Cairo Continued

I keep thinking about other things I want to blog about, so I better hurry up and finish the Cairo posts.

My Cairo trip was filled with the various tourist sites the rest of the week. I went to the Egyptian Museum and saw the everything they had removed from King Tut's burial site as well as thousands of other objects from the Golden Age of the Pharaohs. Compared to the King Tut exhibit that was in Los Angeles a few years ago, the Egyptian Museum supposedly takes months to go through. For me on the other hand, it took a solid five hours just to walk through the entire museum and take a brief look at the objects. In comparison to the travelling exhibit, the museum gives a much better context and was fascinating. I normally am not very interested in ancient art, but almost everything I saw was brilliant in its beauty and awe-inspiring because of the brilliant craftsmanship and sheer age. To think that these were made more than 3000 years ago!

Another interesting place was Coptic Cairo. It is also known as the Roman Fortress of Babylon and is the oldest standing part of the city. However, Duso and I had a bit of an adventure in getting there. Duso told the cab driver where we wanted to go, but I guess he heard something differently. The next thing we knew we were being driven through a slum that was filled with heaps of garbage and garbage trucks navigating the narrow dirt streets to dump more. The neighborhood seemed to be Christian - the women didn't wear headscarves and there were vendors selling plastic Jesuses. Suddenly we arrived at a gate where the guard asked what nationality Duso and I were and when hearing American, he was satisfied. As for the cab driver, he asked for identification and searched his pockets. When this was done, we continued up a very nice white driveway along the mountainside. We suddenly reached a parking lot where there were busloads of Asian tourists and Egyptian school children. There was some sort of church looking building and grass. The mountains formed a wall around us and on the sides of the hill were carvings of Jesus' life. Under one of them, it read, in English, 'JESUS IS THE SECOND COMING'.

We quickly realized that this was not Coptic Cairo and told the cab driver where we really wanted to be. He took us to the real Coptic Cairo, which I think was one of my favorite places in the city. The churches are in a Byzantine style and there are portraits of St. George all over. There were also tons of palm trees (which reminded me of home) and narrow alleys, giving it a very mysterious Indiana Jones-esque feeling. Afterward, Duso and I had turkish coffee, which I adored.

Besides the Indiana Jones moments (no lost ark, though), I got the whole Lawrence of Arabia feel. One evening Duso and I took a horseback ride through the desert at sunset. We galloped through the sand dunes and took a rest at a campfire set up to resemble some sort of outpost. In the distant, we could see the pyramids as well as the Cairo skyline.

There was the night-time Nile boat tour as well. And no, there were neither crocodiles nor lilies. Mainly there were oil slicks and blackish water. Duso told me not to touch the water either - it was known for having tons of bacteria and chemicals in it.

We also went to some of the few bars and clubs Cairo has to offer. There was Cafe Houria, where they serve Egyptian beer, Stella mostly, and tasty bar snacks Egyptian style, which are little yellow bean like things resembling soy beans. They were really good and salty, perfect with the beer. We also went to Odeon, a hotel, known for its decaying colonial style and rooftop bar. There was the Cairo Jazz Club as well which played live music, but with a cover band (no jazz was to be heard the evening we went).

And then there were the Pyramids. Despite the familiarity of them, there were incredible in reality. The structures are massive and despite the years of Egyptian school children climbing on them (we saw many, adults too, climbing up specifically where it said 'No Climbing'), they are still there. Like everything in the Egyptian Museum, it was incredible to think what marvels of engineering they were! And how they still are standing! The Sphinx was the least impressive and the erosion is extremely evident. It was also strange to see the massive fences and hordes of badly dressed Eastern Europeans posing in front of it.

Overall, I am extremely glad I was able to visit Cairo. I'm not sure how much of a hurry I am to return to it - I think Paris wins when it comes to a fabulous city - but it was by far the most culturally different place I've been to. Though as Duso's American roommate pointed out, he was glad he had had the transition of visiting Europe before moving on to Egypt and the Middle East.