To complete my travel logs about Cairo and to be able to move to another places that we’ve been, only few loosen notes are left to be mentioned.
Hotels can offer very "special" views
Generally hotels in Egypt are quite cheap compare to the Europe and especially to UK accommodation (which is absolutely unimaginably priced!). However, having planned quite intense trip to visit so many places, our choice of hotels was based on mainly the price and convenience, rather then on luxury it can offer.
But for the first ever night in my dream land, we pampered ourselves with the best hotel option, one can only imagine. (with the price, reflecting this as well…lol) We’ve stayed in Mena House hotel – literally over the road from the Pyramid of Giza. This is the view from the courtyard of our hotel:
It was a 5* hotel and we’ve felt ourselves like a pharaoh! (Needless to say that I’ve never been in 5* hotels before and it doesn’t look as if it will become a habit of mine in the nearest time) But this one time the experience has been absolutely worth it and memorable, just as I could’ve imagined it will be.
For our last days in Cairo we booked a simple 3* hotel, almost in the Centre of the city. It was ok for the price and considering that we haven’t spent much time in there anyway. It did had a "special" views as well…When we’ve checked in, the porter led us into the room but then suspiciously quick disappeared… Hmmm…the room looked ok, clean and with all the amenities…what’s the matter then? Cheerfully I run to the windows and opened the curtains….opsssss…there was a …wall of the next door building staring right back into me! No windows, balconies or else. Just a plain grey wall. A dirty one as well. And so close that I could probably reach out and touch it…
No, I couldn’t possibly let this to be my last impression of Cairo! This was a hotel we were going to stay till departure. After a brief discussion with the reception staff, we’ve been moved into another room. (Bless them, helpful people of the Concorde Hotel!) So yes, my last few days I was able to look over roofs of the city – not the best view, I agree, but it could’ve been much worse, believe me…
Cairo Museum
All the guide books and traveller’s websites advised to have at least one day (or better two) for the Cairo museum, as it contains the world largest collection of artefacts. And to visit it before anything else to brush up your knowledge of history a bit. Well, we’ve done it in different order and I must say: not only we’ve saved ourselves an extra time, but also didn’t spoil the first impression, when visited real sites. The museum is huge, but mostly consists of things looted out from the tombs and temples. A lot of famous artefacts presented by the models, as the originals are being smuggled to other museums of the World. This seems like a real shame to me – the history should belong to its people!
The expositions were in a bad order and many of the displays haven’t got any signs at all. And to be honest, after we’ve seen everything in reality, set of endless artefacts didn’t impress and didn’t associate with the tombs or temples they claimed to belong to. Only few things were really worth going to museum: the treasures of Tutankhamen’s tomb (with its 110 kg of gold just for the inner coffin!) and a huge Amanra collection from Akhenaton’s period. There was also a famous Mummies Room, but we didn’t go there, as by that time we’ve seen a lot of mummies in different museums around the country already and even hold one of the ibis’s mummies in our own hands!
In the end of a day – the museum collection is just the things you VIEW and some of them are amazing, I agree. But when you go into the temple itself - that’s the things, you FEEL and that’s way more of an experience!
Walking as Egyptian
Not really, but what we did on one of those days in capital - took a taxi to a randomly selected place and walked from there few blocks. For me personally it was a great pleasure. It just feels so different when you are not in the mainstream of tourist’s flock. When you not "one of them", but "among". As we walked along the busy streets, we were greeted by the ordinary people. They were smiling at us and saying "Hello! Welcome to Egypt!" and none of them tried to sell us anything or asked for money or else…it was such a break from the hustle of touristy sites!
I don’t know why, but despite of the overcrowded streets, houses in poor condition, heavy traffic everywhere, it was like – walking at home…among friends…and with a light heart…I would come to Cairo even if just to walk it streets again…
Traffic Jam a-la Cairo
Despite of the really heavy traffic in the city we managed to get stuck in a jam only once. Any other times we never stood, but were slowly moving. But this time we’ve got it. We were heading to the one of the most beautiful island of Zamalek in the end of a working day. And what meant to be a 15 min journey turned out to be an hour’s sitting in the middle of an auto-river that we smoothly drove into. Life doesn’t stops in traffic jams in Cairo. While we were standing, strangled, few sellers walked by, manoeuvring among the frozen in a random order cars, offering all sorts of useful and useless things which apparently did have a demand. I can only assume this was because of the drivers being bored to just sit in their cars, doing nothing. And buying a tissues or handkerchiefs for the laughable price may amuse them, as the art of buying and selling in Egypt is an act of communication, even bonding sometimes, certainly an art of a humour and mutual satisfaction. What also amused me – when on the road in a motion, the drivers get very articulated, very expressive and react vividly to anything happening around them, but in traffic jam – where does all their impatience gone? No honking, no shouting, just a quiet order…well, in as much "orderly" way as it could be achieved in Cairo.
