Day 3 - Cairo (museum, Nile, bazaar - Nov 7)

In the morning, we changed hostels, and are now staying at the Nubian. While in the lounge, I met a girl named Lauren, who was travelling for work then made a stop in Cairo by herself. G and I already planned on going to the Egyptian museum, and she planned to go too, so she joined us. A short walk from our hostel and 60LE later, we were in (and fyi, with student ID, all museums seem to be half price...too bad for me and G).
The museum is huge. And old. And unkepmt. And unlabeled. However, it's still fantastic. Over 100,000 exhibits, and no time to see everything, but we did our best. The highlight of the museum is definitely King Tutankhamen's room. His funerary mask, two sarcophagi, jewelry, and four canopic mini sarcophagi (where they stored the internal organs) were all in one room. When approaching the mask, I felt like I was approaching a casket for some reason...anxiety and respect? I got caught taking a picture (no photos in the museum), and the guard asked to look through my pictures to see how many I had taken. There was no fooling him, going through the opposite direction. He was going to make me delete them, and asked if I wanted handcuffs via some sort of sign language. I begged him not to make me delete them, and upon giving my reasoning (having studied art and Egyptian culture in school, I wanted to remember the actual experience of the museum itself-not something that was in a book), he replied "that's sweet. Ok, no more." YES!

We finished up looking at artifact after artifact. All amazing, but overshadowed by the "most amazing" pieces. And the oddest part to us, besides lack of labels and dust-coverings, was that there were no ropes or cases for so many sculptures-and it seemed to be ok for the children and adults alike that we saw climbing all over the laps of once mighty rulers for a photo-op.

A quick lunch break at the museum coffee shop cost us 80LE (insanely high for here, esp considering that included 3 sodas, two yogurt salads, and one chicken shawarma). Then we went back in for the mummy room (an additional 100LE). It was small, but pretty cool. I snuck some photos of that, too!

After the museum, we walked down to the Nile, which was quite lively at night. Lights, music, touristy cruise boats, and people hanging on the sidewalk overlooking the river all provided a lively atmosphere. We had a guy follow us for a while for money, but he eventually gave up.

Oh, and I haven't mentioned...EVERYONE here thinks G is Egyptian. They all speak Arabic to him, ask him in Arabic if he's Egyptian, etc. He thought it was cool at first, but now is a bit annoyed..hah.

From the Nile we caught a cab to the bazaar, open 24 hours and completely nuts. But first, we kind of got hustled by a guy, but I did end up buying two really nice gifts (just at double what they should have been, I found out later from our hostel guy...and that was after serious bargaining. oh well.). We eventually ditched him and walked through the bazaar's main part. It encompasses many streets in the area, including every side street off of them. Everyone's selling something, but surprisingly, it's fairly organized (lighting district, clothing, ceramics, wedding, electronics, etc.). Everyone is trying to walk by, we're trying not to buy anything, and in the middle of all of it, a small truck completely loaded at twice it's height is driving through all the people. I bought four pitas from a boy carrying a wooden rack on his head for 1LE (about 20 cents). We walked and walked until we ended up in an area selling bathroom furnishings-an area of unpaved roads that smelled of urine. Eventually we got a cab to the Egyptian museum area (Tahrir Sq), and managed to still have a hard time finding the hostel, but we did make it. Off the feet, on the computer, then off to bed.