Cairo can be hard to describe in a few words but if I had to I would say it’s dirty, over crowded but amazing. My friends Arielle, Lindsey, Jess, Dan and I decided to take a long weekend and go to Cairo to see the Pyramids. I was really excited to go but also a little nervous because I had never been to a Muslim country and didn’t know what to expect. Taking a flight from Ben Gurion to Cairo was expensive so we decided to cross at the border in Eilat and take a taxi through the Sinai to Cairo. The trip started with an 11:59 evening bus ride from Tel Aviv to Eilat. We arrived earlier than we expected and arrived in Eilat at 4:30 in the morning. After a nap on the bus station floor and some breakfast, we walked to the Egyptian consulate and got out visas to enter Cairo. We took a taxi to the Taba border, crossed the border and found a taxi van to take us to Cairo. After the taxi company said 10 more minutes 20 times and we waited for 2 hours we finally agreed to pay a little more and we were on our way. The drive to Cairo took about 4 and half hours and once we finally hit Cairo the traffic in Cairo took about 2 hours to our hostel. To say that the traffic is Cairo is horrible would be such an understatement. There are no traffic lights, nobody stays in lanes (if the road is lucky to have lanes), cars weave in and out, people cross the street whenever they want, bumper to bumper traffic, and people honking non stop, just insane.
We finally arrived to our hostel, put our bags in the room and came down to drink tea and talk with Ayman who was our tour organizer. We only had 2 days there so he put together a tour where for 25 dollars each day we had our own driver and tour guide to drive us around and take us where we need to go. After we planned our tour, we walked around downtown Cairo, went to an amazing restaurant called GAD (one of the best deserts I’ve ever had, Egyptian pancakes with honey and sugar) and just tried to take in the fact that we were in Cairo. The next day we woke up early, had breakfast and were on our way, first stop was Memphis. Memphis was the original Egyptian capital and apparently where Moses lived with Ramses before he took the Jews out of Egypt. After some pics and an explanation of Memphis, we stopped at one of the hundreds of carpet making schools in Cairo. The schools take children at the age of 7 and force them to make carpets for 7 straight years until they become experts. Apparently this is not considered child labor in Egypt but it was interesting to see the process of making silk rugs. After that we went to Saqqara to see the step pyramids followed by a stop at papyrus paper factory where they served us tea and showed the process of making papyrus paper. After the papyrus store it was finally off to the Pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx. We decided to ride camels and horses to the pyramids. Riding a camel for 2 hours is not the most comfortable way to see the pyramids but it was an amazing experience. The pyramids were huge, very impressive and what I didn’t know, they are right next to Cairo, the city ends where the pyramids and desert begin. We stopped and took about a million pictures and just enjoyed the whole experience, being in the desert, hanging with Bedouins and camels and overlooking the pyramids. Afterwards we stopped at a perfume factory before we headed back to the hostel. We spent the evening, wondering the city, eating like kings again for 5 dollars, drinking tea and smoking Sheesha (Hooka).
The first day we had an amazing guide “Sam Sam” who made the sites really entertaining, the second day we got stuck with a new guide who was an old Egyptian man. He was very knowledgeable but not nearly as much fun. We first toured the Egyptian Museum which had a lot of cool stuff like statues, mini sphinx, mummies, lots of gold…but also like Egypt it was organized poorly and extremely overcrowded. We all had enough of the museum after about an hour but continued on the tour until lunch time. We then headed to old Cairo where the guide showed us some important churches that have something to do with Jesus and finally the oldest synagogue in Cairo. After lunch we headed to the Khan El-Khalili market which was one of the craziest parts of the trip. I love going to the Muslim souq in the old city because Muslims are so much fun to barter with. They drop their prices so quickly, I was really looking forward to visiting the souq. The souq was so crowded, there was nothing but junk being sold and the vendors were so aggressive that it just made me miserable being there. After walking around for a while Dan and I had enough and decided to sit down for some tea and sheesha. There are definitely no set prices in Egypt, we were even able to bargain the price of our drinks and sheesha before we sat down. After a quick comment from the guide how Muslim terrorist are not real Muslims so we don’t leave with a bad impression of them, we went back to our hostel, relaxed and got ready for a cruise down the Nile. The cruise was a buffet first followed by belly dancing, and a performance of a midget and his friend twirling nonstop for 30 minutes doing cool tricks such as pouring a glass of water and drinking it while spinning the whole time. After the cruise, went back to the hostel and enjoyed some Egyptian beer before we went to sleep. Since it’s a Muslim country there are very few bars and they are very expensive (for Egypt) so going back to the Hostel was the best idea.
We woke up the next morning, Muhammad (aka Alex), the driver who took us from Eilat to Cairo picked us up about an hour and a half late and we drove back through the Sinai to Eilat. We had booked a 5 PM bus to Tel Aviv and didn’t arrive to the border crossing until 4. We got through the Egyptian border crossing in about 10 minutes because Egypt knows your not going in or out of Israel without tight security so they just asked to see our passports and 2 pounds (15 cents) per person and basically trust Israel to handle everything. When we arrived in Israel there were about 1,000 Nigerians and 500 Asians on organized tours waiting to get through the passport questioning. This was not going to work so we bypassed the line, told security we had a 5 O’clock bus and we couldn’t wait in line. After they made sure we were Jewish they let us in front of everybody, we ran quickly through baggage security/passport control, caught a taxi and made it to the bus station with 10 minutes to spare.
