Egptian Holiday, Middle Period

I found Cairo to be filthy, lively, and mysterious. A city dominated by a religion alien to me, which still retained the decaying architcture of her past colonizers and occupiers, French and British. My impression from the few days I was there was that it was, like Buenos Aires, a cosmopolitan, international city with its glory days behind it and covered by the desert dust and the city grime. Perhaps I only imagined it, (as I tend to romanticize) but I could still sense some of that old movie feel, the combination of the the boats on Nile river, the dust, the victorian architecture, and the palm trees. It could just have easily stemmed from a past where mummies did stalk nosy archeologists on the streets.

There was some confusion on our arrival as to the room to be used by Taylor and me. They ended up giving us an executive suite when we checked in around 2 AM, with the warning that we might have to downgrade rooms in the morning. We were all wiped, so we said fine. The rooms were very, very nice. A living room with a writing desk and big tv ajoining a huge bedroom, all behind wooden screens. The largest bed I've ever seen, I believe it was wider than it was long, so it meant less bumping into Taylor while he was rolling around in his sleep. Both rooms had balconies and views out over the Nile, whihc was just across the street. The front desk called and asked if we liked the room that night a little after we had checked in. I told them it was great, and they said fine we could keep it.

The next day we met our guide downstairs in the lobby at 11, who was dissapointed we didn't show up six hours after we got to bed at 3 AM. She was a pushy 27 year old Egyptian woman who had probably just graduated from Egyptian tourism school.

At any rate, our first destination was the world famous Egyptian Musuem, which happened to be right beside the hotel. In fact, we asked if we could walk there but the guide looked at us if we had suggested we walk to the pyramids. "The driver is right here," she told us. So we drove around the block to go to the museum. As it was high season, the muesum was totally packed with large tour groups. Our guide would take us over to a certain artefact or sculpture, get a minute into talking about it when a massive group of Spanish tourists would mob the case, and thier guide would begin shouting in Spanish.

I'm just picking on that one tour group: there were actually tons of groups, mostly British, Russian, Chinese, and Japanese.

The Egyptian Museum was plauged by the Hermitage effect: World-class, priceless treasures housed in a developing world museum. Signage was terrible, there was no apparent coherance to the organization of the different parts of the museum, as if the dynasties had been randomly shuffled around the building. The building had once been beautiful, and was inspiring in its British neoclassicsm, but its interior and its displays have not been well maintained. The tour guides may have some role to play in this, as ours ignored signs to not lean on the old flimsy cases, or touch the statues and carvings.

The colllection was facinating to me, but overwhelming as there was far too much to be appropriately showcased. However, the gem of the collection, worth the price of admission alone, was the contents of the tomb of King Tutankhamen which occupied a massive hall, and a smaller gallery. The smaller gallery contained the gold, jewellry, and solid gold sarcophagai of the boy king. I was blown away by the intricacy of the relgion and culture as much as the sheer craftsmanship of the objects which alluded to it. It staggers me to think about my own ancestors in Europe, who were probably still hunting with flaked stone spears at the time.

The two hours we spent at the museum flew by and we traveld by minibus up to see the citadel of Cairo and the massive mosque built on it. The citidel is the highest plateau in the city, before the city reaches the rocky desert foothills. There is a massive mosque on top of the citadel, known as the alabaster mosque for its use of alabaster on the interior and exterior. It is a traditional courtyard type mosque, similiar to the Suleyman mosque in Istanbul, and pattered on the cascading domes of Hagia Sophia. The courtyard contained the french clock tower which the builder of the mosque, Mohammad Ali (not the boxer) had traded for one of the solid granite obelisks from Karnac. I've actually seen this obelisk before- it was erected at the front of the Tulieries in front of Louvre in Paris.

After the citadel we drove down to the Sultan Hassan mosque and madrassas. This is another very old structure in the city, consisting of a mosque attached to a courtyard with four Iwans which sheltered students from the four schools there. I thought the place was really cool. The Iwans are massively tall vaulted porticos, with lights on chains which hang down to a few yards of the ground. Students would sit in the Iwans, protected from the sun and the noise of the street.

Afterwards, the other mosque we were going to see was closed so we told the tour guide hahloss (finished) and we went back to the hotel.

It was New Years eve, so we had arranged to have a celebratory dinner in the restaurant at the top of the hotel. All fine and good. However, I neglected to bring appropriate footwear the Gala event so I ended up wearing my beach sandals. We arrived at 8 PM which I immediately relized would end up with us leaving as most of the poeple would be arriving to be able to still be there celebrating when the clock struck twelve. The set dinner was good, but not great, and we all retired to our living room to watch TV as is our Family New Years Tradition. Another part of that tradition is that mom and dad both get tired around 10:45, toast whatever part of the world where its currently midnight, and retire to bed.

Tay and I racked our brains for something a little more celebratory. We settled on ordering a bottle of "sparkling wine" on the "Egyptian Wine" list on room service, which ended up being my biggest mistake of the week. This was the worst alcoholic beverage I've ever tasted that came out of a glass bottle. Usually, after a while your taste buds are numbed by the alcohol so you don't notice the aftertaste as much, but this suff actually got worse as we drank it. Breaking my own rules about sunk costs and negative experiances, I still drank the stuff, especially after sinking an unmentionable cost in that one bottle. We were rewarded, however, for watching the road and the corniche from our balcony.

All day a crowd of Egyptians had been walking along the huge walk beside the Nile river in front of our hotel. As New Year was also conciding with an Eid, a three day holiday following Islamic holy days, all the famers and people all came in from out of town. They have no real disposable income, so they were primarily walking around to see whatever was free and to just enjoy enjoy themselves in the city. Actually, the first day of Eid, we were surprised to see piles of freshly slaughtered goats and sheep back in Hurghada, as it was custom to sacrafice those animals on that day. Anyway, around midnight, Tay and I were surprised to walk out on balcony to see a huge mob of people, 500 or more, standing on the traffic island and on the corniche across the street all obviously looking up at the hotel.

We had fun with it at first, waving to them regally as though we were pharaohs, delivering oratories, and blowing them all kisses and thanking them for all coming. After awhile it began to get a little unsettling. What the hell were they looking at? I was further unnerved by news reports of a bombing targeting westerners in Bankok. Did they know something I didn't? Apparently there was some celebrity up on the roof bar, or in the restaurant we had left nearly two hours before midnight.

They actually crossed the street and mobbed the exit in front of the hotel, causing great consternation for the security staff who had to nearly fight them off to let the cars get through. For the next hour the mob exploded and regrouped at various places in front of the hotel. Some clapped, some chanted, and not a few danced. It was an event. Finally the police showed up and began pushing the people back. The police moved the crowd back across the road, back to the corniche, and finally dispersed them. From our vantage point above the crowd, we were able to keep tabs on plainclothed officers who would periodically drag various people over, and chase other watchers away.

Must have been some party.