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Published: September 14th 2008
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Today, the plan was simple. See the Egyptian Museum, see Islamic Cairo, and eat lots of food. And do this all at an extremely slow pace as our bus out of Cairo that night was at 10pm. So of course, we woke up late, sauntered rather than walked and got lost a few times just to fill in the time.
First up on the plate was to pick up some compulsory souvenirs and gifts for friends. One nice tourist item they have here is Egyptian perfume, which actually does smell pretty nice. Alas, my first experience with the perfume was not pleasant - the shop keeper gave me some and told me to 'taste it'. I had no clue what it was, and not wanting to offend, did simply that, at which, he exclaimed 'Perfume is not for eating!'. When he said 'taste it', he had meant 'try it'.
En route to the Egyptian Museum, we stopped off at Felfela - a restaurant highly recommended by the LP. Despite it being a package tour stop-over, the food was actually very nice. Top of the list was creme caramel - apparently a common Egyptian dessert imported from France. We also
One of many impressive archways
If you look carefully enough, you'll stumble across some great old architecture. If you don't look carefully, all ou'll see are souvenir magnets and hookahs. discovered that salad in Egypt doesn't necessarily mean vegetables. For example a tahini salad means bread with some tahini (which is extremely yummy). We also had some foul - which we expected to be chicken (as the name suggests) but turned out to be fava beans. For those who don't know what fava beans are - they are on the list of Egyptian things to try - but in our opinions are highly skippable.
So - the Egyptian Museum. I hate museums, ever since visiting the Louvre, it seems every other museum in the world can be expressed as a decomposition of some part of the Louvre. So it was at Melenie's behest that we went to the see the Egyptian Museum. How wrong I was. This museum has a LOT to offer - but could stand to be rearranged a bit. In particular, the first level looks like the attic of a middle-aged hoarding house wife who missed one too many spring cleanings. Picture items haphazardly strewn in all corners, most with no markings. Most are old, old, old items, and surprisingly are left unprotected from grubby tourist hands in open cabinets or just free standing. Our wanderings
of level 1 went very rapidly from 'whoa!' to 'ah, another room of old Egyptian stuff that looks just like the previous room'.
Level 2, on the other hand, is completely different. This level comprises mostly of items taken from Tutankhamen's tomb. And what a lot of items!! And these aren't the typical dinky little pieces of pottery and spoons that most other ancient civilizations have left behind. We saw intricately carved solid gold thrones, massive bejewelled sarcophagi and amazing pieces of art that still look as new as the day they were made. We aren't ones for appreciating art and relics - if you can't eat it, what's the point. But even we were compelled to wander that museum, jaws dropped open in awe. Even Tutankhamen's death mask (yes, that famous picture everybody has seen) was impressive.
Some less important little titbits of information. 1) Tutankhamen was a minor Pharaoh, and his tomb had a lot of amazing things. Just imagine what a real Pharaoh's tomb would have had. 2) When they discovered Tuti's tomb, things were not as you would have expected. The pictures showed basically everything strewn one-on-top-of-the-other ie. not carefully laid out as you
would have expected. 3. Ancient Egyptian jewellery looks a heck of a lot like the stuff you see sold in markets these days. We swear we saw one particular item selling for 10 rupees in India.
Next up was Islamic Cairo. This was attempt no. 2 to get to Khan Al-Khalili (
attempt #1 was a dreadful failure). This time we were successful. So the description in the Lonely planet - its wrong. That is - don't go expecting a 'well preserved medieval bazaar' as is promised in the LP. Yeah, there are lots of old buildings, but somehow shops selling souvenir magnets and pyramids simply kills that medieval air. Still - its a nice enough place to wander - and once we got into some of the smaller alleys, we did stumble across some beautiful archways. Perhaps the nicest thing we did though was to stop in a rather ritzy coffee house, called Mahfouz - swanky, not particularly Egyptian, but nevertheless a nice ambiance and most importantly air-conditioned.
By now it was getting late, so we swung by our hostel for a quick shower before heading off to the bus stop for an 8-hour overnight trip. Our destination for
Koshary
This is a must-eat in Egypt. A weird combination of pasta, fried onions, some kind of tomato-ish sauce. Quality varies depending on the restaurant - the best we had was some little filthy place near the citadel. the next morning was Nuweiba, a coastal village on the Red Sea from which we were going to cross over to Jordan by ferry. We were a tad worried, since we'd have to do this overnight trip with Sierra, our 4-month old - but she was a perfectly behaved angel.
En route to Nuweiba, the bus pulled up at the Israel border which was rather interesting. About 5 minutes before the border, the bus stopped and about 10 passengers were kicked off the bus by a rather aggressive security guy. We then headed up to the border, dropped a few passengers off, before coming back to pick up the castaways. Not sure what the reason for this was - but it had something to do with passports, because the security guy checked each passport prior to deciding whether to kick off a person. Possibly it has something to do with people from Arab countries - but then you would think Egyptian people would be subject to the same rules, since Egypt and Israel's tussle back in the 6-day war.
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