Huff and Puff

I am in Cairo. The prayer call woke me up at 5:20 plus all night of honking outside our hotel by Ramses St. By 7:30, Julee and I are out looking for the 200 year old 24 hour open coffee house (el Fishawy) in the Khan al Khalili bazaar. We drank mint tea and smoked apple flavored sheesha. It takes no time to immerse into this slow-paced life style. It's wonderful here. People are really friendly and hospitable. This afternoon, we will do more sightseeing in the Islamic Cairo. Tomorrow we go to the Giza plateau for the pyramids. I have also already started shopping, I bought a traditional Egyptian cotton shirt.

Another highlight is the kefta kebob, lovely tasty meat balls over bread.






Photo left: Our Taxi driver negotiating the always busy streets of Cairo.

Note that there was rarely traffic light. If there was one, nobody stopped at it. We saw so many cars driving w/o headlights on at night. Many roads were also not marked with lanes. If there were lanes, they were treated as there were none anyways. Drivers cut each other off only to turn their heads to smile w/o any remorse at the poor guy pulling the sudden brake. We scream in the car thinking THIS IS IT, our life ends here! Crossing the roads in traffic that would not stop to yield to pedestrians was one of the biggest challenges in Cairo. We often hid behind some brave locals and zig-zagged our way through as fast as our legs would allow. So what you would frequently see in the busy Cairo streets are the obviously stupid foreigners running off like chicken without head and sighing with relief upon safe arrival at the other end of the street...that's only a brief relaxation until the next busy street.