First full day in Cairo!
Today was our first full day in Cairo! We realized yesterday that neither of us had brought a watch so we wanted to try to find one today for sure. We started off the day by heading to the Egyptian Museum, just as a landmark, we didn’t visit. We walked around the main square downtown for a bit before heading to the American Museum in Cairo to be a map. At first we couldn’t find it so we asked a nice American woman (who must live here, she actually asked us if we were lost) she sent us in the wrong direction… of course we still missed the building! While looping back we actually ran into her again and she set us straight. We went to the book store and bought a map of Cairo and talked to the guy working there, he’s from Miami but has been here for four years.
Next we headed down Tahrir street and checked out the various shops. We came across some bank machines (attached to banks but still outside) I used the machine to finally get some Egyptian money while Adrian was giving people ocular pat downs to make sure they didn’t try anything.
Next we went to check out the Khan El-Kelil, this crazy market area. Adrian bought some sandals from this one guy and he and his cousin latched on to us right away, they started by showing us to the roof of this building to see the scenery, next they brought us to a papyrus shop (which actually had nice stuff, Adrian and I both got something), next they brought us to this Mosque and they wanted us to pay 50 Egyptian Pounds to enter and 50 to climb this tower, we weren’t interested. Earlier when I didn’t think they were out to screw us I had mentioned that we wanted to buy a watch so they brought us to this hole in the wall store where I bought a watch for 20 American dollars and 35 Egyptian pounds… so like 37$… ugh. NEXT while trying to ditch these guys we figured we’d tip them since that’s what you’re supposed to do. At first I offered them 10 EP each, and they said “I’ve been nice to you, you just be nice to me”, at first I thought they didn’t want a tip… THAT WASN’T the case, they wanted 20 American each, to just stop dealing with the situation I gave it to them (ARG).
After catching a cab back to the downtown area we stopped at a McDonalds and tried the famous McArabia JS was talking about, pretty good! We had trouble getting a cab back to the hotel because either the cabbies didn’t know where it was, didn’t understand us or didn’t want to go that far out of down town.
We ended the night hanging out on the hotel roof again.
Tomorrow…. check out the Citadel (?) and go to Ahmed’s wedding!
