Egypt summer 2011, CAIRO part 3

Around 10am we left to see the Salah El Citadel fortification (it has also many other names like Cairo Citadel, The Saladin Citadel etc.) with Marc (we also named him Einstein because of his hair..). We were supposed to leave alone with Saija because Marc had made plans with some guys to go to the city of  Alexandria. 10 minutes before they were about to leave he made up his mind that there is nothing to see in Alexandria and that he wants to come with us instead.. We were really pissed of! We took a metro and a taxi to get near the famous fortification with Mohammed Ali's mosque there also (in the pic). At there we collided into the australian guys from the hostel and we were really happy that we didn't have to be alone with Marc. The place was the only place were our finnish student cards weren't valid. They were really strict that you had to have the interanational student card there. Salah El Citadel was enourmous and we took many pictures of the picturesque Cairo. The fortification overlooks to the part of Old Cairo. We went inside to the mosque and I had to wear this gown because my own clothes were too revealing..

View to the Old Cairo

 We left from the fortification and took a taxi after the guys had really made business with several drives compering prices and haggling the prices down. We had the easy role with Saija just to follow the guys or especially Kurt while he was having fun. I think that it was a really good thing to hang with other more experienced travellers the first days, we learnt a lot from them. Kurt gave us really good tips how to act in differrent scenarios, what to pay and where to go to. All the backpackers really looked after each other. Anyway after Kurt got the price he was happy with we started making our way to the biggest and the most famous bazaar in Cairo, Khan El Khalili. When the taxi went really slowly forward among the traffic, Kurt shaked hands with egyptians and made statements like welcome to egypt from the open window. :D 

At the bazaar we decided to split up to boys and girls. That way we got rid of Marc.. The australians gave us be-safe and don't-pay-too-much tips. We agreed on seeing them back at the hostel. :) The Khan El Khalili was an interesting experience for sure! I could describe it with words like exotic, friendly, overwhelming and chaotic! There were so many people going to every directions on the narrow allies full of booths! They sold herbs, spices, scarves and other islamic women's clothes, Egypt and Cairo souveniers, watches, water pipes, lamps, perfume bottles, jewellery etc. Mostly it was that one shop only sold for example lamps and the different  booths were one after the other and then the same shops started again.. Even Saija who absolutely loves shopping in different open air markets or bazaars felt a bit uneasy there. Now, however,  I have to say that not once did we feel like we were in danger or pressured into buying anything we didn't want to. Yes, the men can be really discusting shouting after you and trying to convinse you buying something but if you're strict and say no and keep on walking they'll give up. Before the trip I was a bit worried about people trying to cheat us because we can't haggle the prices and end up paying way too much. We ended up being really good at haggling and I started enjoying it (not everywhere, the tourist places/destinations were the worst)! And in the end you have to remember that it is their culture you're in and it's the way they have made business for centuries. It's all about being firm about what you are willing to pay, compare the prices but the best trick was to have a great sense of humour. If you are friendly and go into their "game" they'll probably lower the price for you if they're also having fun. We tend to buy stuff from people who didn't obtrude us to buy anything and who looked like an honest fella. You also have to keep in mind that you're probably haggling over one or two LE (egyptian pounds) and one pound is 0.14 euros..

After walking through some part of the bazaar we arrived next to this big road. We had absolutely NO idea where we were. We had no map. First 20 minutes we just walked to where our intuition told us to. That didn't work, surprisingly. It wasn't difficult to ask help 'cause every one was already watching us. I don't know how long we walked untill we found our way to the Ataba metro station. I think it was easily more than 60 minutes. People were really kind to us all the time especially when we had to cross this big road and run between the cars. The metro ride went easily and quickly but when we got of at our stop and walked to the day light then the difficult part started. We were standing in a crossroad with maybe six streets meeting and at every corner you could entry and exit the metro. Again, we had no idea which way to go. When we at last made it to our hostel the guys were asking us where have you been?! They had been back from the bazaaar for many hours ago..

