train to cairo

Exploring Cairo, old and new

October 14, 2012 Egypt Middle East

With only three days at our disposal, we limited our explorations to the downtown core of Cairo and focused on a few of the most interesting and important sites.  We used the metro system when we ventured a little further afar and found it to be a reliable, safe, cheap and fast way to get around. One metro trip costs 1 EGP, or about 15 cents CAD.  The underground system is comparable to any similar system we have used in other cities with one very noticeable difference.  Each station has signs along the platform that say “Women Only”.   We puzzled over these signs and quickly learned what they meant when we entered a car full of women who cried out in unison – women, women.  Clearly, no men were allowed on the cars that stopped between the “Women Only” signs.  Ahhh, mystery solved!

During the day, the down town core is dirty, chaotic, and noisy with people busily going about their affairs.  But every night, the area is transformed into a festive, fun, almost carnival like atmosphere. At sunset, vendors start setting up stalls in the already crowded streets, selling everything imaginable.  The shops are illuminated like bright Christmas trees.  There are balloon vendors, and popcorn carts just like a country fair in Canada.  The people fill up the sidewalks, walking slowly from window display to window display, pausing to admire the goods.  The restaurants are abuzz with customers.  I loved walking around at night watching all the families going about their business.  We were never bothered or felt ill at ease.  People were friendly towards us, often saying “Welcome to Egypt” as we passed by. One night, we were approached by a young woman, a university student who was interviewing tourists to find out their experience in the down town area.  She wanted to know if we felt safe, if we were being harassed, etc.  We gladly answered her questions and she was so appreciative.  It did raise an interesting question though: where are all the tourists?  They are noticeably absent, yet we knew there are tourists around as we see busloads of them when we visit the tourist sites. I surmise they are probably cloistered away in their Western style hotels far away from the real Egyptian life. They are missing out on so much, in my opinion.

A papyrus paper making demonstration.

The Egyptian Museum

 The Egyptian Museum in down town Cairo is reputed to be have one of the best repositories of Egyptian antiquities in the world.  Now that we had visited the temples and tombs in Upper Egypt, I was thrilled to have the opportunity to view some of the treasures from that region, especially the infamous gold treasures from King Tut’s tomb.  They strictly enforced the “no camera” rule, so we have no photos to share.  But there are plenty on line if you are interested.

The museum is a relic in its own right, dating back to 1902.  The architecture is beautiful, with high ceilings and lofty spaces designed to showcase a plethora of antiquities.

The museum is filled to the rafters, yet apparently only a fraction of the 120,000 piece collection is on display.  Each item has been catalogued, yet most exhibits are not labelled which was frustrating at times. The labels that do exist, seemingly with no rhyme or reason, were small type-written notes on faded paper looking as old as the museum itself. All the display cases are the old-fashioned kind, the ones made of heavy wood with dusty glass shelves, relics of a bygone area.  Each cabinet is secured with a flimsy, rusted out lock. Many cabinets were simply secured with thin piece of twisted wire.  At least the treasures, including the stunning 11 kg solid gold death mask and the two innermost golden anthropoid coffins from King Tut’s tomb were segregated in a separate, highly secure room.  I found it quite incredible that the security was so minimal in a museum that housed such a vast collection of invaluable ancient artefacts.

The museum sure could use a good cleaning as most exhibits are buried under a thick layer of dust. Yet in spite of its tired, faded, old fashioned appearance, there was a charm to this unpretentious museum that made it a pleasure to explore.

The museum is vast; you could easily spend a day here if you had the stamina for it.  I personally get overloaded after about 3 hours in a museum.  After a couple of hours, we took a lunch break and then returned later in the afternoon for a couple more hours.  It was good to break it up this way and we had no problem re-entering the museum with our ticket.  We opted not to pay the extra 100 EGP per person to visit the Royal Mummies display.  They had plenty of other mummies on exhibit so I didn’t feel the need to see more.  Again, a quick google search will yield many photos of these mummies if you’re interested.

