The taxi dropped me off five minutes after the Giza Necropolis opened to the public. I arrived two hours before most of the tour buses, but the complex still felt crowded compared to some of my previous adventures through ancient ruins.

Cairo's dense metropolis edged against the ancient wonder. One the other side of the pyramids, the desert disappeared into the hazy horizon. Even though millions of people went about their daily lives less than a mile away from me, I felt a strange sense of isolation, a mystical sense of connection to history.

And so, I began to wander through the sand.

Walking next to the pyramids gave me a sense of my own insignificance in the scope of history. Stones as tall as me had stood here for 4,500 years. Unmoved. Unfazed.

Unreal.

After sweating out all the water I'd consumed that morning, I caught a taxi to Coptic Cairo, an old Christian enclave in the center of the city. I wandered through old churches before leaving the old city walls. I traveled through a neighboring mosque before I made my way back to the hotel along the Nile River. (My wifi-less navigation led me through some narrow alleyways with amazing street food.)

A two-mile walk along the Nile, some shawarma, and some Arabic soccer commentary on TV put me right to sleep.

The next day, I sped through the Egyptian Museum, catching as many mummies and hieroglyphs as I could. The museum felt like it hadn't changed since the 1920s; rooms lined with wooden boxes of sarcophaguses and ancient artifacts lined halls and rooms, shadowed by massive stone statues.

And then, I went to the old market: Khan el-Khalili. The narrow streets grew thinner as I weaved through the maze. Scents of spices and tea and bread filled the stone aisles and archways. (Naturally, I stopped for a few coffees in places that had been serving Arabica beans since before the United States was founded.)

As I wove my way back to the hotel, I saw a line in front of a small oven inside a subterranean shop. I decided to wait. And I'm glad I did. Whatever sweet bread I bought was the best thing I'd ever had.

I walked back to the hotel and the sun began to set. But the city came to life. I left the window open in my hotel, falling asleep to the chorus of car horns and chatter, a soundtrack to end my experience along the Nile.