sitting on the balcony again tonight it was so murky i couldn't even see the Pyramids. other nights i've been out here i've been able to see at least the outlines. tonight: not so much. air quality's not exactly what you'd call "good" here. a lack of regular rainfall means that stuff hangs in the air for quite a while before settling and between traffic (many to the taxis run on gas rather than petrol, which is good. most of the buses run on diesel or low-octane petrol and belch smoke which cancels out a lot of the benefits), cooking fires, burning rubbish which is heavily plastic and... did i mention dust? regardless of the reason, you can see a noticeable line in the sky from the pollution. looking down from the 6th floor it looks like the aerial scenes from Blade Runner (but without the rain) - the green lights in the nearby mosque's spire and the finished-before-they're-done buildings adding to the cyberpunk tinge.
Mr Sayed's in the hotel foyer this morning as promised, with Louise's chain fixed up as good as new. he's also brought along a pair of ear rings she'd asked to look at - little hollow cartouche's in silver, inscribed with the name Ramses II (Louise's hero). she loves them, and suddenly they're a gift. he REALLY didn't have to do that. just when he can't get any more awesome, he's also come through on another favour we asked on Monday morning: his friend Mohammed will, for LE400, will take us to Alexandria tomorrow and show us around for the day. 200+km and 3 hours drive each way, a 12 hour day. what a bloke. Mohammed's english isn't great, but Mr Sayed has a day off on Thursday so all we have to do is call him and he'll translate for us. i REALLY should have bought more stuff from him. he heads on his way, good deeds done well and truly up until next Ramadan, and we hit up the Taxi-Pimp for a ride into the Egyptian Museum. it was the first thing we were taken to on the official tour, but we really didn't get to do it in enough detail so we're heading back again with Mr Samir - a lovely bloke somewhere in his 40's with specs, a tweed jacket and a 2003 diary filled with notes written by grateful passengers.
we knock the museum over in DETAIL today - catching everything we missed the first time round, and a lot of the stuff we didn't. we spend the extra LE100 to see the mummies, including Ramses II and his father Seti I. Louise manages not to squee, but you can tell she's excited to finally meet her hero, even if he's been dead for 3000 years. we cruise the ancient jewellery, even the exhibit of mummified pets. some of it's world-class in its presentation. some of it's jam-packed in wherever there's space with even less rhyme or reason than the rest of Cairo. we saw the site for the new museum which is going up near the Pyramids and i'm really hoping they sort it out a bit better this time... or at least build it with some space to add anything the find later. there's just too much stuff with too little order to understand half of what you're seeing, but we're loving it anyway. Louise and i have been to so many museums together in the last 6 months that we've got each other's pace almost right so that neither of us is too fast or too slow and i'm more than happy to keep her company through the artifacts until my knee or back gives out, whereupon she's more than happy to sit and let me rest.
we kill the rest of our energy wandering around central-Cairo, meandering along the Nile until we find a street-bazaar and wander around with the locals. we're on their turf now - out of the tourist areas with their touts and walking amongst people who are just living their lives, where a couple of foreigners are an oddity to be stared at, not marks for a quick buck. finally getting sick of the idea we flag down a cab, agree on a price written in my notebook in Arabic (i know the symbols now, but not the words) and take the most convoluted route i've seen so far back to the hotel. this is the 4th time we've been brought this way and we've not used the same route twice.
Louise hits the room for a lie down and i hit the street for a reccie, looking around for potential places to eat tonight. i find a couple of convenience stores, some cafes i want to hit for shisha when i get the chance, and get a recommendation for a good restaurant which later proves to be too expensive. when we head out later we keep rolling past after seeing the prices (take THAT you "thinking i can't read any Arabic motherfuckers"! sometimes i can't be bothered to haggle over the price of my tea and just walk away...) so we roll down the street market a kilometre or so until we get sick of the idea. all the food-places are take-away and with the only english in sight being on the labels of our shoes we're not really sure what the hell we're ordering. it's interesting, and i'm enjoying the local colour, but we're also hungry so we wind up being boring and get room service.
i'm really digging all this at the moment. the abundant availability of sleep, cruising through the days at my own pace... there are worse places to be. i've just about got Cairo sussed. i wouldn't go so far as to say that i'd want live here, but i've accepted it and managed to get my finger more or less in the groove. it's almost a shame it'll all be over in another couple of days, but there are plenty more adventures to have in that time. i think we did well booking 3 weeks - it's been short enough to never feel bored, but long enough that i don't feel like i'm missing much or that i should be rushing. meanwhile, it's time for more sleep, glorious sleep. Mohammed will be here at 7AM so we need to be up at 6 and i've no interest in following the Way of Soobie and only allowing 4 hours to rest...
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