July 16 - Egypt: Cairo
Egyptian Museum
Today we're catching a train to Aswan, but it doesn't leave until 10:00 tonight so we had some hours to kill before then. We got up early and hit the Egyptian Museum, which was very cool. While it doesn't meet the standards we're used to in the US, it had a lot of ancient Egyptian relics. Unfortunately, it wasn't air-conditioned and today was REALLY hot. So the inside of the museum was stifling. Regardless, Lonely Planet's description of the different rooms and highlights were right on target and interesting.
The Mummy Room was one of the coolest parts of the museum, both because it was air-conditioned and because it had mummies in it. Here's the description from Lonely Planet: "The Royal Mummy Room houses the bodies of 11 of Egypt's most illustrious kings and queens from the 18th to the 21st dynasties, who ruled Egypt between 1552 and 1069 BC. They include Ramses II, his father Seti I, Thuthmosis II and Queen Meret Aman (wife of Amenhoteip I). They lie in individual glass showcases (kept at a constant temperature of 22° C) in a somber, dimly lit environment reminiscent of a tomb. Talking above a hushed whisper is not permitted (although irreverent tour groups often need to be reminded of this); for this reason, tour guides are not allowed in, making it one of the most peaceful havens in the museum." The mummies are in pretty good condition for a bunch of people who've been dead for 3000-4000 years. They were very short, too!
There was also a beautiful "Egyptian Jewels" room which had some of the ancient jewels found in King Tutankhamun's tomb. By the way - and I found this very interesting - Tutankhamun's treasure is actually considered insignificant compared to other rulers. It was only because of the location of his tomb in the Valley of the Kings that prevented it from being ransacked by thieves. So "the incredible contents displayed here of this rather modest tomb can only make you wonder about the fabulous wealth looted from the tombs of pharaohs far greater than Tutankhamun". There. You learned something new today!
Errands around Cairo
After the Museum, we had some errands to run before we could get on the train tonight.
US Dollars: First, we needed US Dollars in a big way, and this was a monstrous pain in the butt. For our Tibet tour, we need to have $600 USD for each of us to buy airline tickets within Tibet. We decided against carrying it with us because American Express assured me that we could get US Dollars at any AmEx office in the world. Well, we've been to every AmEx office we can find, and NONE of them can issue US Dollars. In Tanzania, they weren't authorized as an exchange. In Nairobi, they only get US Dollars when someone comes to the office to pay their bill. Here in Cairo, there is a shortage of US Dollars so the AmEx office cannot issue dollars. So here we need $1200USD and can't get it anywhere. We finally found a bank that was willing to convert Egyptian Pounds to $500 USD. So we had to walk back to AmEx to get Pounds for a ridiculous exchange rate, so that we could then take it back to the bank to exchange it to dollars. All in all, this took about 3 hours of our day.
Lonely Planet: Also, we are on a mission to find the Lonely Planet for India, because we know we won't be able to find it in Aswan or Luxor. So as much as we don't want to cart it around for the next two weeks, we'll really need it at the end of the month. We walked all over looking for various book stores, but no one carried travel books outside of Egypt. Finally, Jon figured out where Cairo University was and we went to the bookstore there and struck gold. We got books for India and Nepal, just because the bookstore had them and we didn't want to waste time looking for Nepal later on.
Khan Al Khalili Market
By this time, it was 3:00 and unbelievably hot. We went back to the hotel to drop off the books and stuff, and then caught a taxi to the market: Khan Al Khalili. This market is much like the one we visited in Istanbul last summer, but we really wanted to see it anyway. Of course, after the taxi dropped us off, it took us 45 minutes to figure out that we were on the wrong side of the highway. Once we crossed over the footbridge and got to the right side, it was 4:30 and we only had a short amount of time to look around before we had to leave.
We hopped in a taxi and had him take us to Zamalek - an island on the Nile, and allegedly the location of a great supermarket where we could get snacks for the train ride. We were smart before we left the hotel earlier, and had the girl at the desk write the names of these locations in Arabic for us. So we could get in a taxi and hand him a piece of paper that he could understand. (Slowly but surely, we're learning how to get around easier). So the taxi driver got us there with no problems, except that the supermarket was closed. So we pointed the way to another one that was open. Unfortunately, it had almost nothing that we needed. Not even bread. So we got some cheese and some handi-wipes and caught another cab back to the hotel.
We had dinner at FelFela Restaurant - the same place where we had lunch yesterday - because it's fast, it's cheap, and it's right around the corner from our hotel. This time, we ordered less food because lunch yesterday was a bit of a pig-out-fest. After dinner, we got some ice cream from El Abd and went back to the room to shower and pack.
At 8:00-ish, we checked out of the room and went up to the rooftop restaurant for beers before leaving for the train station. It was a nice evening, and the view from the rooftop is very wide-reaching. Unfortunately, the view is just of apartment buildings whose roofs look like they've been bombed or something.
The Train to Aswan
The train to Aswan left at 10:00, and we got to the train station at 9:30 just as the train was pulling onto the track. We bought first-class tickets because that's the only air-conditioned car and this is a 15 hour train ride. But the tickets were total 70 pounds (about $18) so it was hardly a splurge. (My International Student Identity Card is coming in handy!) The seats were just like first-class airline seats, but this wasn't a sleeper car so we shared with about 50 other people - most of them tourists. The air conditioning worked very, very well - when it was on. In fact, it was so cold that Jon and I climbed into our sleeping bags. But then the air would turn off for 20 minutes or so and the car would get very stuffy. This went on all night, but all in all the ride was very smooth.