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CONTINUED from part one....

We Go Back to Cairo

From Aswan we flew EgyptAir back to Cairo for another ten days of resting and touring. Included in our forays were visits to:

Coptic Cairo

The center of the Coptic Christian community offers several churches from as early as the ninth century, a newly excavated Roman fort, and even a historical synagogue.

LEFT: Excavating a Roman Fort in Coptic Cairo. RIGHT: The Hanging Church in Coptic Cairo

Manial Palace

Built by Prince Mohammad Ali (a descendent of the builder of the mosque in the Citadel) in the early twentieth century, the palace and its compound showed a mix of architectural styles, including Moorish, Ottoman, Syrian, and Persian.

LEFT: Manial Palace in Cairo. RIGHT: Ornate ceiling in Manial Palace.

The Nilometer

Built to measure the flood stages of the Nile , this pillar was erected in 861, although earlier ones go back to Pharonic times.

RIGHT: Deep inside the Nilometer.

Gayer-Anderson House

A retired British major refurbished adjoining 16 th - and 18 th -century mansions in the 1930s. They are filled with Orientalist art and hand-carved screens recovered from other mansions that were being torn down.

	LEFT and RIGHT: Gayer-Anderson House detail.

The Citadel and Mohammad Ali Mosque

Fortified walls high above central Cairo, built for defense, also hold the great Mosque of Mohammad Ali. First built by Saladin, target of the Crusades in the late 1100s, it was built up by Mohammad Ali in the early 1800s.

LEFT and RIGHT: Outside, then inside the mosque of Muhammed Ali inside the Citadel.

The mosque was erected between 1824 and 1848. The domes were rebuilt in the early 1900s.

The City of the Dead

Actually the old cemetery, it is called the City of the Dead, and it is filled with mausoleums sharing space with modern squatters who help maintain the grounds and number so many (over a million) that the government has had to build schools and hospitals within its walls.

RIGHT: Inside the City of the Dead.

Cairo Opera House

How can you be from Bloomington, Indiana, without being opera lovers? With no opera scheduled, we did luck into a ballet performance in the house by the Bashkir State Opera and Ballet Theater, a production of La Bayadere.

LEFT: Bernie and Tom - bound for the ballet.

Khan al-Khalili

This is by far the largest and most amazing bazaar we have ever experienced. The sheer size, our unpracticed bargaining skills, and thousands of people combined to make an interesting but overwhelming experience. Some of our “bargains,” while still very affordable, proved to be higher than similar goods in ordinary shops elsewhere!

LEFT and Right: Inside the Khan.

The suburb of Maadi

Southeast of downtown Cairo, this hundred-year-old suburb has become the home of many expatriates. This is where we stayed.

	RIGHT: Street scene in Maadi suburb of Cairo, southeast of the downtown area.

Cairo American College

Founded in 1945, this K-12 English-language school serves about 1500 students with high-quality American-style education and employs our daughter.

	Scenes of the Cairo American College campus

And, of course,

The Egyptian Antiquities Museum

The country's treasure house, there are just so many carvings, papyri, statues, sarcophagi, mummies, etc. that you're exhausted long before you could possibly see even a part of it.

Sorry, no photos.

Conclusions

As fountain pen collectors, Bernadette and I were always on the lookout for pens. We saw lots of modern pens including many from the U.S. (Sheaffer's and Parkers) but no Egyptian pens, no vintage pens, nothing, sadly, to interest us.

As for the trip overall, photos can't tell the impact upon us, or convey the impact of the experience of visiting the home of millions of people in Cairo . The traffic – mixing donkey carts, cars of all kinds, jitneys, and buses – persuaded us to never even consider renting a car. They have no street lights to speak of, drive with lights off at night, control speed with speed bumps, and have no perceptible rules of the road. Amazingly, there's not much anger shown nor horn-honking.

As a people, we found Egyptians ready to smile and laugh, and open and very friendly toward us. Once you get there, travel is affordable, even cheap. We were there during winter, but rarely had to wear more than a windbreaker or sweater.

You insulate yourself from some health issues by using bottled water. It's best to dress appropriately for the culture. You don't wave money around or count change, which might suggest a lack of trust. Almost any type of cuisine you like is available at bargain prices. Some days the smog in Cairo was an issue, but all in all we had a simply marvelous trip. RIGHT: Baking our bread at a Cairo restaurant.

We owe our daughter Emily an enormous thank-you - she was a wonderful and gracious host during an extremely busy time for her. For that matter, our daughter Angela deserves kudos for taking time off from a much-needed school holiday to join the parents for a family adventure. QUESTION: Where to next? ANSWER: Not sure... QUESTION: When can we come back to Egypt? ANSWER: Soon, we hope!

Thomas Zoss
Zoss Communications, Inc.
3431 S. Weeping Willow Way, Bloomington, Indiana 47403 USA
Telephone 812-332-2334, E-mail to Tom Zoss