A Walk Through the Bizaar

Our first full day in Cairo has been full. We decided to hit the streets today and save the pyramids and Giza for tomorrow. On the top of our list was old, Islamic Cairo! According to the guidebook, it was just a fifteen minute walk. Well, that must have been as the crow flies or walks. After about an hour of asking directions (amazing how many Arabic words we learned today) we found Khan El-Khalili or the craft bizaars.

A street in the bizaar Khan El- Khalili

Although this part of Cairo attracts many tourists, nonetheless, it's still fun walking the streets, looking at the jewelry, copper pots, leather, and much more. This section of the city also has many of the most famous mosques. Many of these allow non-Muslims to enter. Men appears to represent 90% plus of the shop keepers and everyone drinks mint tea throughout the day. With regards to dealing with everyone selling their wares, we have already developed some survival Arabic - la (the word for no). Cairo may be as dirty a large city as we have ever visited, but the people are wonderfully friendly. In the tourist areas, we have found a good many people who speak English; off the beaten path, most do not speak English and our arabic accent appears to be challenging to most who have tried to understand what we are trying to say.

Highlights of our day always seem to center around eating and drinking. After walking for hours, we stopped a Fishawi's ( the oldest tea house in Cairo, run by the same family since 1773) for mint tea and water. We also had the occasion to have a shoeshine while relaxing and people watching.

Inside Fishawi's Cafe

As we will be in Cairo at both the start and the finish of our trip, many more hours will be spent in the old, Islamic part of the city. We treated ourselves to a taxi ride across town in the early afternoon for lunch. Every other car on the street seems to be a taxi. Unlike Mexico City, taxis here are both cheap and safe. We easily hailed a black and white taxi (the cheapest non-metered ride in town) and headed across town to Champillon Street (named after the Frenchman who decifered the Rosetta Stone and thus helped break the mystery of the Egyptian hieroglyphs in the early 1800s). Our quest was taking us to Abou Tarek's for kushari (made almost famous by Tony Bourdain in his Cairo episode of No Reservations.

The assembly line for take-out at Abou Tarek's

Kushari is a wonderful mix of rice, maccaroni, lentils, fried onions, chick peas served with a tomato sauce. This is the only dish served at Abou Tarrek's. However, rice pudding comes included as desert (as good as Grandma Zeta's). This was a great lunch. Only light eating required tonight.

Nancy enjoying a big bowl of kushari.

Tomorrow we head to the pyramids. Although the hotel offers excursions, we'll do it on our own using a very good public tranportation system. Earlier today, our taxi ride across the city cost a whole $1.50.

Tomorrow: Exploring the Ancient World