day 1: alexandria
after flying into cairo bright and early, i dropped my pack at the hostel and jumped on a train up to alexandria.
though i'll admit i slept most of the way, the beginning part of the ride i was awake for was beautiful to see- as soon as cairo's sprawl ends, the land northward along the nile becomes verdent green farmland, fed by the lifeblood of the river. even on a friday the farmers were out working in the fields, while it seemed the majority of their oxen were just hanging out under shaded canopies... ironic role reversal there. visiting alexandria involved a lot of imagining about how the city would have been during its peak years, since not much of the ancient-ness survives today. in the place of the city's famous old library now stands a brand new architectural wonder of norwegian design inaugurated just in 2002. with its 8million books and beautiful spaces, the new library pays honorable homage to its ancestor, which in alexander's time was the cultural and academic center of the mediterranean world.
i walked around the small main harbor enjoying the sea breeze and some fresh fruit juice and reached the site of the ancient lighthouse.
unfortunately it is long since destroyed, but i was imagining it :) the best part of the day by far was dinner. following the guidebook's recommendation, i searched out hud gondol seafood "restaurant"- i knew i'd found it when i peered down an alley and saw a crowd of clamoring people. from thirty feet away i could already tell it was madness- the alley was packed and full of the shouting din of waiters and customers alike. a little ways down the alley was lined with stoves and counters with trays heaping full of all varieties of seafood. me and my obviously foreigner self were feeling a little overwhelmed by the hubbub when a kindly waiter escorted me to the platters to select my meal and then squeezed me into a table in the packed, clam-shell-shards-on-the-floor main dining room. for about $6usd i received a huge plate of calamari, fish, clams, and shrimp that were deeeelicious and wonderfully fresh (not to mention the great atmosphere of a truly local eatery).
day 2-4: cairo
cairo is unlike any other place i've been in its constant everywhere teeming motion. people and cars and noise fill the streets and there is nothing new or clean about the entire city. gritty, crumbling, packed, sprawling, its sights/sounds/smells are a sensory overload that never stops. there are palm trees stuck in at random points along the streets, the stray cats are as prevalent here as in amman, and the catcalls and attempts to rip you off are a million times more prevalent here than anywhere i've traveled. needless to say its a bit of an emotionally tiring city, and after four days i am honestly content to be leaving it behind. another thing about cairo is that it is a city with a great deal of poverty, and it's a city that doesn't try and hide it- there's no extra space or time in which to do so. people here like to carry large unwieldy objects (i.e. trays of bread, sacks of clothes, long wooden beams, etc.) through the crowded streets on their heads, sometimes while riding a bike- this is pure craziness. cairo has a reputation for izdiham katir (=tons of traffic), and this is well-deserved. in cairo the modus operandi is not 'cover the horn' as we were taught in the glory days of sears driving school, but rather 'use the horn.' honking has no stigmas of rudeness attached to it here, and is used approximately ever three seconds as a highly effective tool to announce to fellow traffic that you are there and that they need to move. also, pedestrians do NOT have the right of way in cairo. in fact, the only right they do have is to scurry across the lanes at the slightest gap in cars and try not to become roadkill (an extremely difficult task, but i think i'm learning). even in the small lanes of the souq, walking is the art of dodging frantically speeding and honking motorbikes. the metro here is surprisingly efficient and well-run, and several cars per train are reserved for women only, making it the calmest/safest place i went in all of cairo haha.
traveling here as a lone woman has forced me to be less friendly than usual and to walk around generally trying to make an effective "don't mess with me" face on the off chance of warding off potential "friends" (the face has had extremely limited success since i think i've received more unwanted approaches in my four days here than in the entire rest of my life combined). but mish mushkila, no worries, such is cairo. one of the few random encounters i enjoyed was when an egyptian street vendor's second question to me was "how many states are there in america?" me: (taken off guard by randomness of question) "uhhh, 50." egyptian man: "no! 52!" me: "uhhhh..." (wondering to self if i've been out of the country too long and forgotten the actual right answer) egyptian man: "50 in america, plus israel, plus egypt!" (cue his triumphant smile). i had to laugh :)
my first day here was spent wandering around islamic cairo, an area full of old mosques and madrasas. i visited al-azhar mosque, which is part of the world's oldest islamic university.
i climbed one of the towers of the city's old gate, bab zuweila, and had a magnificent view of the entire city and the many minarets that pierce its skyline, and at the old citadel i went in the grandiose mosque of sultan hassan.
the rest of islamic cairo is now overrun by its souq and one of the best parts of the day was finding the more local section of the market with vendors selling anything and everything including rabbits, chicken, garlic, fruit, spices, nuts, bread, cotton candy, fish, tomatoes- all in what seemed to me a highly unsanitary environment of flies. this street especially was quite the sensory overload, especially on the nose haha.
in the evening i saw an amazing sufi dance show, all the more amazing because it was free! sufism is a mystical sect of islam that focuses on the transcendental nature of god. the performance had beautiful music comprised of wooden flutes, an arab string instrument i don't know the name of, hand drums, tin horns, finger cymbals, tambourines, and singing. the dancers were very talented, with the men at the center spinning and spinning endlessly, with their wide and colorful skirts always whirling. the first half of the show had a more spiritual and serious aura, while the second half took the traditional dance and made it modern entertainment, with the spinners performing circus-like tricks with their skirts and their spins. but all in all a really beautiful and incredible show.
my next day in cairo brought a trip to see the pyramids and the sphinx.
seeing them in real life was quite exciting, and clambering around the tiny tunnels inside the second pyramid made me feel like a mummy :)
a really cool side note to the pyramids was the museum there dedicated to the restored funerary boat of one of the pharaohs. basically the egyptians built this humongous and magnificent boat, and then promptly buried it in the sand.
in case you were not a member of mr. swidler's class and don't know the traditions of ancient egypt, let me tell you: the afterlife is pretty darn important. the pyramids, the mummies, the sarcophagi, all these are related to burial of the dead, because the egyptians believed that it was important to bury the dead with everything they would need in the afterlife- this includes their intact bodies (thus mummification), a boat, a bed, lots of jewels, food, etc. when the one who died was royalty, things got even more elaborate (a.k.a. pyramids). it's interesting to think about the egyptians' spiritual beliefs and what kind of faith or fear led them to bury their most valuable goods with their dead.
eventually i left the pyramids (mostly to avoid heatstroke in the desert) and spent the rest of the afternoon exploring old or coptic cairo, the area of the city inhabited by the coptic christians.
on my final day in the city i spent hours in the enormous and extensive egyptian museum.
first of all, never have i seen so many tourists in such ridiculous quantity and concentration in my entire life (not even in dc!) it was madness, i literally had to shove my way through the clumps of guide-following tourers to see some of the exhibits. luckily as the day wore on the numbers subsided, but still, crazy. anyway, the tourists were probly all there because the museum is so incredibly jam-packed with treasures to see. room after room filled with artifacts, 75% of which are not labeled- you'd think the museum would loan half of it out just to give itself some space! sooo many sarcophagi, hieroglyphics, jewels, mummies, statues- really an unparalleled collection. some of the highlights were the actual mummies, shriveled yet preserved after 3000 years, the larger than life statues of the pharaohs towering above me, and the ornate burial acoutrements of king tut, including four gilded sarcophagi that fit one inside the other, a solid gold head mask, and gold gold gold jewelry, belts, chariots, beds, everything gold- i can't imagine the face of the archaeologist who was lucky enough to unearth all of it!
i ended my time in cairo with a peaceful felucca (sailboat) ride along the nile in the late afternoon sun- an escape, if only momentary, from the izdiham katir.
