This was the day.

The day Egypt is famous for, the place that has lived in textbooks, documentaries, childhood imaginations, and adventure films: the Pyramids of Giza.— and somehow, even after all the anticipation, it still exceeded it.

No matter how many times you’ve seen photos, nothing prepares you for standing in front of them. They are impossibly there—huge, solid, ancient. The city hums behind you, and suddenly the desert opens in front of you.

We’d arranged a photo shoot with a local photographer, Emad Safwat, and it was heaps of fun. I felt like Charlotte in Sex and the City 2, riding a camel and getting a signal for her phone!

I also put together a small itinerary for the day and he brought along a guide for us. And to think I nearly cancelled the night before because I was so tired. The photos will come later and I can’t wait to see them.

We laughed, posed awkwardly with each other and with our camels, tried to look casual beside 4,500 years of perfection — and occasionally just stopped to stare.

Because the Camilla part of the trip is still a few days away, I chose my other fav brand – Nine Lives Bazaar (though I couldn’t resist throwing in a Camilla cape to wear for a few pics!)

Drama unfolded when we witnessed a full on fight between a camel driver and the tourist police. The police wanted money and the driver said no. Corruption! The tourist police are there to protect tourists from the scammers.

Back to the pyramids…

Im not going to give you all the historical information you can get in a million other places. All I will say is that it blows me away that these monuments to three kings, were already ancient when Cleopatra was playing Caesar and Mark Antony. They have a presence you can feel more than describe. One minute you forget they’re there and the next you can’t believe your eyes – You look up, and they look back — timeless and utterly unmoved by the centuries of wonder around them. Imagine the things they have seen!

Face to Face with the Sphinx

The Sphinx has seen it all — pharaohs and phalanxes, Napoleon’s troops, British battalions, and Australian boys bound for Gallipoli. Millennia of armies, prayers, and wanderers have passed before her gaze, and still she endures — silent, unblinking, eternal. And now she sees us.

As a teacher of history and especially World War One, it’s impossible for me not to think about the layers of history here. Just over a hundred years ago, young Australian soldiers pitched their tents across this same sand, gazing up at the Pyramids while waiting for orders to Gallipoli.

Many were seeing the world for the first time; some would never go home again.

You can almost picture them — sunburnt, restless, writing letters by lantern light under the gaze of the Sphinx, unaware that they were about to become part of another chapter in history.

Coptic Cairo

Afterwards, dusty and sun-happy, we drove to Coptic Cairo — the city’s spiritual heart long before Islam shaped its skyline.

The narrow lanes and old stone walls felt worlds away from Giza’s wide horizons.

Wandering through the Sultan Hassan Mosque, where stone geometry meets soaring space. We walked old market lanes filled with brass lanterns, spices, and call to prayer drifting over rooftops. Cairo here feels layered and lives in and endlessly alive .

We visited the Hanging Church, its ancient wooden roof floating above Roman ruins.

Then the church of St Sergius and Bacchus, Christian Martyrs, which is said to be built over the cave where the Holy Family once sheltered while they were fleeing from King Herod.

and finally the Ben Ezra Synagogue, quiet and elegant which was once a Christian church, but sold to the Jewish Community. Unable to take photos inside so image is from Google.

The air inside each space felt different: incense, candle wax, cool stone, the hum of history.

Between stops, we ate shawarma in the car — a very Cairo move. A far cry from my envisioned lunch overlooking the pyramids but it was delicious, messy, perfect.

Islamic Cairo

Later, we wandered through Islamic Cairo, weaving through Khan el-Khalili’s maze of alleys and spice-scented air.

We didn’t go into any mosques this time — it was enough to stand in the streets and feel it all moving around us: sound, scent, light, life. School kids stared at us. Some said hello. Josh tried to amuse them with the ‘6 7’ meme. The universal language of school kids. He got one response.

The Sultan Hassan Mosque rises with elegant geometry—arches, vaults, stone that holds centuries of prayer.

Amed returned us to our hotel and By sunset, we were content and quiet, sitting on our rooftop watching the sun go down and listening to the Call to Prayer finding its way above the noise of the traffic and the unrelenting car horns.

We had a pizza and a beer and called it a night, our tired jet lagged bodies not keen on heading out to dinner somewhere.

It was a day of wonder – a wonderful day. It felt like we’d seen Cairo not as a single city, but as a thousand layered worlds — ancient, sacred, human, all coexisting under one wide desert sky.