Old Cairo and the Coptic Museum

Old Cairo was known to the Greeks, Romans and early day Christians as Babylon, but this should not be confused with the Mesopotamian city of the same name.  This was the original fortified town around which the rest of the city grew.  It is now home to the Coptic community who form about 15 percent of Cairo’s population.  The “Copts” were one of the earliest peoples to adopt Christianity.

We found our way to this area by metro, our first venture using the underground system. Egyptians are very similar to South Americans in that they will give you directions even if they don’t have a clue where you are going.  They just want to be helpful. So it shouldn’t have surprised us when we were given wrong information, from the Information Desk no less.  After two wrong stops, we were finally directed to the correct station (Mari Girgiss in case you happen to be there) by a kind gentleman who took the initiative to help us out as we were puzzling over our map.  We knew we were in the right place by the groups of tourists milling about the streets.

To be honest, we had no intention of going to the Coptic Museum, but we were both desperate to use the bathroom and we knew the museum would have decent toilet facilities. Of course, after buying the admission ticket, we felt compelled to at least do a quick spin through.  Again, no cameras were allowed, so we have no photos to share.  This museum gives you an excellent idea as to what the interior of a 5th, 6th or 7th century church would have looked like.  The most prized collection is the “Nag Hammadi Codices”: 1,200 papyrus pages bound together as books – the earliest books with leather covers found to date.  These Coptic writings date to the 4th century and offer a rare insight to early Christianity.  We learned a lot about the early Coptic Christians and I was particularly interested to see how many of the practices and symbols from Egyptian mythology was adopted by those early day Christians, most notably the symbol that represented life to the Egyptians was transformed into a Coptic cross.

There are many churches, mosques and a synagogue clustered within the ancient walls of Old Cairo.  We followed alleyways (and the tour groups) to find our way around and explore these diverse religious centres. The whole area is steeped in history.  For example, the spring next to the Ben ‘Ezra Synagogue is supposedly where Mary stopped to wash Jesus, and where Pharoah’s daughter found baby Moses in the bullrushes.

The Citadel

On a hill overlooking Cairo sits the Saladin Citadel, a medieval Islamic fortification that has been well preserved to this day.  This complex houses the Mosque of Mohamed Ali, the Mosque of El-Nasser Mohamed, the Military Museum and the El-Gouhara Palace.

The location offered a fantastic view of Cairo which extended as far as they eye could see.  We could even see the Giza Pyramids in the far distance.

Many students of various ages were touring this site on the afternoon of our visit.  We were approached by a few groups who wanted to have their picture taken with us.  One group of female university students approached me while I was sitting on the Mosque floor just taking in the atmosphere.  One girl in particular spoke English quite fluently.  She approached me rather shyly and said hello.  She was very interested in where I came from and where I had been in Egypt and what I thought of her country.  There was no ulterior motive, she was genuinely interested in learning about me.  We have been engaged several times like this, usually by young people and it always leaves me with such a warm feeling.  These interchanges make me feel very welcome in this country.

Footnote:  A map on the wall of the Egyptian Museum indicated a room that contained the famous Rosetta Stone.  This unique ancient artefact provides the key to our modern understanding of Egyptian hieroglyphs because the stone contains inscriptions of the same text in three different scripts: Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, Demotic script and Ancient Greek.

We weren’t exactly sure what we were looking for, in terms of size or shape but surely something of such historical importance would be prominently displayed and well labelled.  We scoured the room and verified the map twice. There was nothing to indicate which stone was the Rosetta Stone if it was there at all.  One stone, tucked away in the far corner of the room, had three distinct scripts inscribed on it.  This stone was displayed in a an upright position, in a very shabby wood case that resembled the photo below.  Did we find the Rosetta Stone or was it just a replica?

File:Rosetta Stone.JPG

Photo of the Rosetta Stone courtesy of Wikipedia.

