To the Euro-free land of Pyramids and Camels...

I never thought I'd make it to Cairo. It's always been a dream of mine to go to Egypt and although I don't have the time to do the long trips around Egypt, I'm so happy that I'm able to experience Cairo. It makes a huge difference of course that Zack has been studying here for 4 months. With his Arabic and knowledge of the city he makes for a pretty good tour guide/bodyguard, plus he's really good at stopping me before I get royally ripped off with just about every purchase.
After arriving in Cairo, Zack picked me up at the airport and we made our way over to the Marriott (thanks mom and dad). Following check in we headed out to my first Egyptian meal. I got some chicken thing (Zack told me it was Egyptian) and he got the rabbit version. Being a cheap student in Italy has really made me protein deprived so I was happy with the chicken (and of course the price). Accompanying our dishes we had lemon juice and peach sheesha...apparently all very Egyptian. I love my authenticity. After dinner Zack treated me to some delicious Egyptian desserts. They were amazing! All basically encased and drowned in honey. The whole night was definitely a nice change from Italian pasta, pizza and wine. We enjoyed the desserts over at Zack's Colgate roommate's apartment while I was introduced to all of Zack's friends. Then back to the hotel for an early turn-in.
Day 2:
As Zack got up at 6:15 for a long day of classes, I slept in until about 10. It was pretty joyous, but I did feel bad that Zack had to get up so early. After lounging around for awhile I decided to get up and go to the gym. It took m awhile to find the gym at the Marriott but I did get a chance to see how amazing the hotel really was. It's beautiful. Following my workout I went back to the hotel room took a long bath and ordered some soup for lunch. Just as I started eating the soup I heard a knock on the door and when I opened it I was thrilled to see Zack! He decided to come back early instead of wait and not get back until about 6:30. It was great. We ended up taking a long walk around Zamalek (the area in Cairo I'm staying in) and then we went to get food at Zack's favorite chicken place. For two 1/2 chickens along with salad, rice, bread and sauce we paid 40 Egyptian lbs, which is equivalent to a little less than 8 US dollars. In Italy I'd be lucky to get a side dish at a restaurant for that price. I love Egyptian lbs. After dinner we went to the apartment again to hang out with Zack's friends.
Day 3:
Today was my first full day in Egypt! Of course, being the lazy college students that we are, we didn't manage to make it out of the hotel until about 12. But nevertheless we had a pretty busy day. We jummped into a taxi and headed off to the 'Garbage City'. There's an Arabic name for the place which is much more appealing but it's also decieving. The place is really a city of garbage. Sound dirty? It was. Sound smelly? It was. Sound cool? Definitely was. Basically there is a community of people in Cairo that collect all the garbage and sort it out. The population is mostly Coptic Christian and they would feed the organic waste to all the pigs. Unfortunatently, as my tour guide Mr. Buzzell told me, the Egyptian government killed more than 300,000 pigs in fear that they would spread swine flu and now there are no more pigs to feed, so the garbage is really starting to collect. Anyways, it was a cool place to walk around and explore a bit. We saw a whole assortment of animals, dogs, goats, donkeys and even rats. We/Zack befriended an Egyptian guy who introduced him to all his friends who then proceeded to surround him. This eventually led to a photo shoot of Zack and his new found friends.
After spending some times with our/Zack's new friends we made our way out of the city and started walking towards the citadel. I don't know much about the citadel but it was beautiful and such a nice change from the churches of Italy. The mosques were gorgeous. I love Islamic architecture. Plus we got a nice panaromic view of the city with a glimpse of the pyramids rising int he background (see photos).
After the Citadel, it was about 4 and we walked to the Al-Azhar park (about 20 min away) to watch the sunset. It was gorgeous. Right as the sun set all the minarets around the city blasted the call to prayer, each one trying to out-do the other. Once there was nothing left to see of the sunset we walked to Khan el-Khalili, the giant Cairo bazaar. Since we literally hadn't eaten all day we decided to grab a quick 'snack' at a food stall near the market. I got to try my first falafel (tammeh) in Egypt! I had plenty when I went to Israel but I was excited to try it in Egypt. The man who worked there was adorable. He though we was a genius photographer (he was pretty good) and insisted on taking photos of us. After refueling we ventured into the market. It was incredible! I didn't buy a single thing because I was way too overwhelmed with everything. I did have a minor obsession with finding some cheap gold which I quickly found out is non existant in Cairo. So we wandered and while we walked away empty handed we have every intention of going back.
Following our day of adventures we went back to the hotel to chill for awhile and when we started to get hungry again for dinner we wandered to the streets in search for koshery, the quintessential Egyptian street food. SO good. Scott kept on insisting that I try it and I finally did. I don't even think I could tell you what was in it. Some sort of combo of stuff. But it was good. Another chill night at the apartment until bed time...
Day 4:
Tuesday was another pretty late start for us. We originally planned on going to the Egyptian Museum and then the pyramids but when we realized that it was about 1 by the time we made it out of the hotel, we decided to hold off on the museum. As we were walking out of the hotel we met a driver/tour guide/egyptian cassanova (he apparently had 17 wives)who told us about his very cheap offer to take us to the pyramids and give us a tour. It seemed like a pretty good deal but we wanted to discuss it over lunch. We went to a pizza joint called Mason Thomas (I know, why get pizza in Cairo? But it's one of Zack's favorite and I was curious about Egyptian pizza). While eating our pizza we discussed the offer and decided that we didn't want to be dragged down by a tour guide, instead we hoped into a taxi towards the pyramids! While in the cab, the driver handed Zack his phone so he could talk to the 'manager' of camel/carriage/horse rides in Geiza. Zack politely said that we want to walk around the pyramids and we don't want a camel ride. Unfortunately, upon arrival in Geiza, the cab driver stopped the car and the guy from the phone jumped in the cab and they took us to the 'headquarters' for all the tours. After awkwardly sitting while this man tried to sell us his tour we kindly told him that we were poor students who simply want to walk around the pyramids. It was really really difficult to finally get away from him. By the time we did it was already 3:15! We had the cab driver drive us to entrance and after so altercation with the ticket guy (we bought 2 student tickets even though I left my student card at the hotel so the guy wouldn't let me in even though the ticket had been bought). Zack had to give the guy some bakshish to calm him down.
Finally we made it to the pyramids! They were INCREDIBLE. It's no wonder they're considered a wonder of the world. I really couldn't believe that I was standing there next to them. While we were walking around I foolishly took photos of the men on camels and got ushered into having Zack and I ride one. We both rode around for like two minutes, took some pictures and then poor Zack had to fight with the man because he was trying to rip us off. We walked away paying the guy 20 Egyptian lbs (about 4 US dollars) and I learned my lesson to not be lurred in the scams. At 4 o'clock the Tourism Police kick everyone out of the 'park' but since we had just gotten in there we decided that we would do our best to avoid getting kicked out and hopefully be able to see the sunset. We were extremely successful. We hid underneath a cliff by one of the pyrmaids as the sun was beginning to set. There was literally not a single other tourist out there. Everyone was gone. It was just me, Zack, some randoms on camels and horses and the tourist police...oh and of course the three great pyramids. Definitely one of the coolest experiences of my life. Eventually we decided it was time to head out of the park so we wandered back through the desert, shoes filled with sand. After the amazing Pyramids we went back to the hotel for downtime. Walking through the desert is tiring! For dinner we got Tammeh again and it was an early night for us because Zack had to be at school all day for exams. Alarm is set for 6am!