Our first stop was the Citadel. The highlight was the enormous mosque of Mohammed Ali. In the courtyard outside the mosque, there is a big clock tower that has never worked. Our guide explained the pretty, yet non-functional clock was a gift from the French in exchange for the Egyptian obelisk I have seen standing in the center of Paris. Also, the courtyard of the mosque has an elaborate fountain in the center that Muslims were required to use for purification before entering the mosque. The mosque is still a working mosque, although the fountain is no longer in use.
Me in front of the clock tower.
Paul in front of the fountain. The inside of the mosque is beautiful. It has several tall domed ceilings, lights everywhere, and a several ton chandelier hanging from the center of the ceiling. Our guide showed us a niche in the wall, always included in the architecture of mosques to indicate the direction of Mecca, and the pulpit where at 12:00 on Friday afternoon, the Muslim priest will deliver his sermon. I was so interesting to see the inside of the beautiful mosque.
The inside of the mosque - hard to capture in a photo!
Next we went over to the Egyptian museum. I LOVED it and was reminded of my childhood obsession with Egypt. Our guide was excellent. He was obviously well educated and knew of all the newest developments in the study of Egyptology. For example, the mummy of the most famous woman pharaoh, Hatshepsut, was just identified in the Egypt museum by DNA testing and matching a tooth discovered in her tomb with her previously unidentified mummy. Prior to the identification, she was referred to as an “obese woman with bad teeth.” We saw her mummified corpse and the old caption in the mummy room.
The mummy room was interesting and creepy at the same time. I was surprised to see hair and teeth and fingers and nails. The mummy of Ramses II, one of the longest ruling pharaohs in Egypt’s history, had particularly distinctive yellowed white hair. We saw animal mummies too, including a giant crocodile and a woman buried with her mummified “pet baboon.”
We spent a lot of time in the King Tut exhibit, which spans two big hallways and a room in the museum. Of course we saw his famous golden mask. I thought one of the most impressive of King Tut discoveries was his solid gold sarcophagus and another larger wooden sarcophagus covered in gold sheet and inlaid glass. The colors and detail in the carvings were beautiful. Paul liked King Tut’s throne the most. It was intricately carved with winged arms and lion paw feet. And the foot rest depicted the enemies of Egypt to show that the pharaoh had his enemies under his control. The endless supply of jewelry, flip flops, and walking sticks were so interesting to see too!
We spent 2 ½ hours in the Egyptian museum, learning the stories of the Egyptian gods and the history of the Egyptian people. Sadly we weren’t allowed to take pictures.
Our final stop was Kahn El-Khalili Bazaar. We stopped for lunch at Naguib Mahfouz, a great little restaurant inside the bazaar, and had traditional Egyptian food. After lunch, we had a few minutes to explore the bazaar (we requested to stay just long enough for our driver to get the car and pick us up, as we dislike bazaar style shopping). We walked quickly through the streets of the bazaar and after a few minutes decided to just wait in the square outside. We weren’t interested in bargaining or buying and wanted a break from the constant yammer of shopkeepers trying to sell. We ran into our guide by the square, and as we waited with him for our driver, a man tried to sell us wallets. He was the worst! He refused to leave, even after our guide politely told him in Arabic that no one wanted to buy his wallets. We tried to ignore him, but he kept shoving a wallet in my face and holding a flame under it (I was familiar with this way of showing the quality of the leather from my time in Florence). Finally, I turned to him and quietly said “MEESH EYE-ZUH!” – a phrase Lindsay taught me that means “I DON’T WANT!” It worked! He slunk away immediately after that. Lindsay told me it was one of the most useful Arabic phrases to know in Egypt, and I was happy to know it after our experience with the persistent wallet man!
Paul checking out the menu in our lunch spot.
Me at the outskirts of the bazaar.
We had a big lunch and weren’t interested in big dinner, so we wandered off to find a small café (Café Tabasco) that Lindsay had recommended near the American University in Cairo dorms. Again, we were so averse to taking the cabs of Cairo, we decided that the long walk from one end of Zamalek to the other was the preferable course of action. We had looked at Google Maps before we left and knew vaguely the direction we were supposed to head, and by some miracle we found the café! But by that time we decided we actually weren’t hungry at all, so instead of stopping for dinner, we further tested our luck with directions and set off in search of Lindsay’s favorite shisha spot. I knew it was “near” Café Tobasco and after walking aimlessly for a while, we stumbled upon a little outdoor spot with lots of trees that I recognized from Lindsay’s Egypt pictures. It was Café du Paris – Lindsay’s spot! It had a great atmosphere – we loved people watching, especially a big group of study abroad students testing out newly learned Arabic phrases – and it was cheap! We had a lot of fun!
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