WALK LIKE AN EGYPTIAN (Cue Go-Gos music…)

Our hotel is in the relatively quiet island neighborhood known as Zemalek. The shops are more upscale and cater to employees of the many embassies located in the area. (The U.S. embassy, however is not in Zemalek and we seriously doubt it looks like one of the many colonial structures guarded by a single skinny dude trying to stay awake in his tiny wooden guard shack.)

Though taxis are cheap and plentiful, I am unquestionably the former and we prefer to walk anyway. So walk we did. For hours. Many of them lost. Most of them lost.

When I say “lost” I don’t mean we were all alone with no one to ask for directions. We were far off the beaten path of tourists, but fully merged into the heavily pummeled path of locals. I mean we were two grains of sand amidst this infinite desert of people, cars, micro buses, more cars, trucks, taxis and… have I mentioned cars?

Our maps were useless at this point as what little signage there was was in Arabic, and stopping to ask for directions posed a threat as moving to the left would land us under a bus, moving to the right would get us creamed by a guy with a blow torch, and stopping would cause a major break in the flow for the cart piled precariously with 4x4s or a burro carrying a few hundred pounds of aluminum tubs. So on we walked.

We decided that a little street food would fortify us in our traffic-phobic meandering and stopped at a clean(ish) place with a friendly proprietor and what appeared to be his enthusiastic following. Turned out that he’s popular because he makes some of the best liver and mokh (deep-fried brains) in town. Maybe we didn’t need so much fortification after all.

Eventually, we bumbled into Islamic Cairo and found sanctuary within the Medieval walls along stone-paved, car-free streets, with ornate mosques and historical merchants’ homes. It also happened to be the wholesale hookah district. Good to know had we been in the market for a water pipe.

Food highlight: Ravioli stuffed with lamb and apricots in a light cream sauce; ravioli stuffed with chicken in a mallow sauce. The pasta was fresh and perfectly al dente but very chintzy on the stuffing. Mallow… the taste is similar to parsley but it produces a glutenous, slimy sauce. Think oozing okra. The “light cream sauce” was really a cheap white sauce and needed a heap o’ Parmesan for some flavor. Must try making my own lamb & apricot stuffing for ravioli. (Anyone want in on the experiment?)

COPPING OUT

The next day, we chose to walk fewer kilometers, save a few hours, and experience Africa’s first metro. An excellent move. (pun intended)

The Coptics came to Caro around the second century A.D. We showed up on Friday.

Housed in the fortress of Qasr el Shamah, the Coptic museum boasts a small but stunning collection from Egypt’s Christian era which linked the pharonic with the Graeco-Roman periods. Within the complex are several churches, the Ben Ezra synagogue (founded in the 9^th century but occupying the shell of a 4^th century Christian church), and the church of our hometown gal, Saint Barbara. Nothing like a good story of beheading and martyrdom to end our day in Coptic Cairo.

We took our dinner and accommodations on the overnight train to Aswan.

Food highlight: Inedible dinner; breakfast of 4 different forms of white bread plus processed cheese spread. Excellent service.

Oxymoron highlight: “Sleeper” car

Next up: KICKING ASWAN

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