In fact, seeing the Egyptian Pyramids wasn’t even my top priority when I arrived. I wanted to see Cairo, the fabled markets and crowded streets and the legendary River Nile. Even a visit to the Red Sea ranked pretty high on my list. I figured the pyramids would be another stop on my tourist path, granted an awesome stop, but I hadn’t given them much thought beyond that.

My itinerary gave me one afternoon to wander around Cairo before flying to Sharm el-Sheik. When I returned to Cairo three days later I had a window seat on the aircraft and was awed by the desperately dry Sinai below and the sparkling Gulf of Suez, a dramatically incongruous conjoining of land and sea. A short time later my seatmate, who had been keeping up a pretty good stream of monologue while looking over my shoulder, bellowed: “The pyramids! The pyramids!”

Every soul on the plane now knew that the pyramids were visible out the left side of the aircraft. I looked and sure enough, there was a stout brown edifice rising from the desert just beyond the Nile. It was a thrill to see, but from the air it appeared less pyramidal than I expected, less impressive than I thought it would be. A moment into these thoughts I discovered why. Suddenly, a little farther north, two huge, perfect pyramids and a smaller third rose above the surrounding landscape. My breath caught.

They were gigantic. They dwarfed the crowded stretch of buildings composing modern Cairo that marched toward the Nile and then stopped, as if turned back by the grandeur of these ancient structures. The pyramids of Giza appeared to cover several square blocks, incomprehensibly vast monuments that towered above the buildings of today’s city, looking as if they could swallow whole neighborhoods without a burp.

I stared at those structures until they passed from view, contorting my body trying to keep them in sight. When they were truly gone I sat back feeling as if I’d just seen a man from Mars, proof of an afterlife, or an angel on the wing. I’d had no idea the pyramids had such power, and suddenly I knew I had to see them up close. I’m sure I wasn’t the first person to underestimate the accomplishments of the ancient Egyptians, and my visit to Egypt took on a whole new dimension.

Cairo’s traffic roared by, then slowed to a crawl, all accompanied by the blares, beeps, honks, and screeches of a thousand car horns and the periodic wail of music from the boats moored to the riverbank. Even in February the sun had the intensity to scorch my face; traffic fumes reminded me that despite the breeze off the water this is a congested, challenging city.

Cups lined up atop the river wall in rainbow colors with straws protruding marked a beverage seller’s stall. Another post a short distance away was a tea shop, glasses at the ready. Just the sight of them made me aware that I was thirsty, but that would have to wait.

A little farther on a round-faced man with a gap between his teeth sprawled in a plastic chair near a gangway. He caught my eye and gave me a smile that said, “Isn’t it a grand day to be alive?” while also giving a half-hearted, playful gesture toward his boat, acknowledging in his manner that this was not the time for us to go sailing, nor time for him to take out his boat. He was having too much fun sitting and watching the world go by, as we were having too much fun walking and doing the same. I exchanged smiles with him, then we moved along.

Fifteen minutes later we turned back, retraced our steps, and found him again in his seat.

“Hello, hello,” I said with a wave and a smile as we passed.

He smiled again, waved in return. “Welcome, welcome,” he answered, and we continued on our way, caught up in the symphony of car horns, beginning to understand that they had a language of their own.

Then the sound of music, energetic strings and the fast rhythms of a tabla pulled me on. It sounded live, so I poked my head around a corner looking for the source. Sure enough, tucked into a corner of the lobby that opened onto the restaurant a quartet of women dressed in headscarves were playing. One strummed a 12-stringed lute-like instrument called an oud, another plucked a flat zither-like instrument, a third bowed a cello, the fourth beat a tabla.

I stood and listened a moment until the restaurant host appeared and asked if I wanted a table. No, I didn’t, I just wanted to enjoy the music a moment.

“Here, sit,” he said, motioning to a nearby table.

“No, no need,” I replied, not wanting to occupy his space without ordering something.

“No, please,” he repeated as he moved toward the table, hand gesturing to a chair. When he pulled it out and turned it toward the musicians I gave in, sat, and enjoyed many moments of inspiring local music.

Later that evening, after a meal in the same restaurant, I headed for the elevator only to encounter another string quartet, this composed of four men, two violins, a viola, and a cello, playing a Mozart concerto. Their music filled the room and I stood, admiring, able to leave only when they finished the piece.

Our group parked ourselves at a hotel near the airport in Heliopolis after our long flight from the U.S. because we were planning to fly to Sharm el-Sheikh the next morning. When we drove into the city we saw block after block of uninspired apartment buildings, the kind of places called tenement apartments when I was growing up. All were reddish-brown to match the desert soil either by design or default, and puffs of dust blew down the wide boulevards as the bus made its way through noisy traffic.

Once we got checked in a few of us went for a neighborhood stroll to find something to eat. Crosswalks meant little so we joined the locals in challenging the speeding traffic, timing our bursts across the lanes so cars would only have to break hard rather than slam on them or run us over. In the first block we spotted a Starbucks and a Hardees, not exactly the local fare we had in mind. So we walked. And walked.

After several long blocks in the dusty wind we found not a single restaurant or café. Turning down a lane took us to a fruit and vegetable market where locals traded citrus and greens. A donkey stood immobile hitched to a cart, an apparent anachronism in a city full of speeding cars and satellite dishes.

We ended up making a big loop without finding a single place to eat until we got back to within a short block of the hotel, when we came upon a shawarma shop where the locals were getting their fast Egyptian food. A shawarma sandwich cost 7.50 Egyptian pounds, or about $1.50; a bowl of foul (beans) was about $.20. A huge serving of friend eggplant set back my friend Clark $1.50.

And it was all tasty. We dined well leaning against a wall outside, Egyptian dust swirling about us, marveling at our disoriented stroll and how we would have found sustenance within minutes had we turned left instead of right when we left the hotel. But then we would have missed our little adventure, of seeing a lot by seeing little of note, coming to know one corner of Cairo immersed in its modernity, while a stolid donkey took it all in.

The new structure is 4,300 years-old and archaeologists think it is the tomb of Queen Sesheshet, the mother of Pharaoh Teti, the founder of ancient Egypt’s 6th dynasty.  Mothers were greatly revered in ancient Egypt: another great teaching moment. The secret found in the sand is located at Saqqara, just south of the capital Cairo. This is the 118th pyramid discovered in Egypt, if you are keeping count. You can see a video about the discovery on the National Geographic website. I could also throw in the news of the latest pyramid found when my sons received their Lego magazine featuring a pyramid replica. They were more impressed than the three-year-olds and both said they wanted to travel to Egypt to see the real version of the Lego structures.

Some time ago I was traveling via taxi from the Manila airport to the center of the city and was amazed that the traffic seemed to veer all over the road, unmindful of lane markings or what car should be where. To an American (me) it seemed complete chaos, but to the Filipinos it was smooth as could be. Everyone’s awareness was on the vehicles around them, not on their “right” to the lane they were in. Later, in the city, I was further amazed to see that when too much traffic flowed in one direction and there was room on the other side of the road, drivers simply crossed the center line and took over a lane or two, so traffic coming the other way had to squeeze over. Again, madness to an outsider, but it actually allowed the traffic to flow faster.

This sort of cooperative driving is common the world over, and is true in Cairo, as Anthony Bourdain discovered on a trip where he communed with Bedouins, felt most comfortable deep in the desert, and empathized with the millions of Egyptians struggling to get by. Things seem to work out one way or another when people cooperate, even when times are tough.