Weather is good about 24 °C and the sky is clear.  Our guide picked us up at 9 AM and took us to see the Coptic churches in old town area of Cairo.  This section was formerly a part of a Roman fort built in 50 BC.  The bank of the Nile has moved away from this area over the centuries and now is a few 100 meters from the old Roman fort.  The government has done a big project to build a dike around this historical section to prevent ground water from seeping back to this area and to pump out the existing water.  They have successfully lowered the water table by 6-8 feet and exposed the original walkways and shrines.  The first Coptic church we saw was built on top of two old Roman towers and is called the floating church. The Egyptian Coptic church was founded by Saint Mark and they trace an unbroken line of bishops from him.  We refer to their head Bishop as the Patriarch of Egypt.  After looking at this Coptic church, our guide then lead us through the recovered passageways to another Coptic church which claims to be the oldest church in Egypt.  It was built over a shrine created by Queen Helen, mother of Emperor Constantine who converted the Roman Empire to Catholicism in 390 BC.  Queen Helen had heard the stories about the Holy Family fleeing to Egypt to avoid King Herod and took it on herself to find where they stayed and for how long.  She had many investigators interview people and recreate the route of the Holy Family.  She documented everything and then built shrines wherever they stayed.  One of these shrines is under this church and is now accessible since the water level has receded.  Imagine we were standing on the same steps the Holy Family may have used when they stayed here for a month.  Because of her efforts, many christians now come to Egypt on a pilgrimage to follow the Holy Family’s steps and visit each shrine.  Just down the another narrow street is an old Jewish synagog.  This synagog is famous because it is supposed to have been built on the spot where the baby Moses was discovered by the pharaoh’s servants along the edge of the Nile river.  So much history here in Egypt.

On to the famed Cairo Museum.  It has a massive collection of Egyptian antiquities.  Fortunately Bishoy, our guide, had studied here for 4 years and quickly showed us the good pieces.  You need a guide in here because there are very few signs in English and with so many pieces its hard to know what ones are significant.  The best exhibit is the treasures of King Tut’s tomb.  It is the only comprehensive set of objects they have from a pharaoh's tomb.  The grave robbers got to the other tombs.  The amount of gold they used for him is staggering - 119 kg of pure gold for his small casket.  Think of that at today’s gold prices!  We checked out the mummy room and it is okay if you know something about the pharaoh’s of that period before you see it.  Else they are just names.  Next nice lunch on a riverboat restaurant (a non-moving type of boat) and then back to the hotel to pack and get ready for tonight’s light show.  We went to the English light show at the pyramids and then back to the hotel for dinner and to wait for our driver to take us to the airport.  Yes we are both finally on our way home.

Several hours later we landed in Amsterdam to transfer to our SFO flight.  Nice to see a green countryside again.  Then a long 11 hour flight and we were in SFO.  While waiting for Denise to pick us up we found that the SFO International Terminal has a map of the world in the floor with disks for cities with major airports.  Here Kathy is kneeling at the Auckland disk, our first destination on our trip around the world.  As much fun as it was, Dorothy was right - ‘there is no place like home’.