Day 11 - Luxor/Cairo

Feluccas moored in the early morning

At 7:15, we take a ferry across the river where we catch the taxi to the airport. Nicola has booked us into a
Fairmont Hotel located along the Nile River in Cairo so we're looking forward to a quiet day of luxury. After a short flight, we enter into a short negotiation with a "limousine" service at the airport. Of course it's just a taxi and the price is the same as the one we paid the first time we'd arrived in Cairo, 200 E£ plus 20 E£ for parking. The only reason I figure they don't post the price is that they revel in the idea of getting more than the normal amount from some unsuspecting foreigner. The thrill of ripping someone. That said, supply and demand are very fluid so what might be a reasonable price for one person on one particular day may change with the person or the day. 

Our taxi is stopped at the entrance to the Fairmont Hotel where armed guards check the bottom of the vehicle with a giant mirror at the end of a stick and a sniffer dog circles it once. After checking in, we're

Satellite dishes

escorted to our room on the sixth floor with an excellent view of the hundreds of satellite dished that populate the rooftops of Egypt. If I stand at one end of the window, I can make out the Nile River just across the street from the hotel. 

We return to the ground floor and, much to my surprise, are greeted by a hostess who leads us to a table where we are waited on by the usual male employee. Although we are the only Westerners in the room, everyone is dressed in Western business attire. Four interlocked large screen televisions display water crashing onto the rocks of some, unknown coastline. This could be any four-star hotel anywhere in the world right down to the beverages on the menu. We choose a French press to share. 

View from Fairmont Terrace

After, we change into our swimsuits for Nicola's much anticipated swim in the rooftop hotel. I envisioned something open-aired and so I'm a bit disappointed to discover that the poll is enclosed behind glass walls 
under a roll-top roof. We are greeted by waiter who asks if we would like a drink to which we reply, no. The 25 metre rectangular pool is empty apart from a rolly polly Egyptian 12 year old lounging in the water. I take off my shirt and Nicola removes her dress much to the delight of a few guys lounging around the pool. The only women on the terrace lounge on deck chairs. Dressed in western attire and hijabs, they are fully covered except for their faces. 

The air is warm so I'm expecting that the water in the swimming pool will require getting used to. Not this water. It's easily above 30°. Nevertheless, we decided to swim a few laps. Well, that's possible. The centre of the pool is less than a metre deep so I bang my knees swimming the breast stroke. Weird, I know. Here they have a 25 metre pool where swimming laps is next to impossible. It's no surprise to see the hot tub closed. 

We towel off. I put on my shirt, Nicola her dress, and we walk over to the bar at the edge of the terrace overlooking the Nile. We can see the pyramids off in the distance. We split a Stella beer and enjoy one last look at the crazy but magnificent achievement of two pharaohs and their unfortunate subjects. 

Tired of negotiating with taxi drivers, we try Uber to get to our next destination, the Khan-el-Khalili bazaar where Nicola wants to visit a book binding store, the oldest in Cairo. The first Uber driver phone and when I reply in English, he hangs up. The second perseveres. We wait at the entrance to the hotel and are surprised when a brand new Honda Civic pulls up beside us. It's not luxury but it could be the nicest car we've driven in. (There was the guy who picked us up in Giza whose car was so new, it still had the plastic wrap on the seats. That said, it still had the plastic wrap on the seats.) He finds the way and then charges us exactly what was quoted in Uber so I give him more, just cause. He was so much less than a taxi and so much more pleasant. 

Our Uber driver is young and very nice however we experience some difficulty with communication. He doesn't speak English and we don't speak Arabic. I give him my phone with our destination on Google maps selected but he wants to be sure when know where we're going. So, he calls his sister through bluetooth on the car stereo. We tell her where we want to go and she translates for her brother who inserts it into his GPS. Traffic is incredibly heavy however, even though his car hasn't a scratch, he slithers between lanes and before we know, we've arrived at the Khan el-Khalili bazaar. But, where's the bookstore. The "Lonely Planet" guide isn't much of a help so, I try typing Abdel Zaher into Google Maps but amongst all the lanes that make up the bazaar, we get lost. 

We must have looked lost because this well-dressed, fit looking Egyptian in western slacks, button-down shirt and loafers asks us what we're looking for. When we tell him, he leads us to an alabaster shop that he says is owned by the same family that owns the bookstore. We nod our head. The owner of the shop is also well-dressed, in his 30s and eager to show us his wares. However, unlike the guys at the tourist sites, this guy seems okay with us just looking. He shows us a few candle holders in the shape of a tumbler. Some narrow toward the top and some are more rounded. The rock has been hollowed so that it glows when a candle is inserted and he demonstrates with a couple of them. Even though Nicola already purchased one at the Luxor Airport, we buy another. 

