I posted on Tuesday evening from Cairo about our travel day on Monday and then briefly about seeing all of the different Pyramid fields on Tuesday.
From there, on Wednesday we spent the day in historic Cairo. In the morning we walked about a mile through downtown to Ramses Station, which is the central Cairo train, metro, and bus station, where we got our tickets to and from Alexandria for Thursday. From there we hopped on the Cairo Metro, which is the only one in all of Africa, for only 1 LE (Egyptian Pound), the equivalent of something like 17 cents. It was interesting seeing two of the cars (the middle ones) reserved for women only... women can go in any car they want, but no men in cars 4 or 5 on any of the Metro trains.
Anyway we rode for 8-9 stops, got off at "Mar Girgis," and found ourselves in the middle of ancient Coptic Cairo! All of the most famous churches are in Coptic Cairo, and Christians are the only real minority in Egypt to this day, mostly centered around this area. After visiting the Hanging Church we walked over to the Ben Ezra Synagogue, the last remaining open Synagogue in all of Egypt. The Synagogue itself reminded me of all of the ancient Synagogues in Safed in Israel, up in the hills. Like those, the bimah was in the center of the Synagogue, facing the Altar. Not surprisingly, the altar (and entire Synagogue) faces northeast, towards Jerusalem. Besides all of that, however, the most interesting thing about this Synagogue is the location it was built on in the first place. Just behind it is a concrete well built over the exact spot Moses was found as a baby by the Pharaoh's wife along the banks of the Nile River. At the time the Nile flowed right to the spot the Synagogue is now on, though today it is maybe a half-mile to the west. After making a donation to help with the preservation, one of the workers was kind enough to take me back to the well where I took a few photos there.
By the way, I suppose now is as good a time as any to mention that ALL of my Egypt pictures are now uploaded onto my facebook account. Feel free to access them there, otherwise the public link is: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2696242&id=8623973&l=a92a777729
From the Synagogue we walked out of Coptic Cairo into the downtown area of the city, and we caught a cab over to the Cairo Citadel.
The Cairo Citadel was built in the 12th century on a hill overlooking downtown Cairo to be a fortified seat of the Egyptian government, to protect against the European crusaders. The entire Citadel has a commanding view over the Nile Valley, and it is clear why they chose to build the fortress where it is at. For the past 200 years or so, however, the jewel of the Citadel has been the Mohammed Ali Mosque, built in the mid-19th century. It is a massive building that can be seen from across Cairo (we had a nice view of it from our hostel, etc.), with many minarets and tin domes that were designed based on then-contemporary Ottoman architecture (which is why it resembles the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul). We visited the Mosque (shoes off!), took some pictures, enjoyed the views of Cairo, and then walked a few miles from the Citadel, back down into the city to Al-Azhar Park.
The Al-Azhar Park was opened in 2005 and is the largest park in central Cairo. There are several waterfalls, lots of green grass, trees, flowers... kind of like a mini-Botanical Garden combined with a traditional park. The charge was only 5 LE (under $1), but that's enough to keep much of the dirt and trash out. I would say the Al-Azhar Park was the cleanest part of Cairo we saw. Better than that, however, was the food. We ate at the "Citadel View Restaurant" within the Park, which had a commanding view over both the park itself as well as the Citadel up on the cliffs. The food was pure delicious. We had one of the best hummus dishes I have ever had, with some type of wonderful Egyptian bread I had never seen before, and then for the main dish I had a baked chicken and rice casserole type of thing. It was essentially shredded white meat cooked into the rice. SO GOOD!
After that bliss we continued our walk... we left the park and headed into the chaos of Islamic Cairo. We walked to the Al-Azhar Mosque, founded in the 10th century (just two years after Cairo was made the capital of Arab Egypt), and in acting as a university, it is the second-oldest continuously running university in the world (after one in Morocco). Again, we walked through (shoes off!), took some pictures, and just enjoyed the beauty of the open courtyard.
From there we crossed the street and visited the Khan El-Khalili Market. The Market itself dates back to the 14th century, and you could spend days just looking around. Like most markets however, most of what they had was junk that you would never imagine yourself needing or buying, and most of the rest of it is overpriced tourist trap material. That said I did some successful bargaining bringing some initial prices down by about 75-85%. The problem I have is that you feel bad either way... either you haggle successfully, like I think I did, but then they make you feel like crap for taking away their big profit (and given that most of these people are quite poor, it's quite the guilt trip). Or, on the other hand, you accept that you aren't going to haggle it down, but then you feel like you got totally ripped off, which sucks too. I guess I'm just not much of a market person. In any case I got some souvenirs at a pretty reasonable price, we took some pictures, and then took a cab back to the hostel and called it an evening.
...Thursday was Alexandria day, Friday morning we were in Cairo, and Friday evening we flew back to London. I will post more about that soon, but for now I am off to a dinner with friends and introducing them to matzah!
Chag Sameach everybody - have a nice Seder and Pesach!
No comments:
Post a Comment