Lost in Cairo

I started out the next day at the museum. We (myself, and the same two other travellers I had met up with yesterday) headed straight for the King Tut room, which was probably one of the best decisions of the day. We had it to ourselves, while all the crowds started on the first floor. Later in the afternoon we saw lineups to get into the room!

The museum had been described to me as a "museum warehouse" and now I see what they meant. It's an amazig museum, and you could easily spend days there and not see everything. There's enough stuff in there for 15 museums! But, one of the reasons you would not see everything, is because the rooms seem to be crammed full of artifacts, with very little of them labelled. We at least had our lonely planet guide book as a bit of a guide through the museum, and we were amazed to read descriptions of really important artifacts, and then when we found them in the museum to see them labelled "Statue of Man" or something similar.

In the afternoon we headed towards the Citadel, to see some mosques and a bit of Islamic Cairo. I think getting there was the best part of the afternoon. We spent most of the afternoon lost in crowds like this one.


The directions in the lonely planet guide say "Follow Mohammed Ali street to the Citadel". Sounds easy enough, eh? Well, it would have been if we could only find Mohammed Ali Street. After spending a while diving through crowds, dodging donkeys and bicycles and the markets and generally trying to indicate that we didn't want to buy anything, we ended up being shown the way by a former bodybuilder turned swim coach--he showed us pictures from his wallet of his body building days.

We climbed this minaret (part of the Blue Mosque) for a better view of Islamic Cairo


Much of this area of Cairo seemed to be in various stages of deconstruction and disrepair. It's interesting to walk through--much less hassle than in the markets in Cairo, and a much better view of day-to-day life


Another view of Islamic cairo, with a new mosque in the foreground.


You can see why the streets are so crazy to cross here--full of traffic, of all kinds. You can see the cars and buses, donkeys and carts, pedestrians and the ubiquitous venders heading towards the markets with huge trays of bread balanced on their heads. This guy (bottom left) was unusual in that he wasn't on a bicycle with his bread.


At the end of the day I met up with Matt and Nile, and Takashi and Yoshie at the hotel. They had just gotten back from Luxor, after what seemed like a long train ride. I think we were all ready for a rest after a long day--plus, tomorrow we were leaving for Kenya!