The dude who brought us here returns and takes us to the second story of a shop that produces boxes. All I

Abdel Zaher Book Binder

think is that this isn't the place but Nicola says the boxes were really beautiful. We tell the guy that this isn't the bookshop, a fact I'm sure he's well aware. With cigarette in hand, we follow him through a series of lanes out of the bazaar central to a street that lines the backside of the Al-Azhar Mosque. We thank him and he's on his way. Weird although I did read in the excellent novel "The Cairo House" by Samia Serageldin that this was normal at the bazaar, one shop owner helping a customer finding another. 

The bookshop is filled with leather-bound journals, sketchbooks, and photograph books, all of various sizes and dimensions. Being book lovers and having written a few journals, we spent a good hour looking through the selection making our choices. Then, once we chose a book, the guy said he would emboss it for us. We wait another half hour. When he brings us the books, we notice that he's mistakenly embossed once with the date 2081 instead of 2018. He suggests that, if we have anything else to do in the area, we could return in an hour or two. 

We decide on coffee at the Naguib Mahfouz Cafe. I'd thought about imbibing in a little hookah but Nicola thought that was an activity requiring time we didn't have. I relented thinking I might try using my own hookah at home. We'll see. The Naguib Mahfouz Cafe attracts a

Abdel Zaher Embosser

very liberated crowd. This is the only establishment we'd entered where women seemed to outnumber the men. There are whole tables of them, many not even wearing an hijab, kind of ironic in that the waiters are all dressed in traditional garb. That said, three women sitting at the table next wear niqabs. I do spot a table of foreigners enjoying the hookah however most of the clientele are Egyptian. For anyone visiting Cairo, I recommend this place a nice escape from the clamour taking place just outside its doors. 

We purchase a lamp for Elizabeth on our way out of the bazaar. It's round and made of brushed aluminum with various shaped holes that emit a pattern when the light is turned on. Nice purchase. It's too bad we don't have room for another. 

We take a taxi to the Zanalek area to eat at "Zooba," trendy restaurant with a really cool website. We try to get an Uber but without success. So, we go to the taxi stand just outside the bazaar and are immediately

Cats in front of shop in Bazaar

approached by a shabbily dressed, swarthy middle aged dude with a days growth of beard (although here, it could be five o'clock shadow.) Our bartering suddenly includes another guy with a similar appearance to the driver. Nevertheless, the negotiation is relatively good-hearted and we agree on a reasonable price. We get into his battered Fiat which makes me wonder about our safety. Then I think, how long has this car been driven and it's still on the road. The guy must really know how to drive. Which doesn't matter because the traffic's so heavy we rarely get to 50 km/hr. 

The Zooba Restaurant is very small with  a couple a giant pots at the front heated by propane burners where the Ful, the classic Egyptian dish simmers away.  One long table stretches down the centre of the tiny restaurant and, at the back, is the kitchen. A couple of seats down from where we're about to sit down three middle-aged men converse in American English. The most hefty of them calls out, "Professor John something." It takes me a moment to realize he's talking to me. When he realizes his mistake he says, "Sorry, you look just like him." 

I remember Anthony Bourdain eating ful in his Egypt episode of "No Reservations" and I suggest to Nicola that I might want to do the same. She says I won't. "It's mostly bean," she says. "But it must include spices to make it tasty," I rebut. "It's bean," she repeats. "You won't like it." So, I have the spiced sausage dish with lots of yummy vegetables the restaurant's famous for. And it's good. Nicola's probably right. I wouldn't have liked the ful. Still, it might have been worth a try. Nicola has the chicken shawerma which is shredded chicken and a lot of vegetables. When the three Americans are about to leave, the hefty guy remarks, "Professor John something, you look just like him. Google him,  he's at the American University in Cairo." I nod and smile. 

We decide to walk back to our hotel. We pass a group of teenage girls dressed just like teenage girls in the West. That's weird, I think but then Nicola remarks that this is more modern part of the city located close to, you guessed it, the American University in Cairo. We stop for coffee at a cafe that's grungier that you'd find at home nevertheless, filled with people dressed entirely in Western fashion. Returning to the hotel, we run into the classic problem finding a way to cross the street and, once across, a sidewalk. Adventure though it's been, we're not going to miss the place.