Living the Tour

Living in Cairo can be as exciting or as mundane as you like it to be. You can live happily in your bubble of expat existence: never leaving the comfort of your neighborhood with its Western coffee shops and English speaking waiters except by private car to get to balls and brunches; or you can decide to burst that bubble on a regular basis and explore all that is amazing about Cairo.

If you are lucky, living in Cairo also means playing host to visitors from home and showing them around (which helps one to get out of the bubble a bit). This weekend, with my friend L visiting, yes - I did the pyramids again (visit number 5 for this gal - they are still pretty cool!), but added something new: a walk of Islamic Cairo. This is new on my 'tour route,' but it was still somewhere I had been once before (so I knew of a few things ahead of time to do). This time I discovered quite a few new things about my home.

Street Food

The original plan had been to wind through the streets of Islamic Cairo, and the Khan-el-Khalili all the way to a delicious Koshary place near the Sultan Hassan Mosque.

Unfortunately, after walking for about 3 hours, hunger was getting the best of us just as we crossed the street in front of the Bab Zuwela into the tent maker's market.

Koshary was not destined to happen on this day, instead, another expat friend and I decided we had lived here long enough without ever having sampled street food.

I sidled up to a vendor (who had just tossed tamaya into his bubbling vat of oil) with a few hungry locals. A few minutes later I had 2 tamaya (essentially falafel) sandwiches and a large cone of home made potato chips in my hand for less than an American dollar! The lunch was filling and delicious and fortified us for the next part of our trip which was...

Alleyways

I have been through the streets between the Bab Zuwela and Sultan Hassan mosque twice; the crowded streets filled with cars, people, and sweet potato vendors are also lined with beautiful monuments currently being restored such as a former palace and Mamaluk and Ottoman era mosques. While I rarely see tourists winding through these streets unguided, often I run into other folks who live here taking their visitors on this lovely walk through a typical Egyptian neighborhood.

As I have been through these streets a few times and wanted to see something new, turned up some side streets previously untraveled and came across some lovely scenes - such as the sweet potato vendor (above) preparing lunch for some giggling-with-delight tourists (it's always about the food with me, isn't it?) and...

Carnival Rides

An unusual and unexpected addition to our walk in Old Cairo was the prevalence of children's carnival rides parked on sidewalks and in alleys where one would not expect to see them - such as in front of this historic mosque.

Anyone who knows me would expect me to get very excited about such a find - and I was. Three times on the walk we came across seemingly abandoned kiddie carnival rides. This swing and two small ferris wheels (all of the same colored metal, but a several hour walk apart) were a delightful and unexpected find on the walk and again, made me really happy I live in such an interesting city.






The other big finds on the walk included: public toilets (50 piasters a use), a mobile of glass stars I will likely go back to purchase, a handicrafts center in the original public water fountain of Cairo (made some very cool jewelry purchases there), and some incredibly kind and helpful vendors and passersby; which made me glad as always I'm not always trapped in the 'bubble' of my expat existence.