Walk like an Egyptian

Since we rushed the last post on Cairo, we thought we would expand a little bit more. We stayed at the King Tut Hostel and they actually picked us up from the airport which was nice to not haggle with a cab driver at 1 am! The next morning we met 2 other Americans from Washington, Matt and Tim, who gave us a quick update of what they found around town so far. Then we were off to explore the Egyptian Museum. As we were trying to cross the road, a local named Alladin asked where we were from and if we knew 'walk like an Egyptian?' Assuming he did not mean the song, we said no and he told us that you just have to start walking and 'pray to Allaah'. He was right, you really just have to start walking if you see the slightest break in traffic and hope the cars avoid you - something neither of us got really used to. We got to talking with Alladin and he was nice enough to walk us to the Egyptian Museum, since we were going to wrong way. The Museum is really impressive and has tons of artifacts. Unfortunately we did not get to see the Mummy exhibit since they were charging an additional $100 pounds per person (more than the ticket to enter the musuem). On our way back from the Musuem, we did not find a whole lot of food places open so we stopped at McDonalds living on Ben's dream of a Quarter Pounder in every country. Later that night we walked through Islamic Cairo for a few hours through all the souqs and markets they have around there. One thing that is striking here is that everyone seems to beam a smile at you and say 'Hello, Welcome!' and seem to be a little offended when you are not quick to respond with a Hello and Thanks. They also seem to like to speak to you about where you are going and are very helpful on pointing you in the right direction - after informing you that they like Obama and there is a nice shop to visit on the way who is run by their uncle or cousin or brother, etc.

When we woke up the next morning and after the post office experience, we had a bit of a scare since our cards were not being accepted at the ATM's we were going to. We tried about 4 different ones that all said they accepted Visa without success so wrote our bank a frantic e-mail. We only had about 20 pounds between us (about $4) and due to the time difference really were not able to do a whole lot. Apparently we just needed to use certain banks for our cards as not all ATM's that say VISA will work - which we found out at about 10 pm. We splurged on dinner after we got money out, but overall the day was pretty uneventful.

So when we woke up we decided to go see the pyramids of Giza. It's pretty impressive to see the huge blocks that make up the pyramids and to think they built them so long ago. We got to see the Sphinx too but with so many touts arounds we did not want to stay in one place too long. Actually going inside the pyramids is extra and from what we were told not entirely impressive so we skipped that part. There were a couple temples, etc that you could go through for free to get the vibe of the inside - but you couldn't stay in there too long because it was HOT!

After our day at the pyramids, we grabbed dinner near our hostel since we had to pack up and catch our 14 hour night train to Aswan (we did not realize it was that long when we paid the hostel for 4 nights but oh well!). Luckily we had the whole cabin to ourselves so we were each able to stretch out across three seats! Once we reach Aswan we will take a fellucha trip (kinda like a big sailboat) up the Nile to Luxor.