OMG Cairo

We're here.

Wow. This is the loudest, craziest city I have ever seen. 

Our apartment is on the island of Zamalek, between two branches of the Nile. Quieter, less crowded than the rest of the city, thank god. But still somewhat crazy.

We got in on Friday morning. Our apartment manager had promised us we could check in early, but he lied. But our flight was delayed 3.5 hours so that worked out okay. We got through customs relatively fast and Ubered to a restaurant for eggs benedict (now a family tradition when traveling, don't ask).

Then we settled in to our lovely apartment with a balcony overlooking the Nile where we can watch party boats and kayakers (no crocodiles here, I assume), napped for a couple of hours, and went out to the Khan el-Khalili Souk, the main bazaar. And good lord. It was jam-packed with people and motorbikes,  all honking wildly. We wandered the shops for a couple of hours; I bought a silver ankh ring and bargained it down to probably ten times what it was worth (I suck at bargaining but it's the culture).

Then we Ubered back to the apartment and went out to dinner. It's impossible to reserve a table here, though Egyptians seem to be able to, so we had to wait a while at the place we'd picked. But the service and food were good, so we ate massively at 10 p.m. and then walked back and crashed for ten hours.

In the morning, we got up very late, had pastries and coffee from a German bakery next door, and headed out to the Grand Egyptian Museum (or GEM). I'd ordered tickets in advance, so we avoided the immense lines. The GEM is monstrously large and nicely laid out, though I think Sue might not approve of all the signage. It gave more info about the time period than the exact pieces we were looking at. 

The part we liked best was the massive staircase, with huge statues on each level. We saw the main galleries, which moved chronologically from 700,000 B.C. to the New Kingdom, and then went to the King Tut galleries, which were unpleasantly crowded. Still amazing, though we did not stand in line to see Tut's death mask because we could see it perfectly well from a distance. It was a bit like viewing the Mona Lisa.

Then we had a snack and went to the Boat Museum, which featured one immense wooden boat from  Khufu's time, a 4,500-year-old cedar wood vessel, semi-reconstructed using much of the original materials. It was buried near one of the pyramids for the king's journey across the sky in the afterlife, never used in the water. It was quite astonishing.

We wanted to have a cocktail and look at the pyramids from a viewpoint, but this is easier said than done in dry Cairo. Our first choice had "cocktails" but not cocktails. Our second choice was a little sketch, but turned out to have an amazing view of the pyramids. When we called our Uber, we had to wait in an area where they parked the horses and camels that took people to the edifices, and also a whole lot of goats. 

Our ride back was a long and hair-raising trip -- there are no lanes, no lights, and occasional speed bumps to make sure no one goes over 20 mph. Our drivers have all been talented and kind, and the fact that they are still alive is remarkable. We took a short rest and walked to a Lebanese restaurant that did not serve wine, and then walked to a very fancy restaurant with excellent food and wine on the other side of Zamalek. We viewed the Cairo side of the Nile, which was much quieter (though still not quiet), and walked back, replete and exhausted.