Five days in Cairo

We were having breakfast in our hotel's terrace at 6.30 am Cairo time when my brother, Edward, called from Los Angeles saying that he'll pick us up at LAX in 20 hours' time. Sophie and I looked at each other, we then realised we'll be traveling 20 hours in order to get home. So last night, 20 hours later we landed at LAX and in half an hour I was home. It's wonderful to be home. Oscar Wilde said, ' two things I like about travel, one is leaving home and the other is coming home'. That's exactly what it is I like about travel, it was wonderful to leave, even for just one week and it was wonderful to come home. Cairo was exhausting because it is so different. Life is such a struggle, my expectations were so different, one would expect an ancient civilization to continue it's greatness. But as all with ancient civilizations that has come and gone, their greatness never continue, their greatness becomes the cemetery, we came to Egypt to see their greatness in burial places ie the pyramids and the gorgeous mausoleums of the Mamluks. It is a great culture shock for us and I'm still trying to get over this. As I uploaded my pictures (I took almost 2000 pictures) and looking at them again brought back that sense of unease as I see again the struggles and the abject poverty of life in Cairo. The wonderful thing about modern digital photography is we didn't have to bring loads of film. I have 2 memory cards of 8 gb each and they hold lots of images. I have 2 battery packs and can use up the power of each one in a day of shooting. We recharge every night when we come back to the hotel. Over the next few months I will post more pictures and write more about our experiences there. Will we go back? Most definitely, there's still so many layers to Cairo we haven't excavated and then there is upper Egypt (south) that we still need to visit. I'm glad I didn't go alone, a single women would be the object of harassment and even with the two of us, 2 Western women, we can sense the hostility in some areas. Most people go to Egypt as part of a tour, probably this is the wisest thing to do and they away with wonderful stories and pictures of the Giza pyramids among other thing. For me, I wanted to see and experience the real soul of Egypt, life and things that the tour operators don't show you. For that we were very successful as you will see in future postings. It is hard to say in one sentence our impressions. I'm still reeling from culture shock. What we saw was so real, it wasn't fun!

From our hotel in the Zamalek area, this is where the expatriates live and it is very insulated from the rest of Cairo. This is a good introduction to Cairo, if we stayed in the heart of downtown we probably would have wanted to leave sooner. It is hard. I chose to only stay a week because I know it wouldn't be easy. There weren't much in the form of amenities for Westerners, there's a few restaurants that were Ok and there's an English bookstore, a small one, where we spent a lot of our evenings, drinking tea and buying books on Egypt.

The Nile, taken from Corniche de Nil, these are some High rise buildings in the Zamalek area.

We did the touristy stuff, rode a horse and cart that took us around the pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx.

A special interest of mine was to see Coptic Christian life, I saw a lot of it, in 'Garbage city', in the Coptic Cairo and in the monasteries of Wadi Natrun.

This is considered a better part of Islamic Cairo, there are others that are appalling.

We loved the displays of spices, to us, as with the pyramids, it represents the quintessence of Cairo, the Spice markets.

They use a lot of palm fronds for building little shelters.

A typical view of rooftops, the ramshackle buildings, most of it have collapsed, the satellite dish for TV. When an Egyptian girl wants to marry, one of the requirement the groom must provide is cable TV.

The skyline of Cairo is dotted by minarets everywhere, every corner you peer into would reveal mosque and a minaret. The call to pray is heard echoing all over Cairo 5 times a day. It is quite beautiful, really.

Street food, 'kushari' costs about 5 Egyptian pounds (less than a dollar), it is good and filling. We loved Egyptian food.

I'm exhausted right now.... the jet lag is not so bad this trip.