Honk like an Egyptian

I’m on the train now from Cairo to Luxor and what better time to do a little blog updating.

Our 5 days in Cairo….

Tuesday

Morgan and I land in Cairo at 3:15pm and immediately notice the heat. We go through the first part of customs then go to the ATM and get out 3000 Egyptian Pounds (LE). The exchange rate

is 5.5L

E to $1. Then to the bank to pay the $15 for a visa…no problems and I got my first visa in my passport. When we get through customs, Fran is right there waiting for us. I finally get to meet Fran, who I have talked on the phone many times with, and Morgan gets to see her friend after more than a year. Fran is the reason we are in Egypt as she will be traveling here for a month. We get Morgan’s luggage and then walk out and find our transportation to the hostel.

My first impression of Cairo is that it is hot and the traffic is INSANE. Jolene, a coworker of mine who has been to Cairo many times, told me about it but to experience it is something totally different. There are 21 million people living in Cairo and instead of expanding roads, they just make new lanes by driving all over the street. And they honk all the time. We spent a lot of time in cabs so the driving was a big part of the experience. We got to know all the different honks…ones for letting people know you are on the right, ones for asking to get out of the way and ones for being mad and telling someone to move their ass. I found the driving to be quite

exciting actually but you could

not pay me enough to drive myself.

When we arrived at our hostel, we found a very nice room with three beds and a bathroom. It had one window into the center of the building but that was ok. We relaxed for a bit and then went out into the downtown Cairo streets. The streets in Cairo come alive at night. It is like a festival, packed with people, cars honking, children of all ages, bright lights in shop windows. The streets are so packed; it is almost hard to move. The women are in all types of coverings from only their eyes showing to only faces to modern dress. We bought sat at a small restaurant and ordered a type of fruit drink that one of Fran’s friends told her about. We had said no fruit or vegetables in Egypt so we would not get sick and after ordering the drinks Morgan asked, “does juice count as fruit?”. Well, we drank them anyway just to test the

fates and we were ok so that’s something. We then bought some Egyptians sweets and went back to the room.

Wednesday

We woke up to find our sweets covered in ants. Lesson #1 in Cairo, use a refrigerator. We then walked to the Egyptian museum, got our tickets (THANK YOU DAD FOR THE STUDENT CARDS!!) and went in. The Egyptian museum is kind of like a storage space for all the amazing things in Cairo. There are statues everywhere and coffins stacked 3 high. There was so much stuff that it was hard to take it all in. The highlights were the section on King Tut (obviously), the humongous statues lining the downstairs and the animal mummies (dog, baboon, alligator, fish). We had lunch in the restaurant which we soon found out was extremely overpriced and stayed in the museum until we got kicked out at 430. We are in Egypt during Ramadan and everything closes earlier as people are fasting all day and praying.

We then went to Al Azhar park. This was the highlight of all of

Cairo for me. Jolene told me to go there at Sunset to hear the call to prayer so at 5 we headed over…we got an overpriced taxi (and when I say overpriced I mean we paid LE20 (which is $4) instead of LE10…we had not had our lesson in bargaining yet) which dropped us off at

the mosque instead of the park. We walked up and finally found the entrance and went to the top of the hill just as the sun was setting. We heard some prayers being said (they are projected through loud speakers) and thought that was it. We were enjoying the view of Cairo when the sun finally sunk below the horizon and we were hit with the most amazing sound. The entire city lit up with prayer, it took me by such surprise that I gasped. And then all I could do (as well as the 10 or so other people on the hilltop with us) was sit and try to take it all in. It was one of the top awe inspiring moments of my life. And during that sit I had a moment of complete clarity. My mind went completely blank…and then of course I noticed it and it was gone. Tha

t night we went to a restaurant that had been recommended to us by a few people called Felfela. It was a glorious meal of falafel, tahini, foul (traditional bean dish), hibiscus juice and Egyptian pudding. A great ending to a very good day.