A subsequent internet search indicates the Rosetta Stone has been a prized possession of the British Museum since 1802.  Yet some on-line descriptions of the Egyptian Museum state the Rosetta Stone resides there.  The official site for the Egyptian Museum in Cairo says nothing about the Rosetta Stone, so my money is on the British Museum, but that doesn’t explain the stone we did see. That remains a mystery!

Bed bugs – a blessing in Cairo

October 13, 2012 Egypt Middle East

My stomach tightened into a knot as we entered into the train station at 4:30 on Monday morning and  I saw the train that would take us to Cairo.  It was old, dirty, and marred with  cracked and broken windows.  The first class coach was marginally better, at least it had air conditioning and large, reclining seats, although it was still pretty grimy and grungy.  But when compared to the second class coach, I’m glad we splurged and paid the extra $10 CAD (total price per ticket: $21 CAD) for first class.  Most tourists travel this route at night on the sleeper train which costs more ($60 CAD + depending on what type of seat you purchase) and I was beginning to see why.  In fact, the day train has only recently become available to tourists.  In the past, it was limited to Egyptians only.

We weren’t alone for long…it filled up
pretty quickly as we stopped in every village along the way. 

The train left on time and 14 hours later we arrived on schedule in Cairo.  Those fourteen hours were spent bumping and swaying slowly along a rickety old track that snaked through the Nile Valley, stopping in every town along the way.  So much for being on the express route! The scenery was consistent and quite beautiful – men and women along with the odd donkey or two, manually labouring in their lush fields of corn, sugar cane, and cabbage.  There are two growing seasons for all crops in the Nile Valley, except sugar cane which takes a year to grow.  It looked like it was harvest and planting time.  The rural landscape was interrupted now and then by small villages, larger towns and a few cities which all looked very much the same as the towns we have already visited.  Surprisingly, we travelled in relative comfort – we even had food and beverage service of which we availed ourselves, at least for drinks.  We declined on the food as the canteen area looked pretty sketchy. There were a few precarious moments, though, when the train and the tracks did not seem to align and I was certain we were goners.  But, we got there in one piece, which is all that really matters at the end of the day.

Sadly, garbage is everywhere.

Before I tell you about Cairo, just a word or two about our weekend in Aswan.  We stayed at the Keylany Hostel which had very good Trip Advisor reviews.  I don’t know if it was because we had been spoiled on the luxury boat for five days, but we found this hostel to be quite grungy even though our room was adequate with comfortable and clean beds, and a usable bathroom.  It had an archaic air conditioner that was noisy as hell but it worked reliably.  We spent three nights here in spite of the grim surroundings.  The town of Aswan came alive at night in the bazaar which was just around the corner from our hostel.  But walking through the market was an exercise of determination to avoid all the shopkeepers who were very obnoxious and persistent, often blocking our way to try to force us into their shop.  We’re getting really good at ignoring these pesky irritants.

View from the front door of our hostel one morning.

A feast for under $10.

Food was a challenge in Aswan.  Our breakfast at the hostel was better than we expected – real filtered coffee, fresh fruit juice, fruit salad, Egyptian pancakes with jam, and toast.  Finding food for the rest of the day was difficult.  On Friday, their holy day, everything was closed and we resigned ourselves to lunch at KFC – yes, they have KFC in Aswan.  With a recommendation from our hostel, we reluctantly ate dinner at a rather grimy looking local restaurant in the market.  The food turned out to be plentiful and tasty and very cheap (about $6 CAD) and most importantly, we didn’t get sick afterwards.  The next day we ate at another restaurant that apparently is a historic icon in Aswan (why our hostel didn’t recommend it in the first place is beyond me) and it was much better in every respect albeit more expensive by Egyptian standards (a mere $10 CAD for the entire meal).

Although we had had our fill of temples this past week, we had already arranged a visit to Abu Simbel through the tour agency in Luxor.  This meant a ridiculously early morning start on Sunday, getting picked up at 3:15 am, spending the next hour picking up other people from different hotels, and then travelling in a very cramped, uncomfortable mini bus for 3 hours in order to get to the site by about 7:15 am.  The site was incredibly impressive, and certainly worth the visit.  The fact that this site had been completely relocated to higher ground in the 60’s when the High Dam was built made it all the more extraordinary.  They literally moved a mountain.

