Cairo Curiosity
After a terrible nights sleep it's another early morning wake-up call to meet my tour agent who had arranged my internal flights and Nile Cruise. I hand over the much wanted hard currency and go have a bite to eat. After a cup of tea and three pieces of toast, I'm ready to tackle the Egyptian Museum.
Hisham and I are confronted by a massive queue of tourists and locals that's exacerbated by the need to line-up for a bag check, body pat down for all local men, x-ray check of bags, purchasing of tickets and then another x-ray bag check. We dodge a fair bit of it because I play the dumb tourist and followed a group in.
The museum is an eclectic mix of artifacts that seems to be just thrown together. The lack of lighting combined with the terrible descriptions does not overshadow the incredible and valuable pieces that are assembled. The best thing is the gold mask from Tutankhamon's tomb, which was 11kgs of solid gold. Hisham tells me that they are building a new museum out near the Pyramids that will house everything properly and allow more things to be displayed.
After four hours, we leave and buy my train ticket and make our way to the suburbs to get some warm pants for my Mt Sinai climb. After lunch and sampling some Egyptian sweets, we got and have a shisha (water pipe) or what I just tell him is a big water bong. I have one try of it and quickly hand it back to Hisham. I just can't bring myself to smoke anything let alone melon and apple flavoured tobacco.
After my little shopping spree, we make our way back into Cairo central and go to the Khan Khallili markets which are a reminder of what the markets are like in Marakesh. On the way I see my first dead body of the trip. Some guy was on the footpath and died; the ambulance is there ready to whisk him away to the morgue.
We walk around the markets a little and then I think I've come across my second dead body (all within the span of one hour) because there's a huge amount of blood and other bits and pieces on the ground in front of me. The men seem to be cleaning it up at a frantic pace but it turns out to have been a sacrifice of a cow because a man who owned the shop where the cow was slaughtered had made an amazing recovery from some illness. Hisham explains the cow's going to be cut up into three pieces. One piece for him, one for the man that killed the cow and the other for the poor people of the area. We have to walk around the blood etc., as they're trying to clean up the mess and I thankfully escape stepping in any of the stuff.
We continue to walk around the markets and come upon the most amazing and incredibly old coffee shop called Fishawi's. We stop here and have some tea whilst watching the people go by. Locals, a few tourists, beggers and sellers of every possible tacky souvener and museum and religious artefacts come by. Some of the things are so impossibly gross that it's unbelievable. I have such a great time talking with Hisham and reading my Lonely Planet. I then meet the people next to us who are in Cairo on a conference with the CDC. They share some of their sunflower seeds with me and show me the souviners they had bought. It's one of the best nights I have had in a long time. We then catch a taxi back to the hotel.
I have another terrible nights sleep and wake-up throughout the night because of how cold the room has become.
