The Grand Mall isn't very grand, but has clusters of certain shops, such as bakeries (yum!), sports shops (which don't actually sell sports shorts) and unfashionable women's fashion. One of the clusters though that appears at the very back of the Basement Floor and in the hidden corners on the Top Floor are The Tailors.
All they are are a small glass shop front which reveals a few sewing machines and a few blokes sitting there with material and cotton all around them. We haven't had a need to go there before, but I bought some new trousers for Scott that I saw on sale one day and they were un-hemmed (which is the way most trousers are sold here - un-hemmed and they hem them for you in about five minutes when you have bought them).
So I took down Scott's trousers with a few pins in to show the length they needed to be. I added a pair of pin strip trousers from Primark that I love, but the hems were going on. I also had a pair of trousers that I bought a few years ago in the Next sale (anyone who has been to the Next sale knows you can never try anything on - just buy then and regret later) that were too long and too baggy at the waist and thigh. I had stuck a few pins in these to show where they needed to be taken in, but the Tailor wasn't convinced so he asked me to put them on. They had a minuscule changing room, but that was all that was needed and he pinned them along the thigh and back.
I asked him when I should come back and he looked toward the wall behind me. I looked back expecting to see a calendar, but found only a clock. "Two hours" he said.
Three hours later (I didn't want him to feel rushed), I pop back and all three pairs are ready. My Arabic numbers greater than ten aren't great and so he showed me on the tape measure the amount he was charging me; 35LE
Just tried the trousers on and the hems are great on the first two pairs and the alteration on my Next trousers mean I can finally wear them again!
Showing posts with label Maadi Grand Mall. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Maadi Grand Mall. Show all posts
Saturday, 14 March 2009
Wednesday, 27 August 2008
We've moved in!
We're just writing from Costa Coffee (!) in Maadi - this is beside the Maadi Grand Mall (which isn't that grand really) and has internet access for just 50p for an hour (but is really slow so we can't upload a video yet).
We managed to move into our apartment yesterday as planned. It is really nice and looks like it did in the pictures (which you can never be too sure about). They have given it a lick of paint and today should be installing a new air conditioning unit in the main room. The place was really dusty - we expected it to be dusty and know it will always be dusty in Egypt, but we think that no one has lived here for at least a year because of the dust in the kicthen and wardrobes. So yesterday we went to the Carrefour supermarket and bought lots of cleaning stuff (along with some Egyptian cotton sheets to sleep on of course). We'll clean some more rooms today, but also hope to explore to "Road 9" where there is a guitar shop and a nice linen shop we want to look at.
You can see where we live on the map here
The mall is marked A and is the flat-iron shaped building at the top of the screen. Below it you can see a roundabout. Between the two, on the right, is a first apartment block although you can barely see the gaps between the apartmetn blocks so they appear to merge into one. We're on the right-hand side of this first building on the 3rd floor (although Scott insists on calling it the fourth as he counts he ground floor as the first floor). We have a balcony to the front which comes of our living/dining room, a second balcony to the side that comes off the master bedroom and guest bedroom, and a third balcony at the rear that comes from the "bonus" room they didn't show in the phographs! It's a kind of 2nd lounge that doubles up as a spare bedroom.
We were quite tired after moving in and doing some cleaning yesterday, so started to get ready for bed around 10.30pm. We were about to turn off the bedroom light when our doorbell started ringing manically. So we threw some clothes on to see what was going on. Outside the door was a man with a huge telly on his back that he had just carried up the three flights of stairs to our apartment! It turns out this is the landlady's son and he and some friends were dropping off our TV and a new air conditioning unit for the living room. The telly only gets arabic channels at the moment - but he knows someone who works for Orbit, the satellite company, and so we can call him to set something up if we want to. We'd better get back soon actually, as the air con engineer is coming this afternoon to fit it and we are going to try and pay our rent to the son if he comes too.
Until we get faster internet we can't put any video tours of the apartment online, but we promise we'll share them as soon as we can!
We managed to move into our apartment yesterday as planned. It is really nice and looks like it did in the pictures (which you can never be too sure about). They have given it a lick of paint and today should be installing a new air conditioning unit in the main room. The place was really dusty - we expected it to be dusty and know it will always be dusty in Egypt, but we think that no one has lived here for at least a year because of the dust in the kicthen and wardrobes. So yesterday we went to the Carrefour supermarket and bought lots of cleaning stuff (along with some Egyptian cotton sheets to sleep on of course). We'll clean some more rooms today, but also hope to explore to "Road 9" where there is a guitar shop and a nice linen shop we want to look at.
You can see where we live on the map here
The mall is marked A and is the flat-iron shaped building at the top of the screen. Below it you can see a roundabout. Between the two, on the right, is a first apartment block although you can barely see the gaps between the apartmetn blocks so they appear to merge into one. We're on the right-hand side of this first building on the 3rd floor (although Scott insists on calling it the fourth as he counts he ground floor as the first floor). We have a balcony to the front which comes of our living/dining room, a second balcony to the side that comes off the master bedroom and guest bedroom, and a third balcony at the rear that comes from the "bonus" room they didn't show in the phographs! It's a kind of 2nd lounge that doubles up as a spare bedroom.
We were quite tired after moving in and doing some cleaning yesterday, so started to get ready for bed around 10.30pm. We were about to turn off the bedroom light when our doorbell started ringing manically. So we threw some clothes on to see what was going on. Outside the door was a man with a huge telly on his back that he had just carried up the three flights of stairs to our apartment! It turns out this is the landlady's son and he and some friends were dropping off our TV and a new air conditioning unit for the living room. The telly only gets arabic channels at the moment - but he knows someone who works for Orbit, the satellite company, and so we can call him to set something up if we want to. We'd better get back soon actually, as the air con engineer is coming this afternoon to fit it and we are going to try and pay our rent to the son if he comes too.
Until we get faster internet we can't put any video tours of the apartment online, but we promise we'll share them as soon as we can!
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