It took a couple of days to get our bearings in Cairo, it is such a huge, chaotic city.  As the capital of Egypt, it is the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and its metropolitan area is ranked 11th in the world with a population of 17.5 million spread over 453 square kilometers.  This is the largest city we have visited so far.

We stayed in the Milano Hostel located right in the down town core.   We were a little intimidated at first as we ventured out to explore our neighbourhood.  Everywhere you looked, the streets were clogged with cars and people, day and night.  In every direction, there was a constant gridlock, often bringing traffic to a standstill.  I don’t know how anybody gets anywhere in a car.  It takes nerves of steel to cross a street, when the traffic is moving that is – you must boldly walk into traffic and trust they will yield to you.  But if you dare hesitate, they don’t give you a second chance and you’re left stranded in the middle of the street as they go around you.  For a while, I waited for a local to step foot into the oncoming traffic and then trailed closely behind.  But we quickly got the hang of it and soon we were walking into 5 lanes of oncoming traffic without breaking a sweat.

There were no signs of protests or unrest while we were in Cairo until Friday (more about that later).  Our hostel was a 15 minute walk from Tehrir Square where all the recent demonstrations have taken place, including the one on Friday.  We feel very safe and comfortable walking around this area day and night.  The shopkeepers don’t even hassle us as they seem more interested in serving their local clientèle than bothering with us tourists. I even went shopping and bought myself a dress without any problems whatsoever.

It’s been a bit of a rigmarole with our hostel.  In spite of their best intentions to make us feel welcome and comfortable, we had problems with this hostel right from the start.  First, nobody met us at the train station as promised.  They did, however, pay for our taxi from the train station to the hostel.  When we finally arrived late on Monday night, we were given a room facing a busy street which was extremely noisy.  Add to this, the ensuite bathroom was ridiculously small, so small in fact that the shower hung over the sink and toilet.  We weren’t quite sure where you were supposed to stand to take the shower.  You could literally sit on the toilet, brush your teeth into the sink and have a shower all at the same time.  Seeing as we were planning to stay in Cairo for a week, we complained, something we rarely do.  We insisted on a better room or we would be going elsewhere.  The next day we were given a new room that was still quite noisy but it had a half decent bathroom, and they offered us a better breakfast after Chris complained about that too.  I have to give them credit for trying to make us feel comfortable and for addressing our concerns.  On our third day, they offered us an even better room which we gladly accepted only to find it infested with bed bugs – something we discovered after we had moved all our stuff over and spent the afternoon napping.  We quickly moved back to our old room which was bug-free as far as we could see.  In spite of these issues, there were positive things about this hostel that made it worth staying – the beds were very comfortable, we had modern, quiet air conditioning, and it was clean.  And it goes without saying that the location was excellent – walking distance to the Egyptian Museum and metro, plenty of restaurants around, and lots of shopping.

Imagine, with all the places we have stayed, this is the first encounter with bed bugs and luckily we saw them before they saw us, or so we thought.

I thought this was the end of the story, but there is more.  When I woke up on Friday morning I was covered in bites, that’s right, bed bugs! That was the last straw.  We packed up our bags and we were out of there first thing in the morning.  We took a taxi to a southern suburb (Maadi), where we found a room at the Hotel Pearl, thanks to a recommendation by Steve, the manager at Roots Camp where we were diving a few weeks ago.

Ironically, this was the day riots and demonstrations broke out down town, apparently right near  our hostel.  If we had still been staying there, we would have walked right into all the commotion later that afternoon when we returned from our trip to the Giza Pyramids.  We avoided the entire down town situation thanks to a bad case of bed bugs, but we did have our own excitement at the pyramids in Giza that day which I’ll tell you about later.