Detailed tour of Islamic Cairo vaporizes, Egypt does Mexican and cyberspace chokes on my ticket home. (Cairo)
Deb met us the following morning for an Islamic Tour of Cairo. It was wonderful, and the guide was excellent. (Samir Abbass, 010 533 4294 – freelance guide with referrals through See Egypt.)
Samir Abass
Starting at the north gate, in about six hours we covered Bayt el Suhaymi, an old arabic mansion; Wakalat Bazar’a (medieval business centre and hotel); walked down the gold street; ate lunch at el Ahat el Gidit; visited Al-Azhar mosque (the oldest university in the world, teaching continuously since 969 AD); and climbed the minoret at Bab Zuwayla, all along having contextual explanations and questions answered, of which I recall absolutely nothing.
View from the women's quarter in Bayt el Suhaymi
Cairo seen from Bab Zuwayla
As I always say, “nothing says Cairo like tortilla chips and guacamole”, so we finished our time together with drinks and snacks at the bar. (Not as good as you get in Mexico, but Mexicans’ Lebanese buffets don’t compete with Cairo’s.) As much as we hated to tear ourselves away, we had our massages to go to! Well-kneaded and scrubbed clean, we were escorted to the Mercedes and whisked off to the airport in record time (the entire country was watching the world cup qualifier between Egypt and Congo, won by the former 4 – 1), which of course meant for Alison that she yet again spent an inordinate amount of time hanging out in possibly the greyest place on the planet. But at least it gave her one last chance to perfect her two newest favourite words: la and shokran. (No, thank you.)
The homeward journey was blissfully uneventful, aside from the twenty minutes during which the airport staff held my passport hostage while they refused to check me in when their computers couldn’t pull up my Aeroplan ticket. But I just relaxed, remembering the simple advice Deb gave us to survive Cairo: “Just surrender.” So I surrendered, and bid Cairo a warm ma as-salaama.
