4 Famous Landmarks That Look Nothing Like You Think | Cracked.com

4 Famous Landmarks That Look Nothing Like You Think | Cracked.com

Add to that list: The Sphinx.

First of all, it basically sits in some guy's backyard. If you look at it from one angle, it is backed by the endless, mysterious desert. From another angle, you can see the nearest Ben and Jerry's. (I'm exaggerating about that, but you can really see retail businesses and urban sprawl.) That house, by the way, is on two corners (it spans a block). One is the corner of Al Ahram and Al Ahram, and the other is the corner of Al Ahram and Al Ahram. I'm not kidding. There's nothing unusual about that. Almost every street in that part of Cairo is Al Ahram (which means The Pyramids, I guess). There's probably some subtlety there, some distinction that I don't understand, but I took away two important lessons from my time in Cairo: (1) Don't even think about driving around there on your own because the whole city is an inscrutable maze; (2) The postmen there are underpaid, no matter how much they make, if they really get the mail to the right people.

Second, my first reaction was, "This can't be the real Sphinx. It must be a model that they show people to keep the real one from deteriorating." It was much smaller than I expected because most of it is below ground level. There was nobody guarding it when I went there, and no fence between me and the ancient wonder, so I could have gone down into the hole and touched it if I wanted to. I was also the only tourist there. Just me, a guide, and Sphinxy. For a small bribe to my guide to look the other way, I could probably have broken off a hunk of the world's oldest monument.