Walk Like an American

We have spent 3 full days in Cairo and have so far learned that walking like an Egyptian entails slowly meandering across 5 lanes of quickly-moving traffic, being harassed by Egyptian men of all ages despite being accompanied by my husband, and turning down 9 out of 10 taxi offers. Still, Cairo is an exhilirating city and we are loving all the dizzying detail everywhere we look. It's not as hot as we had feared, even though today I got the first (and surely not the last) serious sunburn of the trip, nor is it as crowded as Manhattan at rush hour, but the rest of the rumors are true: it's crowded, dusty, and OLD!

We started off Sunday with a visit to the Egyptian Museum, which was really wonderful for placing monuments and buildings in historical context, which came entirely from our guidebook as the museum annoyingly doesn't label any of its items. The things we saw were staggeringly old and beautifully preserved, including intricate heiroglyphic carvings from 4,000 B.C. and the original mask and two caskets of the one and only King Tut. The Tutankhamun items were really amazing - such brilliant gold and gorgeous jewel inlay. Unfortunately, cameras aren't allowed at all inside the museum, so you'll have to Wikipedia everything for yourself. Another great feature of the museum is the Mummy Room - as creepy as you'd imagine but extremely cool at the same time to see the actual bodies - teeth, hair, and all - of the famous pharaohs that I barely remember learning about in school. I now have a renewed interest in brushing up on my world history.

We ended up at the Cairo Tower for the evening - a fairly new tower that's basically empty except for a rotating restaurant and viewing platform at the top. The views were excellent, but the smog prevented us from seeing all the way to the Giza pyramids.


After descending from the tower we searched, and searched, and searched for somewhere to have dinner, discovering that Cairo is not really known for its cuisine... there's this dish called koshari that involves macaroni, lentils, and tomato sauce, and that's basically all we could find for about 5 miles. Once we finally settled for some decent koshari, we swore to never again leave the hotel without our guidebook for suggestions.

We decided to spend Monday in Islamic Cairo, known for its old buildings, elaborate mosques, and sprawling markets. The Khan al-Khalili market really is amazingly dense, crowded, and huge, but there was really nothing there that we cared to buy, which did not take us long to discover.

It appeared to be a better idea to tour mosques instead, which turned out to be fantastic. They're such peaceful structures, designed to drown out the busy city. I loved the graceful archways and lanterns, and the ornate curls in all the Arabic design. I covered my head upon entrance, and was also given a smock and slippers to wear - pretty cute.

The best views in town were those from atop Bab Zuweila - miles of mud-colored apartment buildings and a thousand mosque minarets spread out before us. We stuck around up there for a while, and then dove back in to the amazing marketplace below.

The informal markets that line every street in the Islamic part of town are really spectacular. Every inch is crammed with women in burkas, goats, strange foods on carts, children, feral dogs and cats, you name it. There is so much to look at, smell, and absorb. Unfortunately this also means being looked at, which we were, a lot. This isn't an inherently terrible thing, but the Egyptian men aren't in the habit of keeping their thoughts to themselves, and they tried out their entire vocabularies of dirty English words as I walked by. It was all very non-threatening, but after a while the incessant "Lucky man, how many camels? Very beautiful I love you. (Lots more stuff I won't print here)" just became difficult to ignore gracefully. We managed as best we could, but Ben told a few guys off and overall it ended up taking away from the experience a little bit. A shame, because the markets really are so interesting.

After hours and hours of walking, we looked for a little relaxation, so we headed to the banks of the Nile and booked a felucca sailboat for an hour. Best Decison Ever. It was really such a wonderful hour. We cracked open the beers we'd quietly brought from around the corner and glided over the water at sunset, without a taxi offer, obscenity, or honking horn to be heard. At that moment, I think we'd have chosen to spend the rest of our six months on a felucca, if we could.

But there is no dinner on a felucca, so we went in search once more. This time, we followed the guidebook to a place featuring a "good and varied vegetarian menu, along with traditional Egyptian and international meat dishes." Sounded delicious! However, once we got there, we were given the choice between koshari with meat and koshari without - I am not making this up. 2 options.

In Egypt, we continue to live and learn. But we're having a fabulous time!