Our last stop was at the papyrus institute then we drove back to the ship it was a 3 hr trip. Today was a long 12 hr day into Cairo Egypt , but well worth it.

This is our tour guide holding the papyrus plant.  The plant is cut and soaked in water for several days until it is soft and pliable to make the paper.

Soaking the plant in water.

This guy works at the Papyrus institute were they sell Egyptian writings and pictures on Papyrus paper that they make.  He is showing the plant in more detail and how they take the plant to make the paper.

They use special tools to make the plant thin after it has soaked.

Then they pound it flat with a mallet like this one.

they roll it out thin and weave it together

and it looks like this.  You can see the pictures in the background to see what the finished products look like.  It is very expensive because the process takes so long.  We bought a picture representing a marriage in Egyptian, then we got a small Cartouch picture with it.  They wrote the Egyptian symbols of all our family members on our picture and the Cartouch helps us to decipher what the letters mean.  It is fun to have.  When we were at the pyramids the vendors where trying to sell us pictures like these for cheap and they said it was real papyrus, instead it was banana leaves which are fake looking papyrus.  They do this because they think tourists do not know what they are buying.  We were told not to buy from these vendors because it is fake.