Cairo

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We landed (after 17 hours in transit) in Cairo around 10pm on March 30th (my birthday) and I couldn't ask for a better birthday present! Cairo is easily characterized as mass chaos on the roads: no speed limits and no regards for the lanes while driving, the whole honking at anything you fancy is interesting and walking anywhere on the road is normal (including during rush hour - which is always) so that crossing the street is like a real life game of Frogger! But, despite my reservations with it being a big city and all (I tend to prefer small places), I really loved it!

We spent the first day here wandering around a few markets and various neighborhoods and backstreets, we managed to get severely lost multiple times and probably walked close to 20km in the day. We visited the Egyptian museum, which has so many artifacts (most of which would be center pieces at exhibits at home) that it's overwhelming! We were invited into a perfume shop for tea (and of course to try and sell us something) and ended up coming out of there smelling like roses (quite literally). Did a little souvenier shopping and practiced my rusty bartering skills as well.

Our second day was spent at the Pyramids of Giza, where we took a horse and camel behind the pyramids... the grandness of the
pyramids is unimaginable and rather breathtaking. We managed to avoid the crowds for the most part, that is until we hit the Sphinx which was a complete gongshow of tourists! Amazing feats of engineering, especially for their time!

Our third day in Cairo was a Friday, which is the first day of the weekend for Muslims. Thus, the locals were out in force relaxing with us in in Al Azhar Park, in which we were approached by 10's of kids wanting us to take their photos with them and teach us some Egyptian dancing. We then spent a couple hours learning Arabic and having a picnic with a nice family from Giza... That evening, we hopped on a night train south to Aswan!

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Comments

[Barb Howard]

Cairo
Your third day in Cairo, at the park, reminded me of the great interactions that happen in travelling a foreign country. That must have been fun........and certainly memorable!