Cairo

We arrived at Ramses train station just before lunch after a night of the bathrooms/smoking area door handle falling off every time someone opened it. And they opened it a lot, especially seeing as they were mostly 2, if not 3 pack a day smokers. There was one guy who must have smoked 3 packs that night! He went in every 10 or 20 minutes, smoked at least 3 cigarettes then came back to sit with his young children. A few times he brought his 2 year old daughter with him and let her sit on a ledge and drink soda pop while he smoked in her face. Did I mention that there are few elderly people in Egypt?

Anyways, when we arrived in Cairo the students who bought our tickets lead us out into the street and got us a cab before saying goodbye and disappearing into the crowds. We got to our hotel fairly quickly seeing as we just missed the noon till 5:30 pm rush hour (those times were quoted to me by a Cairean, I'm not being sarcastic!) although there are traffic jams anytime of day. Once we were settled in our hostel we went out for a walk in Downtown Cairo. Downtown is different from the rest of Cairo because it is full of old, attractive European architecture, rather than boring apartments for miles and at first, you do not notice the smog although when you look down the street at something a few hundred meters away and find that you can hardly see it, it makes you realize whet a great job Canada is doing of keeping old clunkers off the roads. The Downtown is full of cheap eateries that serve the same Egyptian food, at the same cheap prices in modern almost fast food style restaurants. Our favourite was a place called Felfela, you could buy a fuul (bean) or felafel sandwich for between 1 and 2 L.E. (about 25 cents) and anything with meat would put you back about 10-15 L.E. (2-3 dollars). There was also a juice shop where you could get a fresh squeezed orange juice made using the juice of 3 or 4 oranges for 3.50 L.E. (50 cents).

On our first full day in Cairo we started off by going to the Egyptian Museum. The museum was amazing, the sheer number of artifacts is staggering. Tutankhamen s treasure was great, but my favourite section was the collection of Papyrus, some of them had translations which were very interesting, mostly documents about land ownership. They also had limestone rocks found in the valley of the kings which were covered in what were essentially doodles done by tomb diggers and hieroglyphic carvers in their spare time. Another interesting part was the mummified animals exhibit, including mummified snakes, rams, cows, alligators, baboons and birds.

Later that afternoon we visited Coptic Cairo, the Christian area of the city. There were many quaint, unassuming churches and narrow, winding alleys. There was also a cemetary where the tombs were all like little houses, it felt more like a quiet neighbourhood. A little too quiet.

Our second day in Cairo was devoted to the Pyramids. We took the bus from downtown down the 10 km long Pyramids road. The entire 10 km felt like we were in the city centre. With 25 million people and still rapidly growing, Cairo is massive. When we arrived in the parking lot which was surprisingly low on tour buses, we walked up the road about 200 metres to the entrance, we had taxi drivers telling us it was 5 km the entire walk. It's not as if the pyramids were hidden around the corner and we couldn't see them, they're pretty obvious from anywhere in the vicinity. Once we had bought our tickets and walked the gauntlet of camel drivers we arrived at the foot of the great pyramid, well, all I can say is that it is really big and triangular. The site invokes a sense of awe and mystery. We walked around a bit, saw the Shinx (which was not in as good a condition as I would have hoped) and went inside the smallest of the three pyramids. Going inside was pretty cool, there was not much to see but the steep, narrow passage down was fun and It's an interesting feeling, knowing that you are in the heart of a pyramid.

When we had had enough pyramids for one day, we drove back along the same road. The traffic was so bad we got out halfway and took the metro back. The Metro in Cairo is a bit like the metro in Delhi, although about twice as crazy. Consider yourself lucky if you get on the first train that comes, it reminded me of a wrestling match. When you do get on, the cramped, hot carriage that reeks of B.O. is not much relief from the fighting to get on, and if you were actually thinking of getting off the metro well, good luck.

On our last full day in Cairo we decided to tackle the crazy walk to Khan el Khalili, the medieval bazaar.

The walk starts off easy enough, about 20 minutes through the heart of downtown, but when you cross over Medan (square) Ataba, It becomes completely different. It's not as if you will get lost or anything, you follow the same road the whole way there, it's just that this is the most densely packed area of Cairo. You cannot lose focus for one second while you dodge cars, pedestrians, hawkers and cats. When we arrived in the market we bought a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice and headed in. The medival buildings were very nice but the market was all touristy and full of touts so we didn't hang around long. We walked all the way back and I bought some dried dates for 8 L.E. (1.30$) a kilo.