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Published: August 23rd 2011
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Tad and I planned to make a stop in Tanta, one of the largest cities in the Nile Delta and we bought a train ticket to Tanta with the plan for an overnight, but when we arrived in Tanta, we had a hard time finding a place to stay. We asked around and ended up at a hotel that was asking something like 450 LE per night (~$80), way out of our price range. Our hope had been to stay somewhere in the city center, and walk around in the fields some. We found that Tanta was bigger than we thought, and it didn't feel all that different from other places that we have been so far. Consequently we decided to take another train back to Cairo where we still had some unfinished business due to things that weren't open on our prior trip to Cairo. Besides our hostel in Cairo was decent, and we knew we would have a good time in Cairo.
On our travel day, once we had checked into the hostel we went for a trip to the Citadel, which is this walled mosque complex that overlooks its surrounding areas in Cairo. You can see it
from a lot of places in Cairo. There are two mosques in the Citadel, a big mosque and a small mosque. The big mosque is the Mohammed Ali mosque, and no, not
that Mohammad Ali,
this Mohammad Ali. His mosque is quite impressive, as is the smaller mosque of (I think) Suleyman Pasha that we also visited.
We tried again to get to one of the larger mosques down the hill from the Citadel, but were defeated since they closed at 2:00pm since it was a Friday. Grr... So in that case we decided to take it easy and went to Costa's (western-style cafe) for a snacky thing, in preparation for a felucca ride around sunset. A bit over-priced, but our options are quite limited, it being Ramadan time.
The felucca ride was incredibly nice. The
felucca is a single-sailed boat with seating space for a bunch of people in the larger rigs. We had an absolutely lovely 1 hour ride for 60 LE. We started around 6pm, and the sun sets around 6:35 here this time of year, so we got to enjoy pre-sunset, sunset, and post-sunset. It was so peaceful sailing on the Nile, and I
was sad when finally docked at the end of the ride.
For dinner we tried to find a Lonely Plant-recommded koshari place, but all we could find there were huge amounts of tables set up for people from all over to sit down together and share iftar. We missed the beginning of the rush so they set us up a table and we were able to share in iftar. I have to say, this was a lovely time, and by far my favorite Ramadan experience.
The next day we went to the American University in Cairo bookstore, the Egyptian museum, and a bit of a wander. We had planned our day in order to have a nice dinner together since this is the last that Tad and I would see each other for quite a while. We ended up at a restaurant in the Blue Nile floating hotel, where we got a dinner, and then we wandered around for a while looking for a place for a goodbye drink. We ended back up at Cafe Riche, met an English girl, and made it back home a bit later than we had originally planned.
And so comes to
a close my trip in Egypt.
Politically, it seems that Egypt is very much at an unstable place right now. The Army is in control of the country, and it seems that if elections were to be held today, the Brotherhood would win since they are much better organized. So it is hard to see how these things resolve themselves well soon.
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Nathan
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And the travel continues.... the fulecca ride looks lovely.