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Published: January 7th 2013
I was so lucky to be invited to Cairo by my friend, Mona, who teaches at the same school as me in Brussels. Mona lives in Maadi, which is a satellite city just outside of Cairo. Maadi is actually considered to be in the Sahara Desert!
On my first day in Cairo, we decided to take it easy, stay out of the heat and go shopping! We went to CityStars, which is this huge shopping centre just outside of the city. It had every store imaginable and ironically, being here reminded me more of Canada then living in Europe had. We walked around the mall for a few hours and then went to see the movie “Killers”. After the movie, we went to Chili’s for dinner (yes, they even had a Chili’s at this mall...) and then went to Road 9 to look around some shops and grab some ice cream.
The next day we had an easy morning and then went to the N Bar for a mani pedi. It felt great to be pampered! After we were all relaxed and looking beautiful, we went to the Geziera Club to have a look around. Mona’s family are members
of the club and it’s like a sports club because people go there to play all kinds of sports, take lessons, or join the clubs’ team. The Geziera Club is located on Zamelek Island, right in the middle of the Nile River. After looking around the club, we had a chance to walk around the island and look at some shops and all of the beautiful embassy buildings that were there.
In the evening we met up with Mona’s sister, cousin and friend and we went to Al-Azhar Park, which is a huge park on the eastern edge of Cairo. It is on top of an artificial hill, but it has a wonderful view over Islamic Cairo. The restaurant, Hilltop Restaurant, where we went for dinner, was in this beautiful Mamluk building and we sat out on the terrace and had an amazing night view of Cairo and the park. For dinner we had a true Egyptian feast! Hummus, babbaghanush, kofta, kebab, pita, pickled vegetables and fruit juices!
The third day began by going to the Ahmad Ibn Tulun Mosque. The mosque was built during the Tulunid dynasty (AD 868-905), founded by Ibn Tulun, who was sent to
Egypt to govern on behalf of the Abbasids of Baghdad. The mosque has two walls in order to stop the traffic noise from entering the mosque and distracting the people praying. The outside wall has a design on the top that looks like soldiers standing guard. We climbed up the minaret (where they do the “Call to prayer”), which was a unique one because it had the staircase spiraling around the outside of the tower. From the top of the minaret, we had another wonderful view of Cairo. Adjoining the mosque on one side was the Gayer-Anderson Museum. The museum was named for its former owner, British Army officer Major Juhn Gayer-Anderson, and it’s composed of two houses from the 16
th century. The rooms were beautiful and were decorated in many different styles. They also had many mashrabiya, which were wooden-lattice screens that were used to cover windows. The screens allowed the women of the house to observe without themselves being seen.
After the mosque and museum, I went to get a new Egyptian haircut at the hair salon that Mona goes to. I had two really fun Lebanese men work on my hair and they kept going on
and on about how blonde I was, and I kept telling them that in Canada, I would be considered brown…but I guess it’s all relative! We ran a few errands in the afternoon and then met up with Mona’s sister and friend and went to Road 9 for sushi.
On Monday, really early in the morning, Amy and Charlotte arrived in Cairo. We all slept in and then headed to the Egyptian Museum for part of the afternoon. The museum is enormous and it has been calculated that if you were to spend one minute at each item, it would take more than nine months to see everything. We only had a few hours at the museum so we saw the Royal Mummies, the Egyptian jewelry room and King Tutankhamen’s treasures, including his death mask!
After the Egyptian Museum we first went quickly inside the Mosque of Al-Azhar, which is the city’s main mosque and is central to religious and political life in Egypt. We then went around the corner to the Al-Ghouri Complex in Cairo and saw an evening folklore performance of the Whirling Dervishes.
For dinner we had some Egyptian pizza called Fiteer. Fiteer is
a light, flaky, multilayered bread made from dough stretched paper thin and folded several times. You can have it with cheese, meat, and vegetables, or with honey, cream, and sugar…we had all of the above!
The next day we went to the Citadel, which overlooks the city from the Muqattam Hills. It was built in the 12
th century and served as the royal residence and barracks until the late 19
th century. Inside the Citadel there are three mosques and the former palace, which is now a museum. The largest, and most impressive mosque was the Mosque of Mohammed Ali. The Turkish-style mosque was built between 1824 and 1848. We also visited the other two mosques, the Mosque of Sultan al-Nasir, which was built 500 years before the Mosque of Mohammed Ali and has beautiful Persian tiling, and the Mosque of Suleyman Pasha, which was built in a Turkish style soon after the Ottoman takeover of Egypt. We had a quick tour of the French style Gawhara Palace, and then went to grab some lunch…delicious shwarma!!!
