Despite the late bedtime we were up the next day at 0900 – we couldn’t waste our first day in Cairo. At breakfast we stumbled across Amy, another girl doing the same tour as us, so we chatted a little and she filled us in on the two guys that would be filming our tour, who she had met the previous day. Basically they work for a production company in Canberra and Budget had commissioned them to do a promo video for their Egypt tour – also they were making a programme called “Earthwalkers” for one of the Sky channels about the experiences of Aussie travellers. Since usually at least 90 per cent of people on these tour groups are Australian or at least Antipodean, they’re going to make one on the tour.
After some breakfast and a shower, the five of us (Shelly and I, Amy, and Ben and Mike, the camera crew) set off for Khan El-Khalili, the biggest and most famous market in Cairo. Not only is it bloody huge, but around it are other, Egyptian markets, where the locals would be buying their necessities, rather than simply tourist traps. We didn’t realise it at the time but we started off in one of the less touristy parts of the market, but even so the din of all the stallholders hawking their wares began to wear after a while, a ceaseless cacophony of
“Come inside and look, I have everything you need!”
“Looking is free!”
“Scarves! Beautiful scarves for a beautiful lady!”
“Smell my perfume, I give you good price!”
“Spices madam? I have cinnamon, aniseed, cumin, saffron, fenugreek...”
“Where you from? Australia? Aussie Aussie Aussie! Spain? Hola señorita! Italy? Ciao bella! France? Bonjour jolie femme! Welcome to Egypt!”
We wandered among brightly coloured cotton galabayas (standard Egyptian dress), perfumes, spices (what gorgeous aromas), silk and cotton scarves, costume and real jewelry, and of course stuffed camels, “Egypt” t-shirts, mini pyramids and other souvenir keepsakes. The heat and sun were strong and welcome for me after the Dublin winter, and we drank sweet and fresh orange and sugar cane juice in the shade while we shopped. Once we wandered even further off the beaten track and found ourselves in a shady part of the market where it appeared we were the only foreigners . There were no hawkers here, most of the stall owners were watching the Chelsea/Tottenham match and were perfectly content to let us look around without hassle.
Eventually we tired of the markets and Shelly and I had planned to go to Cairo Tower, which the hotel reception had pointed out as an “attraction”. The five of us went along to check it out and a typical tourist attraction it turned out to be; undergoing reconstruction and overpriced but at least affording decent panoramic views of Cairo. There wasn’t a queue anyway which puts it a little ahead of the Empire State Building in my book. After that we tried to walk along the bank of the Nile which looked quite pretty, but unfortunately it was all fenced off, so eventually we caved and decided to go back to the hotel where we were to meet our tour leader and tour mates at 18:00.
The meeting was pretty standard, Sam our tour leader introduced himself and also Rami, the Ops manager who was also coming along, and we started to meet each other. Mostly Aussies of course but we also had a smattering of English and Canadians, a Kiwi and an Austrian, Shelly and I who were Chinese and Argentine respectively, and Sam and Rami, the Egyptians, so we had a little variety. After all the introductory paperwork and handing over of cash (*sniff*) we all went down to a local Egyptian restaurant for dinner. Sam recommended a typical Egyptian dish for me of rice, pasta, vegetables and meat which was delicious, although I can’t for the life of me remember the name of it. I also smoked a shisha pipe for the first and only time – I don’t smoke, in fact I’ve never smoked a cigarette but I figure when in Rome...I always want to try the traditions of each country I visit, and one shisha isn’t going to kill me. Basically what it is is a enormous freestanding pipe with a big bulb at the bottom full of water. The flavoured tobacco (it comes in all kinds of yummy fruit flavours, I had apple) goes at the top with the coals and the smoke goes down the pipe, through the water and you suck it up through a tube thing and that’s how you smoke it. I wouldn’t do it again but it was fun to try. I don’t think I know how to smoke properly anyway – I don’t get the buzz you’re supposed to get from it, only just enjoyed the apple flavour. We had a nice civilised dinner and chat, and eventually went back to the hotel and to bed. Given we’d only had about five hours of sleep the previous night, we were quite eager to make it an early night and make sure we were bright eyed and bushy tailed ready to take on Giza the following day.
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