Thursday

Today we were going to do both Saqqara pyramid and Giza pyramid but we got a bit of a late start. We got a taxi and agreed on a price of LE60 to go to Saqqara, wait for 45 minutes and then go to Giza. We drove all the way out to Saqqara through the outskirts of town. When we arrived after

finally finding where to get tickets, we found a much older style pyramid with a step design. We walked around the pyramid and through the smaller ruins in the area. On the way back toward Giza it was 2pm and we realized we didn’t have enough time to go to see the great pyramids so we asked George (our driver) to take us to Old Cairo. When we got there, it was closed. So then we asked to go to the market. We liked him so we arranged for him to pick us up at 9am the next morning to go to Giza. We then gave him LE100 for driving so much farther and he said no it was LE200. I gave him LE150 and we got out of the car. Lesson #2 renegotiate often. It is such a different world here with everyone pretending to be your friend and then taking as much as they can. We thought maybe we had screwed him and he would for sure not take us the next morning. We went to the market and got a few things and then Morgan taught us all about bargaining. She saw a dress and the salesman said 125 and she stuck to 60 and got him down to 75. That’s when we realized we needed to be firmer. We got a cab back to our place for 7 when the same ride had cost us 30 the day before. Lesson #3 bargain harder.

That night we had dinner at Café Riche, another fairly touristy restaurant. The best mousakah I have ever had! We invited a guy from NY, Matthew, to join us for dinner but he was a bit of a lone wolf and will do his own thing rather thank joining us to Giza tomorrow.

Friday

Today it is finally to Giza. We were going to take the night train out tonight but decided last night to slow down a bit and just hang in Cairo another night. At 9am there was a knock at the door that George was outside waiting for us. We were not ready so told them to ask him to leave. Guess we didn’t screw him so bad after all. When we told the hostel that we would stay another night, we found that they had already booked our room so we had to move rooms…we were on the 2^nd floor and moved over to the 4^th. Now we are street side so we have windows but we learn later that we also have the noise.

We headed over to the train station to get our night train tickets to Aswan (we did not book our

tour with the hostel but instead decided to do it ourselves) and while there we met Nicole and Luke from Perth Australia. They are going to Aswan tonight. We could not get into the ticket office because on Friday between 12pm and 1pm there is prayer and they happened to be praying in front of the door to the sleeper car office. Oh well, at least we found out that we have to pay for the sleeper car in US dollars so we can arrange for that.

Luke and Nicole said they would come to Giza with us so the 5 of us got a large taxi and headed out there. You have to understand that the great pyramids of Egypt are just on the outskirts of Cairo which is very strange. You can see them from the city. So we got there at 1pm and they closed at 3pm (for Ramadan) so in we went. As soon as you walk in, there it all is, the Sphinx, the pyramids, the camels…it was very surreal.

We walked all around the pyramids, had countless people bothering us to ride a camel (none of us did) and tried to just take in the greatness of it all. We were going to go in one of the pyramids but ran out of time. I actually feel ok not going in. I liked leaving it a mystery. Then we took a cab to a lookout were you can see all the pyramids and the city as a backdrop. It was quite lovely. After that we headed back to Felfela for dinner and then straight to back to the room to book some more of our trip. It is nice to have internet. We will stay at the same hostel as Luke and Nicole in Aswan so we will see them in a couple days. I am enjoying meeting people along the way!

Saturday

And today (at least today as I am writing this), today we got out of the room and then went to the train station and bought our tickets with ease. We then went to Old Cairo on the subway. The subway system here was quite nice and it was LE1 to go 7 stops. I was impressed. We walked all around Old Cairo and saw churches, a synagogue, old alleyways and a really old graveyard. It was really amazing. Then back to the hostel to wait until it was time for the train. While waiting we met a nice British couple named Amy and Josh who have been traveling through Asia for 5 months. They were on the train just before ours and we will probably find them in Aswan. They told us about Dahab which is a lovely beach spot that we were already thinking of going to. We will probably head there after going to Luxor.

When the train finally came and we have 2 double compartments. They are sharing one and I am sharing one with a young man from Bulgaria named Lubo. I was supposed to share with a woman but oh well. We have a door between our cabins which is nice. We are all very happy to leave Cairo. The hubbub of the city was a little too much for us and they say the pollution there is equivalent to smoking 30 cigarettes a day…it certainly felt that way.

I did have some good introspection time in Cairo. I am reading Radical Acceptance and am finding a lot of good things in it…but that writing I am saving for my personal journal.

Thanks for reading along.

Oh and just so everyone knows, there are mice on the trains in Egypt…even the sleeper trains. Morgan has the top bunk now J