burgers and books

This is the famous Lucille's diner down the street, famous for its burgers. Pictured here is the closest thing around to NYC-style brunch scene, people waiting in line for pancakes and homefries every weekend.


We didn't get any pictures of it, but the Cairo annual book fair was incredible. Two weeks straight of hundreds of stalls and thousands of Cairenes at a time buying and selling every kind of book imaginable. Little kids with their parents, old people, religious, secular, people buying novels, textbooks, religious philosophy, you name it, overwhelmingly in Arabic, but also in other languages. I bought some history books, a couple of Tin-Tin comics in Arabic, a novel and Mister Happy.

nicole visits

Our friend Nicole came to visit. Within a couple of hours of getting off of the plane, we had her with one of our local watery beers in one hand, a hookah in the other, and a plate of babganough in front of her. The pyramids were right in front of us. We waited for sunset to watch the laser light show since we had arrived right at the moment when the park closed, so we waited for the light show instead.


We experienced that same night the sound and light show at the pyramids in all its splendor. For those of you who have not attended this magnificent performance, the Sphinx narrates the history of the world, briefly, to the most dramatic of orchestral music imaginable while hundreds of tourists sit on folding chairs in rapt attention.

This is part of Islamic Cairo. Modern concrete buildings sit side by side with historic mosques.


This is a typical house from, probably, a hundred years ago. The windows have intricate wooden lattice work so that the ladies of the house can watch the happenings of the street while no one can see inside.


This is the wadi close to Maadi - the rhyming was unintentional there. Wadi means a dry river bed. This is our typical Thursday exercise route/ happy hour spot.



We took a trip to Hurghada, which is a beach town on the west side of the Red Sea - on the mainland, not the Sinai peninsula. It's the middle of the winter here, so one day was sunny and hot and the other was cloudy and cold.

We took a small trip into the desert. Basically every tourist in Hurghada is taken to the same spot to check out the Bedoins in the desert. I look alone on the hill, but there are many tourists down below.
All three of us in front of a spot where you can see a mirage.


Sunset.

Camel.

Islamic Cairo

Islamic Cairo isn't any more religious than other parts of Cairo, rather it's the part of Cairo that was developed in the Islamic period, which is to say later than the Pharaonic, Greek, Roman or Byzantine periods and earlier than the colonial or modern periods.

Most of these are of the Citadel, which was the Capitol of Egypt from somewhere in the 1200s to around 1850. The big dramatic building is the mosque that Muhammad Ali built. Muhammad Ali ruled Egypt from 1805 to 1848, and is sometimes called the father of modern Egypt. And sometimes not.

The columns inside are covered in alabaster, but the insides are something more sturdy, limestone perhaps.

This is a view of Muhammad Ali's tomb through the latticework.

The mosque is still used for prayer. For the big Friday prayer they kick out the tourists, but other days tourists and worshippers fit together. Probably a lot of people are both. The vast majority of the toursists at the Citadel were Egyptians.


Yes, I have grown a moustache.

There are great views over downtown Cairo from the Citadel grounds.


On our way to Khan al-Khalili, the main marketplace, we passed this typical bread delivery guy making his way delicately across an intersection.At the entrances to the Khan they've installed these new-fangled Italian rising bollards. The keep the cars out of the pedestrian zone, and fall for emergencies.