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July 14 - Egypt: Cairo

I'm sorry, but I hate this place.  

The men are rude and obnoxious, and every person on the street has their own agenda to scam us.  Although today ended on a good note, it was mostly a terrible day.  And it's the first day that I've honestly been home-sick.

Mosque Trip from Hell

We had breakfast on the roof restaurant at the hotel, with grand plans to see some mosques and the Hanging Church by lunchtime.  I was wearing my new floor-length linen skirt and a conservative but cool top - so I was good to go!  We hit the pavement and walked across town to the mosques.  It was terribly, terribly hot.  And although Jon was feeling better he was miserable in the heat and rightly concerned about dehydration.  We thought we were doing fine until we got to an intersection that had no street-signs whatsoever.  We got our bearings and continued on.  About 15 minutes later, we were both completely lost, hot, and frustrated.  And I was sick of being stared at and commented to.  We came to terms with the fact that we had no idea where we were and couldn't find any street signs to help us out. 

So we did what any New Yorker would do, we hailed a taxi and asked him to take us to the Mosque-Madrassa of Sultan Hassan.  He nodded and drove on.  Then, after about 5 minutes, he pulled over to ask someone directions.  Then he asked someone else directions.  And then he did it again.  The surprising thing was that NO ONE seemed to know where the Mosque of Sultan Hassan was.  Here we thought it was a major tourist attraction.  So not only did the taxi driver now know where he was going, but we STILL hadn't seen any street signs so WE didn't know where we were either.  And when we showed him the map, he couldn't point out our location.  Now I understand that the map is written in English but a map is a map, right?  We were getting more annoyed by the minute.  Finally, someone seemed to point him in a specific direction and we ended up on some narrow windy side-streets.  Then he stopped to ask more directions.  After a few more minutes of this nonsense, we were furious and got out of the taxi.  Either he didn't want to take money from us or was insisting on more thinking that we would give it to him, but we gave him a few pounds anyway and bolted from the taxi.  Jon found a sign on a nearby mosque and we were lucky enough to find it in the index of Lonely Planet.  We were miles and miles away from where we wanted to be, but we could at least find our way out of it.  I said to Jon, "I really hate this city."

By now, it's 12:30 and we've wasted almost 3 hours.  Jon and I decided to bag the mosque trip and go to the Hanging Church.  When we got back to a main road, we hailed another taxi and - before we got in - made sure he knew the street where we wanted to go.  Thankfully, we made it to Coptic Cairo and found the Church of St. George.  But we couldn't figure out how to get into the Hanging Garden and the touts were moving in and hassling us for money and souvenirs.  We kept walking back and forth on the street and we about to catch the Metro back to the hotel when we stopped for one final look at the map.  A cab driver came over to get us into his taxi, and Jon asked him for directions.  He actually helped us out and Jon gave him a tip.  So we made it to the Hanging Church.

Hanging Church

Me at the Hanging Church in front of the Pulpit

The church was somewhat anti-climatic after our hell trip to get there, but at least we've seen SOMETHING today.  The church is under a lot of construction and isn't very conducive to sight-seeing.  So we sit in a pew and read the few paragraphs that exist in Lonely Planet.  Jon looks up and says, "So this church is from the 4th century.  Do you think the ceiling fans are original?"  Silly boy!

As we're sitting there, a nice young man comes up and says he's a student volunteer for the church and will show us around - no money or anything.  So we say "sure" and he takes us around, telling us some very interesting details.  Then he gets a call on his cell and leaves the church to take it.  So Jon and I look at each other and decide not to wait for him.  We walk out the church and get on the Metro to the Ramses train station for our tickets to Luxor and Aswan.

Errands Around Town

The train station is absolute chaos.  We had to go to 3 different windows before someone could sell us train tickets to Aswan (a 15 hour train ride from Cairo, which we will make on Monday night).  I hate this place.  Everywhere I turn, men are leering at me.

