ANNNNNNNNNd we're here!

(by Miller) Annie landed in Cairo at 1:05am. Did she take a nap as expected? No! That girl made friends with everyone in the airport and somehow secured me a visa...without any paperwork and it was the usual $15 USD price....I guess that's what can happen when you linger around in the wee hours of the morning in Cairo. The guys kept making fun of her saying she really didn't have a friend coming but just didn't want to pay for a night in a hotel, though that's not a totally insane assumption, nor are we above that. I spent an entire day at the Accra airport as I had absolutely nothing to do that wouldn't involve serious risk of not making my 10:30 pm flight. Did some excellent people watching and enjoyed a last few castle milk stouts. Finally, boarding was called around 7 and I headed to the gate, no problem. Annie meanwhile, was spending a 10 hour layover in Amsterdam, seeing the sights; riverboats, Dam Square, the Sex museum (which is interesting, I don't care what anyone says) We've started a Picasa Photo album but who knows when we'll figure out how to hook it to the blog...anyways. I landed around 6:15 and after a huge bear hug, she handed me the visa, customs glued it in, upside-down, and we shared a taxi to the hotel with some Australian guy who let the driver rip him off 5 lbs. (a US dollar is trading right now at about 5.4 Egyptian lbs. so we're working on a 5-1 ratio), without a fight. Thankfully, Benin has equipped us with the bargaining skills of a gypsy and we had no problem, even paid him in USD as we hadn't exchanged any pounds yet.
Our hotel, the Sara Inn Hostel, was supposed to pick us up but we didn't see anyone so we just showed up at an abandoned looking building. After hiking up and down 5 flights of stairs, we saw a sign that said "Sara Inn, 7th floor" -awesome. Training for Nepal right? Hiked all the way back up, were greeted by the super nice reception guy, Ahmad, and he let us check in a full 5 hours early as it was only 7:15 by this point (and starting tomorrow we get free lentil and tea breakfast!). Cairo is a great looking city. People may say it's dirty but hey, it's a city. The people were a little aggressive off the plane, trying to get us in their own taxi but really, minimal problems. There are some beautiful buildings here and lots of narrow alleyways to wander down...or speed your car through. Traffic lives up to its reputation of madness on wheels and it's been our crossing policy to stand behind someone from around here and hustle after them as fast as we can. There are government crossing guards (i'm sure they have a more impressive title than that) and they're effective most of the time. After unloading our packs in the dorm and checking our emails on the FREE WiFi, we headed out to do some errands.
Changing money, applying for Indian visas, and eating. The Indian Embassy initially said "no international visas", then asked us what nationality and "American" was the magic word. These are some pricey visas! About $75 and the most expensive of the trip. We can't go drop off our passports for processing until Wednesday so it's going to cut a day off our Alexandria trip, not too grave as we've got some flex time to play with if we need to go back. Things open late here, possibly due to Ramadan, so at 9:15 when we walked out of the embassy, people were just rolling up their storefronts. Found a money change place, the rates are pretty much the same everywhere, not like the black market in Benin where it's far more lucrative to go to the Nigerians on the street corner. Changed enough to hopefully last us the majority of the Egypt stay and went in search of a food smelling hole in the wall we'd seen earlier. Found it and after the guy sat us down and we asked what there was to eat, he said 5,6,or 7 lbs. Meaning the price, so clearly there was only one option on the menu. Fine by us, we'll take the 6lb plate. He brought us each a heaping plate of steaming rice and macaroni with fresh tomato sauce, with spice, lemon oil, and spiced salt on the table. Don't have any idea what it's called, even after we asked him a few times. Must find food like this again! It was incredible, and Annie couldn't even finish. That's ok, they have doggy bags in Cairo! Now the environmental ramifications can't be great but man, it was nice to not feel guilty about leaving a half eaten dish, and have a snack for later!
After lunch, we headed to see the Museum of Modern Art, to get there we had to cross the Nile. Yup, DA Nile, took some pics, dodged more traffic, and walked the bridge that was book-ended by huge lion statues. We eventually found the MoMA, in the same complex as the Cairo Opera house, and classical music was piped throughout. It's a free museum, with all Egyptian artists. Really impressive and a shame we don't read Arabic as all the titles were written in it. All the same we saw a huge range of mediums, oil, charcoal, ink, clay, film, all pretty cool. Spent an hour or so and closed it down at 1:30. Things close early, also probably due to Ramadan, but we'd saved the markets for the end of the day which never stop. Walked back to the hostel and washed our faces and feet of grime. Annie caved in to a nap and after big intentions of doing a little planning, I too, passed out with Lonely Planet on my face. We woke up around 4 and decided to head back out. We'd slept during the hottest couple of hours so it was probably for the best. Took a taxi to Old Cairo, the market called Khan al-Kalili, in the old Islamic section. As we were walking out, people were setting up huge tables in preparation of the nightly fast breaking meal. Food was starting to cook and it smelled amazing, like lamb kebobs!
The taxi took us to the market and lo-we'd found the other tourists! Earlier, we'd seen bus after big-ass tourist bus lining the banks of the Nile, millions of old folks in big hats and bad shorts were boarding a boat with a live band playing. Never, never,never we promised ourselves. We understand the security of a tour like that but wow, it just didn't look like any fun. The crowd in Old Cairo was a bit younger and all the more fleshier. I felt scandalous wearing capri pants and a t-shirt. Women's knees kept staring us down as did their jiggling cleavage. What makes that ok? The women here in Egypt are beautiful, also always modestly covered, most with the hijab headscarf. RIght or wrong by anyone's count, that doesn't really matter for us, it's the way it is here and it just makes things so much easier to respect it rather than charge in with our breasts all high and mighty - literally. We walked down a strip of wares hawkers, so much stuff! Hookah pipes (called sheesha), belly dancing outfits, tshirts and other tourist stuff, clothing, scarves, and perfume and spice shops which smelled so good we were lured into our fair share. You can get perfume mixed and buy your own little glass bottle. Annie and I grabbed scarves in case we visit a mosque or two and sat down to some turkish coffee and mint tea. Bought fresh pita off a little boy's head for 5lbs and walked back to the hotel. The desk guy had changed and it was an older man, Asim, who is a sweat-heart! He read our palms, eerily on target and we talked about the oasis (a literal desert watering hole) he grew up in. We showered and are headed to bed shortly.
Tomorrow brings our first real encounter with public transportation, the pyramids of Giza, and the Sphynx. We kept saying all day, "I can't believe we're actually doing this!" What started as a drunken rant and poking pins into a map has flowered into reality. 2 days down, 103 to go and we're just picking up steam.