We woke up pretty early and got our laundry together (40LE at the hostel), then our things to ship home. A cab to the post office was 10LE. Seemed simple enough...we'd mail our parcel and take off to the citadel. Well, not as easy as it sounds. By the time we went to one place to buy a box, then another to buy tape, then back to the first for packing paper, then to the post office, then to another parcel post office, to have our things examined (supposedly to make sure we weren't sending any antiquities home), it was two hours later. Yikes.
We took another cab, hoping to go to the citadel, but we ended up at the Al Azhar mosque/El Kalili bazaar area. We went into the mosque and had a private tour (in Arabic..ha) of the mosque and the top of the minaret (sp?) for 70 LE total. Not bad, but he did take the amount of money he wanted out of my hands after I unsuccessfully offered 10LE. I think it was probably worth the view and experience. And of course we had to remove our shoes and I had to cover my head (ended up using G's straw hat).
When we exited the mosque, we ran into a man we had met our second night in town, who we thought to be a hustler. He flagged us down and we ended up have him take us to a bathroom, which of course happened to be in a papyrus art shop. We had tea there, then escaped without a purchase, and he wasn't too pushy. He suggested we go to see the Sufi whirling dervishes dance for free nearby from 8-10pm. Sounded good to us.
Next stop: citadel. It's quite fantastic, and of course 50LE to enter. Basically a compound of museums and mosques upon a hilltop with a lot of history and a great view (including the pyramids in the distance!). After about two hours, we left, ate, napped, and woke around 7:30pm to head to the Sufi dance.
The cab dropped us off at one end of the bazaar and pointed to the left. We headed into that direction and ended up running into four fellow hostel guests (Americans studying in Greece). We invited them to join us, but after two hours of getting "directions" from people who obviously had no clue where they were sending us (noone says they don't know where something is), they ended up bailing. Not that we could blame them. The irony of it all was that after we had a police man lead us around and finally call the phone number on our not-so-hustler friend, we ended up almost exactly where the cab had left us-just in time to see the crowd leaving the dance hall. ARGH. It was slightly repaired by the our new friend offering us coffee and shisha, so we hung out while he showed us "Hidden Treasures" - the name of his shop. I eventually bought a nice scarf for 50LE, then we headed back.
Tomorrow...the DESERT! We'll be waking up early then taking a bus for 5 hours to the Western Desert, Bahariyya Oasis in particular for 3 days and 2 nights. Should be relaxing - and a nice contrast to the chaos that is Cairo. Sand dunes, here we come.
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