Travel: Visiting Egypt

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2090-2457081,00.html

I liked the tone of this travel piece - not a long article, but the writer conveys some of the feel of a first visit to Egypt (Cairo, Aswan and Luxor): "Strangely, as I discover the next day, proximity and daylight don’t make the pyramids more impressive. You marvel at how they managed without cranes: the largest of the trio, the Great Pyramid of Cheops (or Khufu, as Ingrid has taught us he is more properly known), was constructed from 2m blocks of stone and took 100,000 workers to build, according to one estimate. You want to be overwhelmed. But the closer you get, the more you lose any sense of scale. It takes a trip to the Cairo Museum for the reality of Cheops’ megalomania to sink in. There, in a nondescript glass case, you can see all that remains of the treasures once buried in the Great Pyramid, a 7-inch statue of the king. You almost feel sorry for him."

See the above page for the full story.