5/23 Day 2, Cairo

Alarm was set for seven, but when it went off I reset it for fifteen more minutes. When that alarm went off, again, I turned it off and just rolled back over. The next time either of us woke up it was eleven o’clock and we decided that since this was vacation, it was one of the treats. We got ready to go out and caught a cab to the train station so that we could buy our tickets for Luxor, leaving in two days. Then we headed to Islamic Cairo and Al-Hussein mosque. We got our first Egyptian meal, pizza, and made our first Egyptian friend, Nargi. We sat in his restaurant for a little while. Nargi and his nargila joined us and we watched people fill the mosque for one of the five daily prayer sessions. The mosque filled until people were left to pray outside and we were able to take in the whole ritual.
After their ceremony, we finished our lunch, took our shoes off, and went inside the mosque. Some were still chanting and others just relaxing on the rug lined floor. I did not feel extremely welcomed and it was not like we blended in. No one said anything or was mean, but the looks we received were not all smiles. If I made eye contact with someone or gave a nod, then they would acknowledge me, but no words were exchanged. We kept it brief and made for the Khan El-Kahlili market. The mosque was at the mouth of the market and the following alleys were just lined with street shops and shacks. We walked around and admired, then crossed the street to the Mosque Al-Azhar, the oldest institution (university) in the world.
Then continued down the street and met Egyptian friend number two, Mohammed. He was a very nice guy, the Muslim Arnold Schwarzeneger, and wanted to show us around Islamic Cairo. We figured why not and began to follow him; he first took us Mosque Al-Salih Ayyub. The mosque was very old and had a minaret with a wonderful view of the entire city, even the pyramids in the distance, our first glance. The stairs go up in a circle and during the final leg up the minaret, the staircase goes pitch black and you must put a hand on the wall in the center to help yourself balance while you figure out where to step. From the mosque, Mohammed took us to a papyrus shop and we saw some beautiful artwork. Doron and I each got a couple of pieces and said our goodbyes to Mohammed. From here we headed for the Egyptian museum, home to a plethora of ancient Egyptian artifacts.
One of the many challenges in Egypt was the language barrier. Neither of us speak nor understand any Arabic, for instance, when we get cabs it is a challenge to communicate to the driver where we want to go. For the most part, we are hitting up the main sights, but even some of those require a lot of hand signals. So when we got a cab to the Egyptian museum, the driver thought we wanted the Nile river. Luckily the museum is on the Nile and we were a couple blocks away, so we just hopped out and walked the rest of the way. As we were about to cross the road in front of the museum, friend number three came into the picture. His name was Sharky (Sharuki?) and he recommended that we save the museum for another day, when we could afford more time to walk through. He suggested we split a cab with him to Giza, just outside the city of Cairo and where the pyramids sit. It made sense, the museum would close in an hour and sunset at the pyramids would be pretty special. So we took him up on it and headed out of the city.
Now, as nice as all of our friends have been, two out of the three have led to Doron and I spending some money. Sharky was one of the two and led us to his buddy’s guide shop. We ended up heading into the desert and checking the pyramids out by horseback. It turned out to be a wonderful experience and fun way to see the pyramids and the Sphinx . We got to go up and climb the third biggest pyramid, something that I do not believe would have happened if we were just walking around on our own (I don’t think it is allowed, I mean, our guide kinda snuck us around the side of the pyramid and was whispering the whole time). This concluded our tour and we rode back to the guide post and there was Sharky, just hanging out.
He invited us over to his house for dinner and cocktails, but we passed and cabbed back into Cairo. As we drove out of Giza the sun was setting behind the pyramids and it was like a painting, absolutely magnificent. We seemed to go the long way home, but D and I were not complaining, we just looked out the back window.
When we returned to Cairo, we decided to go for a bite and this is where we met friend number four, Doctor Sherif. Doc Sherif worked at the Egyptian museum as an Animal Mummy Reconstructionist (he restored discovered mummies of animals). The Doc led us to an Egyptian restaurant that was very cheap and looked pretty clean. We ordered kabobs (lamb) and falafel.; it was our first truly ethnic meal and we were both satisfied with the outcome. Doc only stayed long enough to help us order, but told us to call him the next day while at the museum and maybe he could bring us downstairs and show us his work. After the meal we were both exhausted and walked home to our “apartment” for the strangest shower I have ever had.
There were three bathrooms in our hotel/hostel and all three contained showers, well sorta. On the wall was a shower head and no where in the bathroom was a designated shower area (the toilet is in the shower, the bathroom floor was also the shower floor, the shower is the bathroom). The water just sprays from the wall and the floor was somewhat slanted toward a drain. After a shower and a couple games of sheshbesh, D and I went to sleep, promising not to sleep in the next day.