Before leaving, I took a whole bunch of pictures of Cairo from my room's little balcony. Check out the rubble-strewn roof of the building across the street. Totally the norm for Cairo.
I got back to my hotel in Cairo around 5pm. I showered, dropped off my bag and headed out into town to go shopping. Before leaving, I promised Mama Zandi, our elderly neighbor who is originally from South Africa, that I'd pick her up a new kaftan! Here's me about to enter a huge mall that was entirely comprised of stores selling women's clothes!
After showering and breakfast (my stomach had thankfully returned to feeling normal after a close-call with Cairo's tap water the previous evening), I caught the subway and headed cross-town over to the district of Cairo that's near Giza.
A little after 2am I arrived back at my hotel room and I was so tired I could barely walk! I hit the bed and hoped I wouldn't be too sick the next day to enjoy my last day in Egypt!
The proprietor at this restaurant hooked me up with a nice meal, but totally fucked me by giving me tap water. He brought out a big bottle of Aquafina water, and made a big show of opening the cap and pouring it into my glass - but as soon as I started drinking it, I could tell that it was just tap water that he'd put into an Aquafina bottle. Had terrible stomach cramps and crazy fever dreams all night, but didn't get this shits. (My stomach is basically made of iron).
While eating, I busted out my guidebook and decided on Luxor as my next destination. Later that night, I set out to find the Cairo train station on foot and ended up purchasing a ticket to Luxor departing 8pm the next night!
By the way, a funny thing about Egypt: no cars have their headlights on at night! The only time they even get turned on is when drivers flash them while simultaneously honking (and not slowing down for) pedestrians trying to cross the street.
Check out the atmosphere in the hotel dining room! I felt like a character in a Mahfouz novel as I sat at my quaint, colonial table for one and tried to figure a plan for the next day or two.
I decided to hire a car for the day, and drive outside of Cairo to visit three different sites: Saqqara, home of the oldest stone monument in human history; Dahshur, home to Snofru's Red Pyramid and Snofru's Bent Pyramid (I swear I'm not even making guy's name up!) and (ancient Egyptian city of) Memphis, home to the Colossus of Ramses II!
As soon as I got back to my room, I jotted down a whole bunch of notes so I wouldn't forget any of the details of my museum "experience" and then decided to lay down for another nap. Cairo during the day is extremely hot, busy and soooo noisy and loud and a ten minute walk through town is enough to send your body into total sensory overload.
I woke up a little before midnight and decided to check out Cairo's streets at night and to try and find something to eat!
Pride goeth before the fall! As I was on my way walking out of the museum, literally 50 feet away from leaving, I turned around right in the middle of this huge room to take a picture of the awesome hugeness of these statues, and a guard appeared from behind a column (Indiana Jones style) stopped me and told me "Very bad. Very serious." OH SHIT.
He motioned for me to follow him to a doorway, which led to an empty hallway and then told me "Now you must wait here with me." Even though I was in the midst of assuming the worst, I knew that no matter what happened, I'd definitely have time to take the mummy memory card, chew it up and swallow it if I had to. And then I realized that being "detained" in the hallway didn't seem to make much sense so I decided to "go for it."
By going for it, I mean that I decided to do the Internation hand sign for "How about a nice big bribe and we can forget all about this?" by rubbing my thumb and my two forefingers together whilst simultaneously raising and lowering my eyebrows rapidly. He immediately recognized my gesture and countered with a gesture that I easily interpreted as "Sure, but it had better be a good one because I know you've probably got mummy photos on you."
I tried to venture a peek in my pocket without letting him see what I had (no easy task when you're dealing with money you've never seen before!). I quickly realized that I only had two bills on me! The first bill was a 25 Egyptian Pound note (about $4.50 USD) the other bill was twenty dollar bill! I decided it was better to be safe than sorry, folded up the twenty, and slipped it into his hand.
He tried to hide his smile and tried his best to play-off my subtle hand off with that look that everyone gets when they're like "Holy moly, this is just like a secret agent movie!" Just before he slipped the bill in his pocket, he couldn't resist a peek and glanced down at the bill. His eyes instantly got huge and he did a what looked like a vaudeville double-take. For a split second I thought I'd totally messed up, but then I realized that I just dropped a MONSTER bribe on him and he was intent on hustling me out of there before someone else got wind of the major jackpot he'd just hit. Hahahaha.
We quickly parted ways. I half-jogged my way to the exit smiling. I knew right then and there that me and Egypt were going to get along just fine.
After spending a long time marveling at the mummies, I went back out into the rest of the museum (because there's SO MUCH TO SEE). The museum was getting ready to close and there weren't many people around, so I didn't even bother to hide the fact that I was taking photos.
...which made it all the more fun to see how many sneaky mummy photos I could take without going to Egyptian jail! (I'm really good at taking sneaky pics - I can basically take pics like this with the camera inside my pocket!).
I took a ninety minute nap and woke up feeling so refreshed that I decided to get right on with my sightseeing and set out to find my way to the insanely famous Museum of Egyptian Antiquities from my hotel on foot!