So then we take the Metro to the Hilton, where we go to Egypt Air to get plane ticket from Sharm el-Shikh back to Cairo.  The guy behind the counter is - thankfully - very pleasant.  This is good because, after we booked the tickets and he was printing them off, we realized that we'd given him the wrong day!  As it stood, we would miss our flight out of Cairo to India!!!  He was very nice, though, and we fixed it right up.  What a day!

Then we went into the Hilton's Internet Cafe to see if we could meet up with Brenden for drinks tonight (his train out of Cairo is at midnight this evening).  Brenden smartly sent us his schedule for the day from 12:30 - 3:30.  Unfortunately, it was 3:30 when we finally logged in so we completely missed him.  Maybe we'll meet up with him on the Red Sea or something.  We hadn't had lunch yet, so we grabbed a bite to eat in the Hilton food court.  Unoriginal, yes, but we really didn't care by this point.

The Pyramids

We decided to go to the Pyramids to catch the 8:30 evening light show, and figured we would just wander around the Pyramids until it was time to start the show.  We knew there was a bus that stops "near the Museum", but we didn't know where.  So we ask the Hilton concierge about the bus to Giza, and he helped a bit but not a lot.  Then we walked around outside of the museum to find Bus #355 or #357.  No luck.  We walked and walked and walked and asked a few unhelpful and unfriendly people.  Out of sheer frustration we stopped and leaned against a wall to rest and pondered paying the money for a taxi, when we saw bus #357 drive by.  We ran to follow it and found its stopping point at a random place in front of the museum.  We missed it, but we didn't care because now we knew where it stopped.  So we waited for the next bus to come along.  There were other people waiting for other buses, and the men were outright staring at me.  I knew by this point not to make any eye contact or anything, but even Jon's presence didn't seem to help.  Finally bus #355 came and we hopped on.  Thank God it was air-conditioned, because I was on the verge of a break-down at this point.

When we got to the Pyramids (just outside of town, by the way), we found that they had closed at 5:00.  The touts were everywhere trying to get us to take camel rides, so we couldn't get a straight answer from anyone.  And the police were VERY unhelpful.  From what we gathered, the pyramids close from 5-8 and the light show is on the other side of the plateau from where we were.  Miserable, miserable place!   It was 6:00 by now, so we went to the ritzy Oberoi Mena House Hotel to have "evening drinks by the pool", as suggested by Lonely Planet.  Unfortunately, we couldn't find the pool and didn't want to ask.  So we bought a USA Today and settled into the lobby bar for drinks until it was time to go the light show.

Mark and Niloo

After 30 minutes, I looked up to see another couple in the lobby looking at their Lonely Planet and looking in the bar to see if there's a pool.  They made their way into the bar near us and I said, "Are you looking for the bar at the pool?".  They looked at me and nodded and we laughed that we'd already looked around and couldn't find it.  So they sat and we chatted until it was time to go see the light show.  They ended up being our soul-mates for the night.  Mark and Niloo have both just finished their medical residencies in LA, and have had the same feelings about Cairo as we have.  They are sick of the men and the scam artists and the fact that everyone in this city has some agenda.  It was so nice to hear that we're not the only ones that had a miserable day.

At 8:00, we left and took a taxi together to the other side of the plateau (where Mark and Niloo had already been a few hours earlier).  The taxi, of course, stopped for a tout that wanted to get us to do something.  We made the taxi continue driving.  Finally, FINALLY, we got into the light show.  Much to all our chagrin, there were no student rates.  But that's par for the course for the four of us!

Mark, Niloo and us - waiting for the light show to start

The light show was over the top cheesy.  It was nice to sit in front of the pyramids and see them all lit up, but the music and narration was ridiculous.  The music and accompanying narrative sounded like something out of the old Star Treks, and at times the narration was outright bizarre.  So we were kind of glad when it ended 45 minutes later.

The four of us got in a cab and decided to go to dinner together at an Italian place called Da Mario.  By the time we got there, it was 10:00 and we starving and exhausted, but we had a lovely time together.  We laughed and shared stories about our travels.  So it was a nice end to the day.  At 11:30, we said good-night and we were off to the hotel to go to bed.

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