After lunch we went to the Tentmakers’ Souq, which is Cairo’s only remaining covered market where you can find beautiful handcrafted appliqué work.
Then Amy, Charlotte, and I went to see the Sound and Light show at the Pyramids. This was a one-hour show in which the history of Ancient Egypt is related by the “voice of the Sphinx” while lights play across the Pyramids. It was a little bit cheesy, but great to see the Pyramids at sunset and to learn a bit about them before visiting them during the day.
On Wednesday, we went to see the Pyramids! We woke up (fairly) early and a driver friend of Mona’s came to pick us up. Once we got there, we arranged to have three camels, one horse and a guide take us all around the pyramids and to a few panoramic views of them. Our little caravan around the pyramids was amazing! We stopped at a couple of places to take some pictures and our guide was great at knowing what some good pictures were to take and telling us some interesting things about them. After touring around the pyramids for almost 3 hours(!) we went back to a perfume and papyrus shop to have some cold drinks and browse through their merchandise.
Later in the afternoon, we headed home
to Mona’s apartment, had a quick shower to wash all the sand off ourselves, and then went to meet up with her cousins by the Nile River. We went on a falouka, which is a very large and wide sail boat, down the Nile just as the sun was setting. We brought Egyptian pizza (both meat and cheese, AND dessert) and ate our dinner on the boat. I had the most AMAZING day!
Thursday morning we went to Coptic Cairo. We went to the hanging church and went inside the Greek Orthodox Church, which is one of the only circular Greek Orthodox churches in the world.
That afternoon we all packed into the car and headed to Mona’s vacation place on the Red Sea. It was a beautiful resort-like place right on the beach, but it also had two swimming pools. Our stay included breakfast and dinner and we shared the place with Mona’s parents. We had a quick swim on Thursday afternoon and then joined Mona’s family, which included her aunts, uncles, and cousins, for dinner in the restaurant.
Since the weekend in Cairo is Friday and Saturday, we spent the next two days having a
great time at the beach. We swam, ate, sunbathed, and had a great adventure in the paddle boats – we got stranded out at sea because it was SO windy that day.
On Saturday night since it was Charlotte and Amy’s last night in Cairo, we took Mona and her sister, Rana, out for dinner and this great Egyptian restaurant close to their house. We had the ultimate feast of Egyptian food like fool, baba ghanoush, stuffed grape vines leaves, koshari, sesame chicken, moussaka, falafel, kebab and sugarcane, guava, banana, strawberry juice to drink! After dinner we enjoyed some delicious mint tea, a yogurt dessert and an apple flavoured sheesha pipe.
On Sunday morning, we woke up nice and early and enjoyed a falouka ride on the Nile before having to take Charlotte and Amy to the airport. After dropping them off,I went to the carpet store with Mona and her mother and I ended up buying a beautiful Egyptian carpet for my new apartment in Brussels. I got a really great deal on it, however I was a bit worried about taking it back to Brussels since I was pretty sure I had to pay taxes on
it and I was only allowed 20kg of luggage on the plane and the carpet itself weighed 25kg! In the end though, I had no problems bringing it on the plane and at Belgian customs, I was able to leave without paying because nobody came to the window I was waiting at in order to declare the goods you were bringing from a non-EU country.
We spent Sunday afternoon at the souq. It was a large covered market and had all kinds of souvenirs, jewelry, sheesha pipes, and spices. I went out for dinner with Mona and her mom and sister at a fish restaurant beside the Nile River.
I had such a wonderful time in Cairo! My friend, Mona, and her family were so hospitable and it’s definitely a place that I’d like to go back to in the future!
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ZANDY IS BACK!
Oh my word. Humphrey and I are both squealing with joy! Thank you Zandy, for making 2013 quite possibly the best year EVER with the return of your TraBlog (see what I did there). All that talk of fiteer and mint tea has gotten us both exceptionally hungry, so I don't think I will be able to write much as I need to have another breakfast... or two. Cairo sounds magnificent, and although late, we are assuming that you will be posting more regularly now, and look forward to seeing your travels! Huzzah, for apple shisha and Whirling dervishes, and Zandy! H&H