How Doth the Little Crocodile...
⬅ previous ⬆intro next ➡Day 2 ~ January 21 ~ A Day in Cairo
According to our itinerary, we have a morning city tour and then the afternoon free. According to Rob and Lynda's itinerary, it's a full day. It turns out their version is right, so we're not quite sure what happened.We meet our guide, Rawya (pronounced RAU-i-ya, or at least that's how it sounds to my anglophone ears), first thing after breakfast and we're off for the day.
First then, to the Citadel, and the Muhammad Ali Mosque (which I presume was not formerly known as the Cassius Clay Mosque).
The chandelier isn't quite the monster alien mothership of the Grand Mosque in Oman, but it makes up for that by having a lot more satellites in orbit!
Somewhat unusually, we don't have to take our shoes off, but instead are given little blue plastic covers. Not quite sure how that works theologically, but fine by us.
The cat doesn't seem impressed.
Ok, back in the bus for a change of religion: we're off to the Coptic area. "Coptic" in this context refers both to the Egyptian version of Christianity, but it's also the name for the ancient Egyptian language written with a modified Greek alphabet rather than hieroglyphs (or the later hieratic and demotic scripts that they evolved into).
Now at this point I was going to give you a quick summary of how the Coptic church differs from the varieties we're more familiar with, but I have decided that life is too short! The Coptic Orthodox church is a variety of Oriential Orthodoxy, which is not to be confused with Eastern (or Greek) Orthodoxy, all of which split off from Roman Catholicism long before Henry VIII broke with Rome and Martin Luther invented Protestantism, and if you can understand the arguments that raged at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD, I take my hat off to you!
It's theology, ok. Let's move on.
This is the remains of the so-called "Fortress of Babylon", built by the Romans in around 30 BC. At that time it was close to the Nile, but since then the river's course has moved about 400 metres further away. Within the fortress area is the Coptic Museum and several churches we are about to visit.
Aha... A subtle hint that this is Christian territory.
We're about to enter the "Hanging Church". Why the name? Well, no, not the site of a gallows, nor does it swing on a chain suspended from a tall tower, but it was originally built above a gatehouse of the Roman fortress, with the nave suspended over a passageway.
This fine marble pulpit is 11th century. The orginal building is some 400 years older, but very little remains from that time. Interesting Internet fact of the day; "As customary in Coptic churches, one of the pillars is black, representing Judas, and another is grey, for doubting Thomas".
Over there is the church of St George, the only round church in Egypt!
Stained glass in the Coptic Museum.
We walk a long passage lined with books, maps and magazines that nobody seems very interested in buying.
Our next visit will be the Ben Ezra Synagogue, where photography is forbidden and the guards are eagle-eyed, so you're just going to have to imagine it. Or search online, of course: just because we are not allowed to take photos doesn't mean that photos are not readily available. Doubtless it makes sense to somebody, if not to me.
Rawya tells us that there are only three actual Jews left in Cairo, all elderly ladies. This sounds a bit bizarre, but an article on the Al Jazeera website from 2014 backs it up. The youngest remaining member of the community died suddenly from a heart attack at the age of 59, leaving eleven remaining women who were then all in their 60s and over.
According to local folklore, the synagogue was built on the site where the baby Moses was found, and now we're off to the Saints Sergius and Bacchus Church, also known as Abu Serga, built on a site where Jesus, Mary and Joseph are said to have rested at the end of their journey to Egypt.
Well that's a new one. I guess that despite being a Christian church, Muslims probably visit it for the Jesus connection [Islam venerates him as a prophet, though not the son of God], and might otherwise assume that mosque rules apply.
The crypt where the Holy Family are supposed to have stayed is not the most exciting of spaces, but it's a step up from a stable at the very least. On the other hand, it gets flooded when the Nile is high, so not really the des-est of res-es.
Right, that's the Peoples of the Book (Islam, Judaism and Christianity) done, let's get secular...
The National Museum of Egyptian Civilisation, or just "Civilisation Museum" for short. Rawya leads us in.
I should mention that by now it's becoming obvious that Rawya is not just any old guide: she's a proper Egyptologist who knows her stuff inside out, upside down, left to right and top to bottom! Oh, yes, Google tells me that her name means "Story teller, Narrator, Reciter, Transmit, A woman who tells great stories." Blimey! Nominative determinism or what?! And she seems to really care that we all have the best possible time. [Hope she doesn't blush too much when she reads this.]
