Ciao Mondo! : Cairo, The Khan & Giza

So, the new "sparky" (electrician) at the boat yard (another Kiwi) has never been to Cairo, so we decided to head to Cairo for another round of sightseeing.

On this trip we had 3 Kiwis and Egyptian girl and me. We got to Cairo in the morning and had lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe in Cairo. I decided to skip the Egyptian Museum and get a much needed haircut. I went to the same guy that cut my hair when I was there in February. He had done such a fantastic job; the color, cut - everything. This time - not so much. I have no idea what he did! First of all, my hair is now brown instead of red, then he was trying to curl my hair with a flat iron. So weird. My hair almost looks lik

e a mullet! So strange. I have no clue what he did. He speaks no English and looks to be about 60 years old. His hands shake while cutting my hair. Like last time, when he was finished he took the mirror and showed me what he did all around my head. He had such a big, proud grin on his face, I didn't have the heart to tell him he screwed it up this time. Oh well. It wasn't that bad.

We went to get our hotel room. There were five of us; three

guys and two girls. I thought we could all stay in a dorm room or something. No. Dalia is Muslim, so it turns out it is illegal for an Egyptian woman (I doubt if her religion matters) to stay in a hotel room with a foreign man and vice versa. Really? Illegal? Sure enough, they were watching us like hawks. Dalia and I stayed in a room together and the guys stayed in one. That evening when we returned to the rooms, there they were. Sitting there in the dark staring at us; watching us. Seriously, they were actually guarding the rooms. Whatever.

The next day we headed back over to the Pyramids....again, yes my seventh trip! We got into two cabs and headed down to Giza. The taxi took us to the bottom of the entrance by the Sphinx...and holy crap...there had to be hundreds of kids! My God! Loud, screaming, pushing, shoving kids. We managed to bust in line and get our tickets. Then we had to squeeze our way through the small door. One girl lost her shoe and bent over to pick it up; as she did all the kids started pushing and she almost got trampled.

An Egyptian guard started screaming for everyone to get back. As I was getting shoved through the doors some girl pinched the flesh on the back of my arm! Ow! Little brats!

We decided to go see something new on this trip and headed over to the Solar Boat Museum. The Solar Barque was discovered in 1954 in long cavities around the Pyramid of Cheops that was broken into more than a thousand pieces as a votive offering. It took ten years to reassemble. The 43ft long boat is though

t to be 4500 years old and to have carried the Pharaoh Cheops down the Nile from Memphis.

There were so many damn people at the pyramids it was practically anarchy. People were starting to climb their way up it much to the dismay of the guards. They started yelling at people to come down and surprisingly they did.

Later, we took another trip to the Khan. We had some drinks at the historical coffee shop, Fishawi's, that's been open for

hundreds of years. I hate tea and I hate coffee, but I did get some cold Hibiscus tea (Karkade). It tastes a bit like cranberry or a sweet grape juice. People kept coming by trying to shine our shoes or sell us stuff. One guy had a suitcase full of genuine fake Rolex watches. Gavin decided to tease the guy a bit and then ended up buying a watch from him for about 100LE ($17.00). His wrist is so hugethat it didn't fit and he managed to break the band trying to force it on. Nice going! That's what you get, silly! Weather was kind of cold, but we had a really nice dinner at a place called Sequoia on Zamalek. Later that night we headed back up to Alex on the train.