Me and Saija left to eat to some local place near our hostel. It was a four storeyd place called Abou Tarek and later back in Finland we found out that it's the most famous koshari place in the whole Cairo. Koshari (also koshary, kushari, kosheri) is a very popular dish in Egypt. It's really cheap, healty and delicious. The meal consists of a strange combination of macaroni, spaghetti, rice, black lentils, chick peas, garlic sauce and a spicy tomato chili sauce, all topped with fried onions. You can have to chili sauce either spicy or not. For a small plate which was so big I couldn't even finish it every time (and I eat a lot) we paid around 1€.

The same morning we had sent a thank you text message to Mohammed and agreed to go out with him the same night. He promised us to show Cairo from the eyes of a local. First, back at the hotel I was hanging in the common room after waking up from the nap when Saija was still sleeping. There was Kurt and Marc with me also. Kurt was talking to his friend through skype and Marc suggested that he can show me his travel pictures. Suddenly he tried to make a move on me and I was totally in shock!! I was trying to stammer something in response to his action. After squirming out from the situation I went to wake up Saija and told her what had happened! She promised not to leave me alone with him anywhere.

We stopped to admire the Nile river

At 7 pm we got ready and went out to wait for Mohammed to pick us up with a car. He asked us if we wanted to visit the Tahrir square and of course we wanted to! The square was not scary at all! There were families sitting around and having a picnic. We drove around and he showed us places. We saw thiese HUGE seven star hotels! We thought that five was the maximum but apparently not.. :D We saw numerous big mosques but we didn't quite get the names of them. The ride was interesting in many ways: we got to listen to arabic music, we heard about the revolution from some one who has been there while it started and still goes on and experience the crazy traffic. We for example drove pass some crossroad we were supposed to go. So our driver decided to drive backwards against the traffic on a HIGHWAY! Mohammed took us to see the Cairo Tower which we had seen from our hostel windows.

The Cairo Tower is 187 metres high and one of Cairo's well-known landmarks. It cost 70 pounds / person to get in (10€). Mohammed paid us in, he didn't allow us to pay. The view was amazing!! All the city lights. We got our first young admirer from a local 10-year old boy who was brave enough to come and talk with us. Her parents took a picture of  us with the boy. :) 

me, Mohammed and Saija

After the Cairo Tower he took us to eat at this local area with only egyptians there. He told us before hand that it's an expensive but not so elegant place and its very popular among the locals. We don't know the name of the place. There was mostly men in the restaurant, most of them sitting outside and there were couple of tables inside also. When we entered the restaurant ALL of the people there including the staff stopped and stared at us. We went to sit inside to get a bit shelter from the people staring at us. All the menus were in arabic and Mohammed offered something for us. The plates just kept coming to our table non-stop. We were like idiots in the restaurant for the first time. We had no idea how to act there, whether we were supposed to eat from the common plates or gather food to our own plates. We tasted some green soup (don't know and don't want to know what that was), liver, some beef (called banana) and many many other things! We fell in love with the local rice!! It was so good! Mohammed introduced us to his cousin (also working at the airport) Rami. Mohammed paid also our food! 

Rami, me and Mohammed at Mokattam

Next they wanted to take us to this famous Mokattam hill from where we could see the whole Cairo. Right at the edge of the hill there were tables and chairs were people could sit and watch the city while drinking the local tea and smoke Shisha. We talked about stuff and had a good time there drinking the local tea. For the first time in Cairo I had cold because we were so high and there was windy up there. At 1 am the boys took us back to our hostel and we were really happy and had a great evening. We had seen the Cairo in a very unique way! The boys at the hostel were jealous to us. :D Oh, and we went to the big bathroom to wash our faces at night and got stuck there! There wasn't a handle on the door and we laughed so much and tried quietly to shout someone to help us until we finally figured it out how the door opens up..

We heard a lot of history during the night. We also got a better perception of the revolution. And it's a bit sad that the media only shows one side of it. So far we had learnt to speak arabic: (don't know how to write them)

• Ählän = welcome
• Ähläm = dream
• E or Is Zaijak? = how are you?
• El hamd lele = thanks to Allah i'm good
• Afwan = you're welcome
• Shokran = thank you
• LA SHOKRAN = no thank you