Walk Like an Egyptian

the Nile River

One of the first things we noticed when we arrived in Cairo (besides the heat, sand, and crazy traffic), was the way in which the locals cross said crazy traffic. There are crosswalks, but few traffic lights and certainly no crossing signals. Instead, people just kind of wander across the middle of the road wherever they see fit. We're talking 4 or 5 lanes of traffic, already weaving around each other wildly. At first we were terrified, but we eventually realized that at least the cars will swerve generally to miss you (not a guarantee everywhere) and you just have to go for it. Confidence is key. Hesitation gets you smashed. Slowly we've gotten better at it and by now we are as savvy as the locals and just cruise through the traffic.

We spent a total of 4 nights in Cairo. I don't have to tell you it is a chaotic city, so we needed some time to rest and decided to take our time seeing the sites. Our first day we walked over to get our first glimpse of the Nile river and check out the Egyptian Museum. We told ourselves in Europe that we would get a guidebook before coming to Egypt so we would know a bit of history and know what we're looking at. There was a great travel-themed book store in London, but the guide books cost almost $30 bucks! Cheapness prevailed and we instead bought a book called "A Traveller's History of Egypt" ($15). We've been reading it, but it's kind of hard to get through as it is a little too scientific and not enough narrative. This pharaoh replaced this pharaoh and so on and so on. Still, there are some interesting facts and it's good to have a general idea of the history of the region. So, we were at least partially prepared for our visit to the Egyptian Museum. It is a apparently famous museum, though surprisingly low-budget even by Egyptian standards. There's tons of artifacts packed in there and most of them aren't even labelled. Many of them are literally sitting on the floor or on wooden pallets. Still, there was some fascinating stuff and we especially enjoyed the King Tut room. We got to see the beautiful gold headress he was buried in as well as his first and second coffins (and that's not even all of them). All intricately carved, made of gold, with precious stones and gems adorning them. They also had a lot of the jewelry and riches that were buried with him.

Egyptian Museum

King Tut's headress

Another notable thing from the museum were the mummies - and not even the human mummies (they cost extra), but the animal mummies. I never knew that animals were mummified, but it was apparently a very popular thing during the Late period which started around 600 B.C. Apis bulls, falcons and ibis (wadding bird with a long beak) were the most popular as these were associated with gods they worshipped. In one temple not far from Cairo, archeologists apparently found apis bulls that were entombed in magnificent stone sarcophagi, along with the mummies of hundreds of thousands of falcons and one and a half million ibises. Woah. We got to see mummies of these as well as snakes, monkeys, fish, and even crocodiles.

Another popular tourist site is the Khan Ali-Kalili market in old-town Islamic Cairo. It's a huge maze of shops and bazaars that almost exclusively caters to tourists. You can get spices, perfumes, clothing, jewelry, antiques, plus all the touristy trinkets that seem to appear everywhere people go on vacation. Who buys that stuff? I found the antiques stores to be pretty interesting, though most of them were essentially the same with old cameras, coins, some undoubtedly fake Egyptian statues, and so on. Actually some of the coins were interesting and appeared to be old Roman or Greek coins, but I'd be very surprised if they weren't fake. If you knew what you were looking for and were able to spot fakes I'm sure you could find some good stuff if you looked long and hard enough. We, unfortunately, don't have a clue what we're looking at so we didn't buy anything except a little hibiscus tea by Steph.

mosque

Overall Cairo was great, though 4 days is plenty. It's certainly the most exotic city we've ever been in. The first morning we were there, sitting on the balcony of our hotel having breakfast and watching and listening to the chattering traffic below when the Muslim prayer calls starting blaring over speakers positioned throughout the city. It was just bizarre to be in a place like this. We have to watch what we wear more carefully, especially Steph, but otherwise it's got all the comforts of home. The food has been pretty good so far - we really like the restaurant called Gad across the street where Steph can get a bowl of spaghetti for under $1 and I can get a 1/4 chicken, macaroni and some coleslaw for about $3. Whenever we want something more familiar, there's always McDonald's. I don't know how they do it, but their french fries taste the same everywhere we've been. No Starbucks to be found, though. We saved our last full day for the crown jewel - the pyramids of Giza, just about 30 minutes south of the city center. For simplicities sake, we let our hotel organize a driver for us the day and went to sleep preparing for the last remaining (even if it's the oldest) of the Seven Wonders of the World...