Advertisement
Published: March 13th 2006
Edit Blog Post
We started our day by going to the Citadel.-which is the big walled complex on top a hill overlooking Cairo with the big Muhammad Ali Mosque (tomorrow we are going to the George Foreman Mosque…lol). It was home to Egypt’s rulers for over 700 years. You have to take off your shoes before entering the mosques, and I was proud not to be one of the women they had to shroud in cloth to cover up their bare legs, arms, and “chests.” (where’s the respect?? Or are they just plain ignorant?)
So then we were off to walk down to the famous Ibn Tulan Mosque (we walked because the taxi driver wanted to charge us $3 instead of $1-too much!). We passed a ton of school kids on their way that were heading for a field trip and they all were yelling “Hello” with huge smiles (some of the teachers were a little peeved). Several of the girls (like 12-13ish) were reaching out to grab me as they passed by..almost amazed to be touching an American! There was a teenage boy who had his camera and took our picture.
At the bottom of the hill was typical
Cairo life-guys eating gross crap at makeshift stands (good pics though!), tons of cars, people, horns, flies, cats, garbage, etc…We started going towards what we thought was the right direction (lonely planet book maps suck!!). We ended up on another “no-tourist zone” street. You can tell by it not being the normal 50% of people to completely stop what they’re doing to stare at you, but 85% of the people stop (kind of like our experience in Xian-best ever!). We were still looking for the mosque when we went up a dirt path and some Egyptian guy started talking and pointing. We were trying to say that we wanted to go to the Ibn Tulan Mosque-we thought he understood (but ya know communication between foreigners is a lot of “yes’s) So what did we do? We followed another Egyptian man as he weaved in and out of alleyways…BUT! He led us to the Northern Cemetery (that we weren’t planning on going to). There were lots of old mosques and tombs…the weird thing is that families have moved into these mausoleums (homeless) and live among the dead.
We followed this guy for like an hour and he stopped often for
Matt to take pictures. We gave him a couple of dollars, but we don’t think he would’ve cared either way. He then ran into his friend who knew what Ibn Tulan was (deciphered our butchering of “Ibn Tulan”) and our new friend began to show us the way. We of course crossed another 20 car road…all of a sudden he was pushing us to get on a “microbus.” A microbus is a mini-Scooby-Doo looking van that is packed with Cairenes (the sliding door remains open while driving). People hop off and on while still in motion. I have to say I didn’t want to get on, but the guy was nice and Matt seemed excited (great travel experience right? Don’t get to do that on a tour!)) Our “friend” paid our way and communicated for us….before we knew it we were there! He walked us to the entrance, we gave him another tip, and he left with a smile (who are we afraid of?).
Ibn Tulan was nice (shoes off of course). Matt climbed to the top of the Mineret for pictures; I decided to stay behind to plot our next course. Look at the pics…
We
Al Hussien Mosque
View from the Citadel spent the rest of the day at Khan-al-Khalili market and the outlying market areas. We got some more great pictures, met more nice people, and ate more good food (Egyptian Pancakes, Swarma, and Lebanese Alessa-yum). Matt got his equivalent of the famous National Geographic girl picture with those intense eyes. She was a sweetie who stopped to say the few English words she knew, and then happily posed for a picture…she’s going to be an Islamic knock-out when she grows up (worth 100 camels).
We had dinner at the very popular Abu-as-Sid restaurant. Matt had stuffed pigeon (tastes just like dark meat turkey-but there’s onlynenough meat on it for an appetizer) and I had Egypt’s national dish of Mollokeyna (garlic, spinach, oil -think pesto soup) The atmosphere is what made the restaurant…good music and really neat!
Tomorrow we are off to see Saqqara and the best of all…the Giza pyramids…can’t wait!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.047s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 6; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0244s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Troy
non-member comment
For Real
It is important that you put photos of yourself in the blog--otherwise I think your audience begins to wonder if you downloaded these pictures from the National Geographic website! All of your photos are amazing in quality--each one tells a story....and we feel like we are on the journey with you! Thanks for sharing!