Overall, it was an incredible journey. Egypt is so different than anywhere I’ve ever been. For the most part, the people we met were very friendly. Even though I know they do it for the money, everyone seemed eager to help us. This was also my first time having real interactions with Muslims and while it certainly doesn’t change my view of Israeli politics, I enjoyed talking with them and experiencing the Muslim and Arab culture for a few days.
We finally arrived to our hostel, put our bags in the room and came down to drink tea and talk with Ayman who was our tour organizer. We only had 2 days there so he put together a tour where for 25 dollars each day we had our own driver and tour guide to drive us around and take us where we need to go. After we planned our tour, we walked around downtown Cairo, went to an amazing restaurant called GAD (one of the best deserts I’ve ever had, Egyptian pancakes with honey and sugar) and just tried to take in the fact that we were in Cairo. The next day we woke up early, had breakfast and were on our way, first stop was Memphis. Memphis was the original Egyptian capital and apparently where Moses lived with Ramses before he took the Jews out of Egypt. After some pics and an explanation of Memphis, we stopped at one of the hundreds of carpet making schools in Cairo. The schools take children at the age of 7 and force them to make carpets for 7 straight years until they become experts. Apparently this is not considered child labor in Egypt but it was interesting to see the process of making silk rugs. After that we went to Saqqara to see the step pyramids followed by a stop at papyrus paper factory where they served us tea and showed the process of making papyrus paper. After the papyrus store it was finally off to the Pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx. We decided to ride camels and horses to the pyramids. Riding a camel for 2 hours is not the most comfortable way to see the pyramids but it was an amazing experience. The pyramids were huge, very impressive and what I didn’t know, they are right next to Cairo, the city ends where the pyramids and desert begin. We stopped and took about a million pictures and just enjoyed the whole experience, being in the desert, hanging with Bedouins and camels and overlooking the pyramids. Afterwards we stopped at a perfume factory before we headed back to the hostel. We spent the evening, wondering the city, eating like kings again for 5 dollars, drinking tea and smoking Sheesha (Hooka).
The first day we had an amazing guide “Sam Sam” who made the sites really entertaining, the second day we got stuck with a new guide who was an old Egyptian man. He was very knowledgeable but not nearly as much fun. We first toured the Egyptian Museum which had a lot of cool stuff like statues, mini sphinx, mummies, lots of gold…but also like Egypt it was organized poorly and extremely overcrowded. We all had enough of the museum after about an hour but continued on the tour until lunch time. We then headed to old Cairo where the guide showed us some important churches that have something to do with Jesus and finally the oldest synagogue in Cairo. After lunch we headed to the Khan El-Khalili market which was one of the craziest parts of the trip. I love going to the Muslim souq in the old city because Muslims are so much fun to barter with. They drop their prices so quickly, I was really looking forward to visiting the souq. The souq was so crowded, there was nothing but junk being sold and the vendors were so aggressive that it just made me miserable being there. After walking around for a while Dan and I had enough and decided to sit down for some tea and sheesha. There are definitely no set prices in Egypt, we were even able to bargain the price of our drinks and sheesha before we sat down. After a quick comment from the guide how Muslim terrorist are not real Muslims so we don’t leave with a bad impression of them, we went back to our hostel, relaxed and got ready for a cruise down the Nile. The cruise was a buffet first followed by belly dancing, and a performance of a midget and his friend twirling nonstop for 30 minutes doing cool tricks such as pouring a glass of water and drinking it while spinning the whole time. After the cruise, went back to the hostel and enjoyed some Egyptian beer before we went to sleep. Since it’s a Muslim country there are very few bars and they are very expensive (for Egypt) so going back to the Hostel was the best idea.
We woke up the next morning, Muhammad (aka Alex), the driver who took us from Eilat to Cairo picked us up about an hour and a half late and we drove back through the Sinai to Eilat. We had booked a 5 PM bus to Tel Aviv and didn’t arrive to the border crossing until 4. We got through the Egyptian border crossing in about 10 minutes because Egypt knows your not going in or out of Israel without tight security so they just asked to see our passports and 2 pounds (15 cents) per person and basically trust Israel to handle everything. When we arrived in Israel there were about 1,000 Nigerians and 500 Asians on organized tours waiting to get through the passport questioning. This was not going to work so we bypassed the line, told security we had a 5 O’clock bus and we couldn’t wait in line. After they made sure we were Jewish they let us in front of everybody, we ran quickly through baggage security/passport control, caught a taxi and made it to the bus station with 10 minutes to spare.
Overall, it was an incredible journey. Egypt is so different than anywhere I’ve ever been. For the most part, the people we met were very friendly. Even though I know they do it for the money, everyone seemed eager to help us. This was also my first time having real interactions with Muslims and while it certainly doesn’t change my view of Israeli politics, I enjoyed talking with them and experiencing the Muslim and Arab culture for a few days.
