly

These women were fighting with their burro and pulling and pushing the cart up the hill.

Lunch was fresh pita bread, hummus, beets, eggplant, vegetables, kebabs chicken and rice. It was very good and they had dates for dessert.

Baking the pita bread. She gave you a piece fresh from the oven that was still warm.

Next and last stop was back up the Citadel that we went to yesterday.

All of the window decorations in the pictures were hand carved.

We took more pictures at the viewpoint.

We made it back to the hotel by 3:30 and agreed to meet up for dinner at 6:30 which gave us all a few hours to rest and relax.

We had dinner in the Japanese restaurant at the hotel, had great service and celebrated Kathy’s birthday. The food was very good. Micheal was feeling a bit under the weather so he skipped to rest up for tomorrow.

Dinner with the birthday girl and our wonderful server, John.

Tomorrow is another early day and we will go to the Egyptian museum and the Giza pyramids and sphinx.