Island of Zamalek
Posh district of Cairo. This is the place where most of embassies located. The public is different from the central Cairo and the shops looks more like European. Very nice and very green area, pleasure to walk around. If I to choose place to stay in Cairo now, definitely will be Zamalek, despite of the fact that it is more expensive.
Somewhere in Zamalek there is Cairo Tower – a viewing platform and rotating restaurant. Perhaps, when it was built, it was a tallest viewing point in Cairo. Of course now there are many high profile hotels that outgrown Tower already. We chose Cairo Tower’s restaurant for our last evening meal in Egypt. The meal was nice, although not the finest. The restaurant rotates with some feel of "last breath" – squeaking on few joints and even shaking sometimes. Apprehensively dressed in pharaonic clothes guys tried to offer an "amusing" souvenir from Cairo Tower: your name written in hieroglyphs and personal horoscope performed in English and Arabic, all typed on A4 piece of paper with "papyrus style" watermark. Very "populistic", but cute. And it just happened that since I’ve been more then reasonable in terms of buying souvenirs all my travel throughout Egypt, this last evening I’ve decided to go slightly mad and have that completely unauthentic something to remind me later that I’ve actually been in Egypt for real!
Heliopolis
Should’ve been in reverse order – we’ve been in Heliopolis on the first day when arrived in Cairo. My friend lives there. He met us at the airport when we came. Heliopolis used to be a separate entity and now it is a part of Cairo. It is very beautiful and for some reasons reminded me of my most favourite city in Russia – St. Petersburg. And as I’ve learnt later by personal experience, it is not even as half as crazy as a central Cairo. I think, to live there would’ve been a great pleasure. My first impressions of Cairo – rich villas and multi-storey buildings of Heliopolis, standing together and not looking isolated at all. Jemy, I love the place where you live!
6th of October City
This is another suburb of Cairo we have visited, when meeting with another friend. I would definitely say – this is the city of rich and richest! Brand new houses, mainly villas, all the necessary structure neatly built into the nicely planned blocks of fashionable houses. If you live in this place, you don’t even need to get to Cairo at all, unless you enjoy crazy life of the ever busy city. The taxi driver, that took to the 6th of October City, has been very humble talking about "very, very rich people there" and it was obvious that he treated us with more respect too.
Tourist Police
They are everywhere. In fact I’m under impression that when boys in this country grown up, half of them becomes a tourist police and another half just hangs out in the street cafes smoking shisha. I have seen very little of representation of any other occupation compare to those two: professional policemen and professional shisha smoker. At some sites the amount of tourist policemen were equal or sometimes even above the amount of tourists at one given time. Some of them are very friendly and since they are quite bored sitting whole day in ancient ruins, they are keen to communicate.
A Quiz:
See how many policemen and how many tourists you can find on this picture:
Things I regret not seeing
Despite of the impression that we’ve seen a lot of Cairo, there are still few things that I did plan to see, but didn’t manage to. So these are left to be a reason for me to go back, I guess.
I do regret that I couldn’t see more mosques and couldn’t climb the minarets (I’ve heard in some mosques they allow it).
I regret that I’ve completely missed out on the Jewish part of Egyptian history.
I regret that due to the lack of time I didn’t get to see the Sufi-dancers show, which I was so looking forward to. But they performed at those days, when we were out to another sites till late the evening, so we couldn’t make it in time for the performance…
I regret that I didn’t get to sail the night Nile in Cairo – the boats looked so bright with all the decorations – like cute little Christmas trees on the river! (but I did plenty of sailing in other parts of Egypt, so guess, this wasn’t a big miss)
I regret that I haven’t got more time to walk the streets of this fantastic city to live with it, to breathe with it, to be crazy with it…
That’s again – a list of the reasons to return…
Well, I think, this will complete my Cairo Chapter. At least for now. Time to hop on the train and head for Aswan – the best town in the whole Upper Egypt!
To be continued…