I bring this up because that's the closest I can come to describing the mad calamity of Cairo. Each night in our hotel room we hear the volume steadily increasing outside. It starts getting crazy about Noon, by 5:00 it is sheer madness, and it stays that way until about 3:30 A.M. Our room was on the 7th story, but the height does little to deaden the noise. The sounds don't so much "drift in off the street" as come crashing through the windows to slap us across the face.

Despite the annoyances, Cairo has a lot to offer the visitor. Foremost are the big three: the Egyptian Museum, the Pyramids at Giza, and Khan al-Khalili, the bazaar.

Khan al-Khalili is in eastern Cairo in what is known as the Islamic section. While all of Cairo is Islamic, this part of town takes its name from the extraordinarily high concentration of mosques. Walking down the old narrow streets and peering up through the smoke wafting out of coffee-houses, seeing the minarets reaching into the hazy sky, one feels transported to another world. Specifically -- though this dates me as a child of the George Lucas generation and also as sort of a geek -- it reminded me of that spaceport on Luke's home planet where we first meet Han Solo. Cloaked figures, strange looking food, and all.

We dove headfirst into Khan al-Khalili and were quickly lost. I had expected the kind of thing we'd seen all over Asia: a town square covered with makeshift tables and stalls. Instead this bazaar was a town in itself. Three-story buildings were placed so close to each other at times you could reach out and touch one on each side of the street. It was a gigantic medieval maze. Alleys looped back on themselves. Streets grew smaller and smaller and then came to an abrupt end.

There were still plenty of traditional goods for sale, but much of the eastern side (the part where the tour buses drop off hordes of western suckers) is now given over to such priceless treasures as pyramids that you shake to make snow, Cleopatra lighters, and every imaginable form of papyrus art. Though, come to think of it, I guess I didn't see any Elvis papyrus. There are block after block of gold and silver merchants and a fair sprinkling of rug dealers. I have a pretty good sense of direction, but it took us hours to find our way out of the market and back to our hotel.

The Egyptian museum was next on our list, and Sarah and I spent the better part of a day exploring its dusty halls. By the end of our 5 or 6 hours we felt like quite the Egyptologists. The museum houses some of the world's greatest treasures, but unfortunately they are housed in some of the world's worst exhibits. Most of the items are poorly lit (if lit at all) and are placed behind thick slabs of warped glass made translucent by decades of noseprints and dirt. The labelling system is severely lacking, and the few items that do have labels are stunningly unhelpful. For example, a label next to a tall, thin-necked vase might say "Tall, thin-necked vase" without any allusion to date or location of manufacture or discovery.

Without question, Kig Tut's treasure is the star of the museum. Sarah and I headed there first, like everyone else. It was good loot. After reading about what a minor pharoah Tut was and how small a burial chamber he had, I was amazed at the amount of stuff they had. His gold masks, coffins, and thrones were impressive of course, but some of the lesser items like the gameboards and model ships were almost more interesting. And did you know that the ancient Egyptians had boomerangs?

Other areas of the museum offered some good surprises. There was the animal mummy room with mummified dogs, monkeys, even alligators. I also liked the room with the everyday objects like fishhooks, combs, and mirrors. Somehow, seeing those personal items transported me back in time more effectively than the fanciest of golden thrones. There were also the gut boxes.

Turns out, when they mummified people they first removed the liver, lungs, intestines, and stomach. Each of these was mummified seperately, placed in a miniature golden coffin, which was then placed in an alabastor jar, and finally these four "Canopic jars" were places inside an elaborate box (aka "gut box") that was prominently displayed in the deceased's tomb. The gut boxes (I forget their official name) were some of the prettiest things we saw.

I overheard a guide explaining the mummification process to his group. One of the people asked what they did with the brain, and the guide explained that a spatula was carefully inserted through a nostril into the brain cavity. The priest used this spatula to carefully scrape all the brain matter away from the skull. Then another hook-like device was inserted into the other nostril, and this hook was used to gently pull the entire brain out through the nose. I think in modern times this can only be achieved by watching too many Steven Segal movies.

We saved the big kahuna, the Pyramids, for last. The pyramid site is located just to the west of Cairo, and the city now stretches all the way to the based of the Sphinx. It is possible to take a city bus the whole way there, but Sarah and I also wanted to see some other sites further out of town, so we booked an over-priced private tour with guide and driver for the day.

