Blogs from Lower Egypt, Egypt, Africa - page 104

Thats right Egypt! A destination untouristed? Definitately not. There are more tourists here than people in Clearwater. Cairo is cool. Your typical big city overly influrenced by westen idealiogies. Non the less still beautiful in its own right, even if they have a TGI Fridays that dosent serve beer.... read more

Camels, Sand and Pyramids make good Egyptian coffee What possibly could be written about Cairo and the pyramids that hasn't already been written? Besided the nightmare of getting here (my flight was cancelled the last minute from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to Cairo) I more or less expected what I have experienced. Uh...besides the street children, trinket hawkers, smell of camel dung, expensive taxis from the airport and Pizza Hut. Travis and I once again embarked on another adventure that took us to Egypt. We had done little, if any, real planning other than our flights, so when we arrived (he 8 hours ahead of me) we wanted to take in as much as we could in the few days we will be here. After checking into the Sheraton Royal Gardens (4 stars and worth both the ... read more

30/03 Got into Cairo airport around 01.30 in the morning. No rooms at airport hotel, got in taxi and ended up in some random hotel somewhere in Cairo !! 30/03 Went to pyramids at Giza from the hotel. Weather was perfect and spent a couple of hours plodding about on 'Michael Jackson' the camel !! Very tired from getting in late on the flight, but it was quite relaxing seeing pyramids by camel... 31/03 Spent the night in the hostel I had booked. Went to check out a local market, but it was seriously shoddy and consisted of people selling belts and some sort of animal dung ! Bumped into an Egyptian whose cousin works at a papyrus shop down town. Chatted over tea for a while and went to look at the shop. Very nice ... read more

We had heard so many horror stories about Cairo. People warning and warning. Yes they were all true. It's noisy, busy, dirty and hot. Also though it is exciting, friendly, diverse, beautiful, interesting and fun! I wake to the call to prayer and a few hours later descend from our bargain roof top hotel in a very cool marble 1930's art deco stair well and fancy lift to get take away breakfast. I'm not too hot on architecture terms but Cairo has great buildings and once they were even clean and new. It would be easy to get overwhelmed by all the hectic nosie and fumes (as all the people who warned us about the place must have done) and stop appreciating that this city is really cool. Downtown there are beautiful people posing, the girls ... read more

Geo: 30.0571, 31.2272Had to move to my new shared room this morning. Met my room mate, Shastra. We were glad to have met, as now we wouldn't have to walk around on our own. We decided to try the metro. Walked to the station and still got looks and noises. Metro is clean and was a good way to travel. The first carriage is reserved for women, which was good news for us. We got off at Coptic Cairo- the only area in Egpyt where there are 3 different religions practiced in the small area- Jewish, Muslim and Greek Orhtodox. Saw old churches and cemeteries. We then decided it would be nice to catch the local river bus back downtown. We tried to follow the LP map. We ended up off the beaten track and in ... read more