Okay, Wednesday we did a day trip to Cairo, which ended up being a literal day— we were gone nearly 24 hours. It was one of those bus tour things where you go to see the Pyramids and whatnot, and we had a great time.
I guess they’re not as cavalier about smoking here as they are in Turkey— in Antalya you see the airport police leaning against the wall and smoking right under the big NO SMOKING sign. In the Cairo airport, they put them in an enclosure like zoo animals. It always makes me a little sad how people sprint in a stampeding panic from a one-hour flight to go have a cigarette. If they were sprinting off the plane to get a shot of whiskey or a armful of heroin, we’d be appalled and try to hospitalise them and get them the help they need. But for some reason helpless uncontrollable desperation is acceptable if it’s cigarettes.
There is a strong police presence in Cairo. They sit around in the back of trucks a lot, just watching and waiting. The police all carry fully automatic weapons, which made me mistake them for soldiers, but apparently they’re just metro. Yikes.
I wish I’d gotten a picture of the wild traffic, but all I got was this shot, and it looks pretty normal, except… see how almost everyone appears to be changing lanes? They’re not, they’re just driving with complete disregard for the lines. As you can tell, our own bus is straddling lanes as well. I don’t even know why they waste money painting lines on roads in this part of the world. It’s unnecessary.
First view of the Nile.
First view of the Pyramids.
This is the biggest one. I’m too lazy to look up the name.
This is the second biggest one, with Emirhan and a camel thrown in for good measure. Those camel guys try to sell you a camel ride at an advertised price of 50 pounds, which would be about 8 dollars. Then they take you out for a ride into the middle of nowhere and ask for the money once you get out there. You give them the 50 Egyptian pounds, and they say no no no, they meant 50 British pounds (about 100 dollars). The misunderstanding is your fault because you should have asked for clarification before you agreed to the price. If you refuse to pay the 100 dollars, they just leave you out there in the desert, so of course you pay, and of course it’s now 200 dollars because the other thing you forgot to clarify was that it was 50 pounds one way. A round trip costs double.
Okay, this is a view of Cairo from the side of one of the Pyramids. You can see the very distinct line between sun and shadow. I had my jacket zipped all the way up with the hood on and really had to concentrate to keep from shivering while I took the photo. In the sun, though, it was about 18°, and t-shirts were more than enough. On the bus we had to have the air conditioner on.
Okay, this is the view of the Sphinx they never show you in photos. You can see the height of the people standing next to it— it’s just not very big. That’s Emirhan in the foreground. We didn’t get any photos of us together because our tour guide put the fear of god in us about letting other people hold the camera. He said sometimes thieves dress as Egyptian police so tourists will trust them, and then they run away with the camera. We don’t have the kind of income that we can just replace this camera, so we stuck to taking turns with it.
Now you’ve seen a Coke bottle from Egypt. Pretty cool, huh? I had to have it, so Emirhan got it for me. Will this be the start of a collection of Coke bottles from around the world?