We spent the first weekend walking around and exploring Old Cairo. This included a trip to Fishawi's for chai w'nana (tea and mint), lots of haggling and lots of walking - up Muhammad Ali street, along Bab Zuweyla, up Bab Zuweyla, all through the Khan and around the Used Car Parts Market.
During the week, after visiting Saqarra, they headed to the Canal Zone for a few days exploring themselves before we all met up in Alexandria for the weekend. We got a train after school, which was typically delayed, but allowed us to have a nice tea and relax and rewind a bit with a tea after school.
We all enjoyed the bit of luxury that is the Cecil Hotel on the Corniche and we even had a balcony with a sea view! After eating as much as possible at breakfast we managed to direct a taxi towards the Catacoombs in the Karmous district of Alex. It was great to explore this underground labyrinth. We first came here over a year ago with Fabs and Sam and this time it felt that there were a lot more tourists around. We had to wait a while to get into some areas. Having said that, this time it felt that we were left alone a lot more - a lot less hassle, so that was nice.
We then spent the rest of the morning and afternoon wandering around their Souq. There are far less tourists here than in the Khan and it is smaller, which means you can get between districts more easily. Great purchases were made; dried hibiscus, tie hangers, halva and pint pots were our favourite finds.
we had noticed that in the late afternoon a "concert" was due to be played at the Bibliotec Alexandria which featured Egyptian artists and east-meets-west etc. We decided to pay it a visit and got our 20LE tickets. The concert hall was great acoustically and those comfy seats were just what we needed. This first band on were technically good, but it was all a little "widdly-widdly" guitar-solo-y for our liking. Even Scotty conceded that he understood why some people didn't like prog! The second band were in a way an improvement, but more of the same. The third band though - after 3o mins change-over between bands - were awesome. They were a Pink Floyd tribute and played note-perfect renditions of their songs. We stayed for their whole set, even though we were starting to get hungry. We managed to stay for the first few songs of the next act, who were playing more originals and singing in Arabic, but then headed to Fish Market for a lovely dinner.
On our final morning we wandered the streets downtown some more, making a few more purchases and then tried to fit as many as possible into our bags before catching the train home. The first class carriage was brand new - with even the plastic covering left over the floor carpet!So two great weekends and a really great visit! :)
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