In the hunt of another of the wonder of the world I ended up in the mythical Cairo. I confess that I wasn’t to excited about it though and I were expecting a dirty over crowded city filled with scams and people who do whatever it takes to take your last dollar. Once I arrived i wasn’t disappointed and it was all true, you can also add one of the ugliest architecture I ever seen were the most of the buildings looks like they passed their best before date with 30 years or so. So it do sound like I hate it but instead I got a strange, mixed love/hate relationship with the city. It is chaotic, dirty and filled with people who try to hassle your money but I just love to stroll around in the small alleys, drink some tea and smoke some shisha on the sidewalk, eat street food that I have no idea what it is but it tastes really, really good. Once you leave the major tourist areas the harassment will stop and you can walk around freely and surprisingly its not uncommon that people will actually ask if they may take a picture together with an exotic white man.
I did however hit some mines. Cairo tower which actually has a pretty good grade on TripAdvisor doesn’t really give you any view, the day after I found out that you could go up on the roof of our hostel (15-16 floors) and it was better view from there. Egyptian museum is huge but it felt more like a warehouse than a museum, there are more pieces of rocks, sarcophagus and other items than you can imaging but almost no information signs about it so without a guide you have more or less no idea what you are looking at. The Khan el-khalili bazaar was absolute the biggest tourist trap I ever seen but to be honest, the old city area around it is really, really nice. If you are in the neighborhood I can also recommend to visit the Al Azhar Park which is a green oasis in the city center which gives you both a opportunity to rest and a glimpse of the pyramids.
So what about the pyramids? Of course I had to visit them but I’m not convinced. Yes they are huge, yes its hard to understand how they succeeded to build them almost 4000 years ago but still there is something which doesn’t persuade me. It may be all the plastic garbage which is everywhere around the place, the plastic bags that whirls around in the wind or that the city is literally speaking built all the way up to the pyramids. Once you climbed down, into a pyramid you will end up in a empty room, it would be so much more fun if they left any stuff or at least replaced them with replicas but as it is now it just gives me a feeling of; ok check on that.
The good thing is that now I can focus on the street life which is really awesome, have a cup of tea on the sidewalk and just get lost in this maze of back alleys and small historic streets.
You will find photos from my trip in my gallery.