Pursued
Trip Start
Sep 10, 2009
1
16
Trip End
Sep 27, 2009
Cairo, Egypt
Saturday, September 26, 2009
The eight other Canadians who had been on the trip were going to Alexandria today on a day trip. Gabriela joined them and I had the opportunity to do so as well but I was so tired I just wanted a day to chill out.
So while those going to Alexandria left at 7 a.m., I slept in. A Scottish girl who was also on the trip said she would join me if I was doing anything. I had seen plenty of Cairo by now and the only thing I wanted to check out was a huge market. We headed out in the early afternoon.
We first had to get to the area of the city where the market is. We asked about a cab from the hotel to the market but it would have cost us more than 100 Egyptian Pounds and I didn’t think it was worth it. I did include having the cab driver wait for us but there are cabs everywhere in Cairo, so not being able to find one near the largest market in the city wouldn’t be a problem.
I suggested to Anne Marie (the Scottish girl) we take the Metro. She wasn’t sure but I told her it cost only 2 Egyptian Pounds each way and there was a metro stop near the market.
We got the Metro fine but once we got onto the street level of the station near the market I didn’t really know where to go. The hotel didn’t sell maps and the only map I had was in my guide book and you had to flip pages to find what you needed and it wasn’t the clearest map to understand.
We did get headed in the right direction then an Egyptian man asked what we were looking for and I said the name of the market. He said he would lead us there. We walked for a quite a while with him but I was thinking he was just leading us to a perfume shop (that’s what previous experience had caused me to expect).
We were walking through a market area that was just streets and streets of clothes. We figured this had to be the start of the market so we told the man we wanted to stay around that area for a while. He was nice and went on his way, not expecting anything or trying to keep us going to a perfume shop.
We walked more and more and came into the touristy area of the market. I don’t know how big the market is, but would guess it spread among hundreds of streets. Some streets are almost like alleyways they are so narrow.
We wandered around these streets and ran the gauntlet of the shopkeepers trying to get us into there shop. Sometimes you just had to laugh. At one point during a 30 second span as I walked about five shopkeepers said the same thing to me as I walked past. I don’t remember exactly what they said now but it was something like, “Come see what I have, good price for you.” They probably say that to thousands of people.
I got hungry and we came across a large square with quite a few restaurants. Even the restaurants had people out front trying to entice you to sit and eat there. I think selling is an instinct with Egyptians.
We wandered around some more and got away from the touristy part of the market and into an area where it seemed the locals did their shopping. At one point an Egyptian man started talking to us and the cynical part of me thought - what does he want? He did lead us to a shop (I don’t like being right when it comes to this) but it wasn’t a perfume shop. It was a little spot down a random alley where they sold small wooden boxes that were inlaid with mother of pearl. They were beautiful and exactly what Anne Marie was looking for. She bought one that was probably real mother of pearl (unlike the plastic stuff they pass off as real in the touristy area of the market we had been in) but you can never be sure. I was pretty much out of money by this point, so the boxes were out of my budget.
Anne Marie did some good bargaining as well. She was smart and had only put a small amount of money in her wallet and put the rest into her camera case. That way when she opened her wallet she could actually show them she only had 100 Egyptian Pounds.
What caught my attention when we where at this shop (which was more like just a walk-in closet) was the smell coming from the other side of the alley. I saw that a building had collapsed as there were only partial walls standing. Within the walls the people seemed to have turned the abandoned lot/collapsed building into a garbage dump. It had lots of garbage, as in a couple of feet deep, within the walls of the collapsed building. It had been the smell that had caught my attention first and it was extremely strong, and not in the pleasant way.
The Egyptian man who had led us to the shop showed us how to get back to one of the main roads as we had no idea because we had gone down so many alleys and side streets.
On our way out of the main part of the market an Egyptian man started talking to Anne Marie. It was the usual stuff on hitting on her and trying to flatter her. He asked if she was married and she said no but I’m engaged. That didn’t bother him at all. He just kept on walking beside her and trying to talk to her. I think if she had told him that she was married it wouldn’t have bothered him either because he would think that because her husband wasn’t around she was available.
Anne Marie was having none of this guy’s crap and wanted to get rid of him but he just kept following her. We had a long ways to get out of the market and there were tons of people around, so we couldn’t walk extremely fast. I was trying to get us away from this guy as quickly as possible, so I was weaving between people and market stalls. I was hoping we might lose him eventually but no. Two foreign women are quite easy to pick out in a crowd in Egypt. Especially when one is tall like I am and the other one is blonde.
After about 20 minutes of us walking as quickly as possible to get out of the market and Anne Marie telling this guy she didn’t want to talk to him and to get lost he eventually stopped following us. I don’t know why. Maybe it was just a game to him.
We got on the Metro and then back to the hotel where we had some time to relax before the others that had gone to Alexandria got back.
Upon talking to Gabriela when she got back I was glad I didn’t go. It was pretty much a day on the bus as Alexandria is three or four hours from Cairo. Apparently they only stopped and got off the bus at a couple of sites. After the previous two days of sitting on buses, I would have been in no mood for a day like that.
The rest of us were leaving that night but we had one more chance to have Egyptian food. We went to a fast food kebab place and it was good.
Gabriela and I were flying out within an hour of each other so we shared a cab. It was good to have a chance to say goodbye to each other. But it was a quick goodbye as I had told the hotel which airline I was flying with so the taxi took us to Terminal 3 but Gabriela was flying out of Terminal 2. At the Cairo Airport, the terminals are not connected so you have to take a bus to travel between terminals. I don’t think it was a long distance. So when we got to the airport we found out Gabriela was told she needed to get this bus to Terminal 2. I felt really guilty as I had only said my airline when booking the taxi at the hotel. Of course the airport was chaotic despite the fact it was about 1 a.m. (a lot of international flights depart and arrive Cairo Airport in the middle of the night). I couldn’t do anything to help Gabriela figure out where this bus was that she needed to take as I had to go check in for my flight back to Edinburgh.
That went fine and I was on the flight no problems. I had a couple hours at Schipol airport near Amsterdam then onto Edinburgh. And that is the end.
I have since found out that Gabriela got to Terminal 2 fine and made her flight with no problems. Thankfully her flight was an hour later than mine so she had some time to travel to the other terminal.