We began the day by heading about 20 km south to Memphis, Egypt's first capital as a united country. Nothing remains of the old city, but a small museum houses some impressive statues including a giant granite statue of Ramses I. From Memphis it was a short drive to Saqqara, our first taste of ruins-in-the-desert. Saqqara was a graveyard for Egypt's first pharoahs, and as we all know, those boys liked a bit more than a simple tombstone to mark their resting place.

Saqqara has an impressive array of temples and tombs spread out over about 7 km of desert. Most noteworthy, it is home to Egypt's first-ever pyramid.

Around 2700 BC, the Egyptians began using stone instead of mud bricks to build their monuments. This made them more durable, but it also allowed the architects to design larger and more elaborate structures. When it came time for King Zoser to build his funeral complex, he first followed the style en vogue at that time, which consisted of a large rectangular building resting on top of the burial chamber, dug into the ground below. After completing what was basically a pharonic equivalent of a single-wide, Zoser was unimpressed. He asked his architect to spruce it up a bit, and his idea was to add another layer of bricks on top, slightly smaller than the one below. This went off without a hitch, so they added another, then another. When it was done they had a 6-story "step pyramid", instantly recognizable as a pyramid (though stepped instead of smooth) and inspiration to his successors who in typical male one-upsmanship made their own larger and sleeker. But Zoser's was the original and it is still standing there today.

From Saqqara we headed north to the pyramids at Giza, one of the great wonders of the world.

Only not quite. Apprently the fact that Sarah and I were the only people on our tour didn't exempt us from Nelson's First Axiom of Third-World Tours, which states that all tours must make at least one unwanted and unannounced stop at a gift shop selling locally produced "art" of some kind.

Our driver pulled over at Cleopatra's Carpet School "so we could learn how they make carpets" and shoe'd us inside. There we were met by a tall man with sleepy eyes who said "I am zee teacher" then led us into the basement where his "students" (6 year old kids) were slaving away at some oriental carpets. I am not quite sure where the Egyptians got the idea that actually showing you the underage slave labor at work would inspire you to buy their product, but it seemed a common thing. After refusing every carpet in their showroom and resuming our drive north, we passed The Pyramids Carpet Institute, The Sphinx School of Carpets, and innumerable other variations of the school/sweatshop euphamism.

We could see the pyramids from a long way away. Through Cairo's murky air they still looked new with sharp clean edges and no imperfections. Not until we drew closer did the wear and tear of four millenia appear. Cairo lies in floor of the Nile valley and, nurtured by its waters the valley is green and fertile. But as we climbed up out of the valley to the Giza plateau, we crossed a sharp line out of the green fields and into a rocky nothingness that makes the Sonoran desert of Arizona look like a rainforest.

The pyramid complex includes three big pyramids, six smaller pyramids, the Sphinx, and a variety of temples, ancient causeways, and other ruins. From the plateau you can look east into the smog of Cairo, or look south across the desert to the distant point of other pyramids on the horizon. Several people I've spoken with have expressed their disappointment with the pyramids, that they weren't as impressive up-close as they'd always imagined, but Sarah and I were plenty impressed. They looked big, like amazing feats of engineering. I guess they were a little plain, but then again that is part of their appeal, isn't it? A basic geometric shape done on a massive scale. Modern art, but a long time ago.

The Sphinx was a bit of a disappointment. It was small and mangy, appropriate I guess for all the small and mangy cats that roam the streets of Egypt. The restoration work just made it look mangy-er, like a bad patchwork quilt.

There were throngs of tourists and throngs of locals trying to sell this and that. It was funny to watch the wrinkled old Arab men on their camels selling camel rides. They spoke several languages and switched effortlessly between them as different groups walked by. Wie geht's! Nur zehn pounds auf fahren! Bonjour! Welcome! Camel ride?

Having completed our triumverate of siteseeing, we booked a sleeper train to Luxor. As we chugged out of the station a few hours ago, I must admit I wasn't sad to bid the city goodbye. I am nursing the worst cold I've had in years, and Cairo's horrible pollution and sleepless nights aren't exactly a soothing balm. Maybe it's my cold talkin', but for the first time on this long trip of ours I looked with a bit of envy at those tour groups being whisked in air-conditioned comfort from their sterile 5-star hotels directly to the attractions. Normally that's not the case. Usually, Sarah and I are glad to walk the streets and smell the smells, to find the stuff that isn't in the brochure. But now, with this cold and with that pollution, room service at the Nile Hilton sounds pretty good.