Wandering Around Cairo

Ice Delivery

January 4th I slept in a little since I had been so exhausted from all of the constant travel of the tour group. Would I do a tour again? Maybe as half of my trip and spend the other half of my time both before and after the tour just relaxing. The tour definitely enabled me to experience many things that I would never have had if I were on my own. I’m also still sick and all of the treatments I am taking aren’t really working I need to go and look for some antibiotics to get rid of the cause instead of treating the symptoms.

I love to just walk the streets with no destination in mind and to get away from all of the tourist places. It makes me feel like an explorer when I walk down back streets and see the life people really live instead of the lives they try to portray in the tourist areas. In the tourist areas if a stranger talks to you they want to try and sell you something. In the places I walked today people that talk to you want to try out their English and learn about you. I met a young man who was with two of his friends and was very nervous to try and speak English to me but I think he was trying to impress his friends. He asked me where I was from and I told him I was an American. In Every country that I have been to when I tell people I am an American, they are always excited. All of the people that I have met love America, or at least pretend to. The little girls wear Miley Cyrus tee shirts and the boys wear WWE (formerly WWF) ones. I know a couple of words in Arabic such as “hello”, “thank you”, “no thank you” and “goodbye” and I try to use them whenever I can. I had this really cute little girl come up to me and say “hello” in Arabic and I said “hello” in Arabic back to her and then she said something I didn’t know and I told her I didn’t speak Arabic and she just smiled at me and waved goodbye.

As I walked through the streets I saw people working at their crafts, repairing cars, building chairs, repairing glasses, making leather belts and woodworking. All of this is done in streets and alleyways during the day because it doesn’t rain here very often this time of year and the light from the sun is free and the space in the alleys is also free, so it dramatically reduces the expense needed to own a business. At least that is my thinking, maybe they just like to be social.

I came across a vegetable market with fresh delicious looking vegetables. Potatoes had just been dug out of the ground and were still covered with dirt. There were cages of animals available to take home to slaughter, chickens, ducks and even bunnies. There was a small Egyptian girl that followed me around the market as intrigued with me as I was with her and the market.

I saw men sitting outside smoking sheesha in shops similar to the men in Morocco drinking mint tea. There were lots of small mosques all over in unmarked buildings without tall spires and with no speaker for a call to prayer. It was a really great day, with nice weather and friendly people.
As the sun started to set I decided that it was time to head back to my hostel but I literally had no idea where I was since I had just been wandering around and at every intersection I would look for what I thought might be more interesting and headed that way. As usual I had a terrible map that only had major streets on it and was only for the tourist areas. I was starting to worry that I would have to spend money and hire a cab to get me back to my hostel when I had a great idea. If I could find the Nile, I could find the Egyptian Museum and then in turn my hostel. I started looking for major roads and looking down them for the river. Finally I saw a road sign indicating which direction the Nile was and was able to follow that road back to the Nile and find my hostel.

For dinner I had a feast of kebab meat, rice, bread and vegetables from the same place I ate at last night. There is a primary cashier that you pay at and then you are given a ticket for every item that you buy and then you have to take the tickets to the appropriate counter to pick up your dinner. There is a counter for meat, one for fried foods, another for cold foods and a couple others. It makes it really easy because I can order at the picture board in the front and then I just take the tickets to a window and they take the one they need and then point to the next window I need to go to get the rest of my food. The meal was amazing, I love kebab meat! Tomorrow will be more wandering and then back to the airport for lots of long flights.

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