First full day in Cairo, Egypt


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Africa » Egypt » Lower Egypt » Cairo
August 4th 2010
Published: September 22nd 2010
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August 4th

The next day my new friend, Alex, and I got a late start after Samer had left his home early in the morning to get to work. After having a quick breakfast Alex and I headed to the Ma’adi metro station to catch the train into town, all the while trying to make plans with another local CouchSurfer named Shady.

We ended up at Midan Sadat square, a very popular and well known place in Cairo. We though we would meet Shady there but ended up making plans to meet him at the Citadel. The heat that day was excruciating, I can remember spending 15 minutes debating with Alex if we should take a taxi or bus to the Citadel. Good thing we had it my way and paid $2 to go to the Citadel, we would have been in a hot bus for an hour or more to get where we wanted to go.

After we got dropped off at the Citadel we headed up the stairs towards the entrance. On this particular day there happened to be a movie set and a big production going on for a Ramadan TV series. There were a couple well known actors (I can’t remember their names) but we got to see them do a couple scenes before we met up with Shady and Aanas.

So the four of us then went inside the Citadel compound to check out the Mohamed Aly Mosque and other sights located in the area. The mosque was amaaazing, the photos I took don’t really do it justice. It’s one of the oldest mosques in Egypt and the world so it was pretty humbling to be able to go inside and just look around at the interior or a place soo ancient. Shady gave us tidbits of information before we went outside to walk around the exterior of it more. On the outside there was also an amazing view of Cairo which I really enjoyed. You can see a video of the view here. There were a couple museums to check out including the National Police Museum which was pretty strange, nothing extremely interesting, though it did seem like they had an old building and wanted to put it to use so they said “Ahh what the hell make the police happy and throw some guns and uniforms in some display cases and call it the National Police Museum”.

After the police museum we went to the National Military Museum which was 1000x more interesting. There were all sorts of military paintings, artifacts and maps that dated back many centuries. It would have taken hours and hours to get through the whole museum reading every detail and understanding the bad translations from Arabic to English but we went through it in about an hour.

We left the Citadel area after a quick visit to another mosque on the Citadel premises, our next destination was the Old Islamic Cairo. Basically an area that you would expect to see in a movie about Egypt. Small, narrow streets with markets everywhere and everything for sale, spices, perfumes, knives, shisha pipes, gold, silver and tons of clothes. It was bazaar central and really cool to walk around, although we did get lots of attention being foreigners, kind of annoying. After walking around a bit and getting a bite to eat we met up with Alex’s friend from Jordan. The five of us headed to a mosque in the Old Islamic Cairo and passed the time inside for a bit before sitting on a bench outside to watch the passersby.

We talked for a bit but as the sun was setting we needed to be somewhere else, not too far away, a few streets away actually. Shady had planned to take us to a free show of Sufi dancing. It’s a traditional Egyptian dance in which men have a sort of dress on, or number of dresses and they spin and spin and spin taking layers of dress off intermittently. There are drummers and woodwind instruments playing as well as a singer and a couple stringed instruments, it’s pretty incredible. These men would spin for about an hour, people say that they trance themselves and it’s a spiritual experience for them. Videos of the show are here and here.The whole CouchSurfer “unit” we had created loved it, (about 15 of us united at this event). It really wasn’t what I expected but I loved every second of it, I promised myself to go back again before I leave Egypt, especially cause it was free!! (Although I would pay good money to see it again!)

After the show the group of us walked through Islamic Cairo (you can see a video of that here). We made our way to a metro station and the nover to Midan Sadat square. At this point we met more CouchSurfers and there must have been close to 20 of us. We all headed to a juice spot to quench our thirst and have some laughs and talk about the show. Aanas, a Thai CouchSurfer, had an idea to do a flashmob at the square. If you don’t know what that is look it up on YouTube, “Flashmob Bangkok”. Basically the idea is to surprise the public by doing something out of the ordinary. Since a lot of people walk around Midan Sadat it was the perfect opportunity for us. We all split off into different areas of the square and met in one sector where we all froze on command. We stayed frozen in different positions for about 4 minutes, meanwhile the public looked on shocked and entertained, it was pretty awesome. You can see the video of it here. Special thanks to Shady and other Egyptian CouchSurfers for the video editing and camera recording!!

Post Cairo FlashMob we all walked down to the Nile for a boat ride. We waited around for a bit while Shady made a good deal for us and it only cost us each about $2 to spend an hour cruising around on a long boat on the Nile. We danced and listened to music, talked about our travels and enjoyed the night in absolute delight. It was the perfect ending to a looong day and after the boatride I jumped in a taxi with some other CouchSurfers to Ma’adi. My bed was calling me and I obediently followed orders, with dreams of the Pyramids on soon to fill my head.

Hope you like the photos and post, until next time, Pura Vida!!
-Avila



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