I confess I forget whether there is some deeper significance to this picture than just some beautiful and fascinating costumes.
A slightly weird projection area before you enter the Mummies' Hall, where again, photography is not allowed. For that matter, guides are not allowed either, so we have to fend for ourselves. The official museum website says, "The design aims to give the visitor the feeling of strolling down the Valley of The Kings, where most of these mummies were originally resting." Now we are going to the Valley of the Kings later, but I will be most surprised if it will involve strolling through darkened rooms looking into glass cases.
From a terrace outside the museum, the view across the Nile to central Cairo loses all the frantic hustle of the city.
So as I mentioned earlier, our itinerary seems a bit outdated. It says that we will now return to our hotel and have the rest of the day free. In fact, we're going to have lunch and then continue our group city tour.
Note this landmark minaret. It's where we should head towards if we get lost, as it's visible from all over the place. Ish.
But that's not a problem for now, we're heading for lunch.
Rawya, Lynda, Rob and Amanda, in case you couldn't work it out.
It's a nice roof terrace location, but you can't tell from the picture that the 'entertainment' just out of shot to the left is more quantity than quality. That said, there are some enthusiastic patrons in the front row who must surely be family.
But there's a different sort of entertainment too, in the form of a man whirling what turns out to be a skirt above his head. Why?
Well you put it on - or strictly speaking, he puts it on you - and then spin round and the rim is weighted so it flies out for the Whirling Dervish experience.
Mission accomplished!
And I've found a cat.
After lunch, we are left to wander by ourselves for a bit in the souk.
We seem to have left the tourist tat area, and are more in the local shops for local people.
Although quite who this is for is not immediately obvious.
Unfortunately, we have now wandered sufficiently far that the aforementioned landmark is not at all visible. After a couple of wrong guesses, we realise we're now running late and have to resort to my GPS. When we get back, Rawya is having kittens in case something's happened to us, and our driver has had to pay a parking fine for overstaying his slot. Oh dear, bad Steve and Amanda.
So now to the Egyptian museum called the "Egyptian Museum". Some of these names can be confusing.
The main entrance hall.
The huge statue of Amenhotep III and his wife Tiye dominates the space. The three smaller figures represent some of their daughters.
One of three triads featuring the Pharoah Menkaure, with the goddess Hathor to his right and a personification of a 'nome' - an ancient administrative district - as a goddess to his left, identified by the symbols above her head. The other triads feature different nomes.
There's a substantial Tutankhamun exhibition, but guess what - no photography!
From here, it's half an hour in the bus back to our hotel. Or we could just cross the road in front of us on foot!
We choose the latter option, of course. In all honesty, we've seen worse traffic in other parts of the world.
Dinner was not on our original schedule either, but Michael takes us for a short walk to a local restaurant with the curious name of 'Oldish'. Food is decent, but portions are huge and well nigh impossible to finish, especially after our far from insubstantial lunch. We are starting to discover that Egypt doesn't seem to do 'small', or even 'just enough' in the food department.
One slightly surprising thing. Our package includes all meals, but no drinks. That even means water is a paid-for extra at some places.
On the subject of water, an aside: tap water is not considered safe to drink, at least for us foreigners, but we've brought our water filters to minimise the need to buy bottled water. WF do encourage this, as water is generally sold in single-use plastic bottles, so we're being all eco.
We have two different sorts of filters. Amanda has the "Water-to-Go" brand, which is the more common type where the water is filtered by squeezing the bottle as you drink, but I've got a Grayl 'Geopress' which works on a different principle. You fill an outer bottle and then force a piston-like inner bottle into it, causing the water to pass through the filter into the inner bottle which is then just like a normal container. That means you can drink straight from it or pour it into another vessel very easily. We end up not using Amanda's at all, as I just use mine and then pour it into an ordinary bottle for her to carry.
In fairness, it's not necessarily perfect for everyone. It's not cheap (around £100), it's bigger and heavier than the WtG types, and you need a solid surface you can use your body weight against to apply enough pressure, but that said, I do absolutely recommend it. https://grayl.co.uk/collections/geopress
Back to our hotel.
Tomorrow, the Pyramids!
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