A 2 pullover day. Not feeling at all well, but don't want to miss the Cairo museum and the bazar. We get to the Cairo museum early, to be at front of the queues. Sadly the 2nd metal detector picks up my penknife (and Peter's also), and we get sent back outside to hand it in... Queue is now somewhat longer than the number of workers on the pyramids. We approach the problem in the French manner, ie skip it by pushing round the sides. Look at the Tutunkarmun stuff only (as limited time). V. nice. The jewellry is excellent, and by going directly to this area we get about 15 mins to see it peacefully before the hordes arrive...
Next, we see the earliest christian church in Cairo (the Hanging Church, built over the ruins of a Roman fort) - good trompe d'oeil on wooden panels. Then, the Citadel and the Alabaster Mosque. On a hill overlooking Cairo so great views. Mosque is very nice inside - carpets for a floor is a good idea. Our guide gives us a run down on Islam - much of his presentation appears to be a contrast with issues with the Catholic church but decide not to argue. In general, its very interesting to get the "official tourist" viewpoint on Egyptian religion/life/poverty/land reform etc compared with what we've seen and heard already....
Lunch in a very nice restaurent in the bazar (the biggest bazar, so also the more touristy). Then, 1 hour to shop... I decide I want scarves and a carpet. Scarves are easy enough (I do like the bargaining...), but finding a carpet is more tricky. The shop we find is pretty expensive, and bargaining doesn't appear to work at all! Peter and I head off looking for a better deal - we follow a guy who claims to have a carpet shop 'just down here'. 10 minutes later we arrive at his brother's perfume shop and he disappears 'to fetch carpets from factory'. Talking to another man it seems the carpet factory is "just 5 of your english minutes' away, so we go with him to look for it. After 5 minutes we're at the edge of the bazar - and now we must take a taxi or train! This does not look so good - we excuse ourselves and head back to the first shop - at least there we can see the carpets! Shopping done, we make it back to the bus just in time....
In the evening, we invite the Habitat folk for a meal in the posh restaurent at the top of the hotel - I'm not eating really but apparently the food is nice. Service is extremely slow though! It's Dot's birthday, so she has a cake. Well, 3 actually : one organised by Richard, one by Jen and one by the hotel.... At the end we give Sherif a load of boots, gloves, hard hats etc to use on the projects, and say goodbye to them all. They've been very very good to us, and made the trip work very well. Apparently we've exceeded their expectations (we're their first 'long' work party of more than 2 days) - they thought from looking at the ages of the team that they'd better keep the work load down!! Very pleased especially with the encouragement that it gives to the project teams and local people to have the contact with outsiders.... This is one of the reasons why we felt we kept getting moving from house to house - the interactions with the families involved are one of the main objectives for them.
posted by brian.wyld @ 2:08 AM
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