First Encounter with Cairo

---

I just returned to Boston from a week's holiday in Cairo and really had a marvelous time. It took me a long time to make up my mind about going there. In fact, I had thought about it for years. But, with the terrorist bombings of tourists at major Egyptian tourist areas in the past few years, and the Gulf Wars going on, I wasn’t quite sure if that was the place for a single American woman to travel on her own. But, rationalizing my desire to go to this exciting destination with the often used adage that the chances of me being attacked by a suicide bomber was less of a probability of me being struck by lightening, I decided to give Cairo the go-ahead.

At first glance, Cairo is not what I had originally thought it would be as no place is ever what you have imagined it to be when you get there. After the initial relief of making it past airport customs without being arrested and put in some nearby “Midnight Express” type jail due to the vitamin pills that I was carrying in my luggage, I was stuffed rapidly into a hotel taxi, and whisked out of the airport parking lot. I masked my growing sense of disappointment upon first viewing the city with it’s tall, European style architecture interspersed with minarets and the occasional mosque covered in soot or smog or whatever the coating is that gives everything a perpetually grey look as we slowly made our way through the quagmire of inner-Cairo that is commonly known to Westerners as a traffic jam by saying enthusiastically to the taxi driver, “wow, Cairo is really something!” Since it is half the size of New York City and has twice as many people, along with accompanying cars and assorted donkeys and horses, the streets are quite crowded. I also noted that many Egyptians must walk a great deal because there were shoe stores on almost every corner. In addition, there was also a distinct lack of westerners anywhere I looked and wondered nervously where all of the tourists were.

My taxi driver asked me what country I was from and after being rather ambiguous about my origins and wondering if I could play up my German and British accents sufficiently well enough to have him think I was European, I reluctantly decided to tell him the truth and he cried out, “Oh, I love Americans!” Then he proceeded to lament being an Egyptian and having to work 12 hours a day to support his six kids and a wife, while telling me that in comparison to life in Egypt, life is such a piece of cake in America. Since he sounded so knowledgeable about the socio-economic situation in America, I asked him if he had traveled there, and he replied that he hadn’t, but had seen this on television. Notwithstanding that I suspected that his life was less of a piece of cake than mine in America, I began to suspect that this was a ploy to gain my sympathy so that I would give him a bigger tip than I normally would have. So, I shrewdly countered his statements by replying that I also worked 12 hours a day in America (which has been true on many occasions) and really could empathize with his situation. The common ground that we reached here made him view me more as a peer than a rich tourist, which I definitely was not, although I did end up giving him a pretty good size tip.

One thing which you notice immediately in Egypt is the multitude of security and police. There are hordes of them on every street, fully armed to protect their citizens and tourists (tourism is their main source of income) against fanatical attacks and bombings. This provided me with both a sense of comfort as well as a feeling of foreboding as I hoped that they were not corrupt. One corrupt cop can be easily handled but what about this number? I searched through my wallet to make sure I had enough Egyptian pounds on hand to stave them off just in case.

Upon arrival at the hotel, you must bypass a security screening where they search your bag. This is always a point of phobia for women as no woman likes people to go into their pocketbooks; goodness only knows what you’ll find. But, I relented in the name of security as tight security is actually good to have, as some attacks in the past have occurred at major hotels. They were also very nice about it.

I stayed at the hotel that I had booked online. The hotel (not named for fear of being a spammer) is the first 5-star hotel built in Cairo and is a landmark, is centrally located (kind of, as Cairo is rather decentralized really), and is adjacent to the Egyptian Museum. I highly recommend this hotel as it quite lovely and well-designed. I also found my spacious 12th floor room with its Egyptian motif overlooking the city to be very comfortable and the service excellent. There is a panoramic view from the balcony that is quite awesome in the evening when the lights go on in the city and envelope all the buildings and Egyptian Museum in twinkling lights, and the calls to prayer from the minurets echo through the night. In the hotel, there are a number of great shops selling any manner of Egyptian goods (that are also pretty pricy); a number of restaurants including one which stays open 24 hours a day; a bank, a travel agency, a beauty salon and, in short, all of the amenities of any 5-star hotel. I was also very impressed by the fact that every time I called any of the different hotel services they immediately knew my name upon answering the phone. It was truly an experience in roughing it.

There was only one place in the hotel that I didn’t like: the Food Court. Since I travel quite a bit and am on a budget, I am inevitably drawn to food courts. On my first evening in Cairo, I was very excited to find out that one existed and hurried to see it. It was located in the lower floor of the hotel, was dark and cold, and did not appear to have any customers or any open kiosks. One lone server finally appeared from the back and asked me what I would like to eat. Although, I didn’t really want to eat there, for the sake of appearances I ordered a couple of kebobs, but kept looking over my shoulder as I ate to make sure no one else was going to come up behind me from the gloom. Unlike my meals at some of the other hotel restaurants during my stay, this was kind of a sinister dining experience.

If you book an executive room as I did, you are eligible for club privileges, which, among other things, translates to a wonderful buffet breakfast complete with smiling chef and staff, to include both western and Egyptian fare; full buffets of meats, eggs, fish, cheeses, fruits; yogurts, and pastries that you partake of while gazing at a lovely view of the Nile with its banks of palm trees and Nile cruise and dinner boats each morning. The service is so good, that in the end you become somewhat hostile as you have to fight off the waiters from pouring any more coffee in your cup and forcing you eat another croissant.

---