Egypt Strut part 3

The next day was, in my opinion the best day of the trip. Everything about the day just flowed together nicely. We had this checklist of things to do on that day, but we ended up doing more than planned for which was brilliant. That morning i remember getting up and aasim telling me about the crazy cleaner woman that was to torment us during our stay in cairo! she was so useless - only fixing the bed and asking for 100 egyptian pounds! bloody cow. After that she had the nerve to ask for 30 egyptian pounds for toiletries which she didn't even need since we came back and she did it without us paying for it.

I remember us getting some foool (not a typo mind you) and egg sandiwiches in the morning. It was really cheap you know, around 6 egyptian pounds for a sandwich which was totally worth eating. After a light breakfast, we went and got into a taxi and made our way towards the cairo tower. The taxi drive was awesome - i remember seeing the Nile and and the sun and thinking "wow man, this is it! im in Egypt - after a 7 year hiatus of going abroad, i've now ended up going to egypt and i went on my own!" it was a big thing for me to do it alone. We got out of the taxi and i think we prayed before anything. We stayed in the mosque for a little while before we went out and started to walk around. Aasim took me to this bridge where the breeze is amazing at night time; we took some pics and i told Aasim about how i couldn't believe i was actually in egypt. We took some pictures with the Nile behind us on the bridge and we walked on pass the bridge onto the other side. The city has this really lively and busy atmosphere where it's never sleeping. The buildings have that yellow/brown tinge to them and the sun sort of glows and glares at the city below without the veil of clouds. It is truly desert country. We were to come back to the Nile again that night, but before that we had a large day ahead of us. We went up the cairo tower. At the entrance we're all these guards with machine guns and i got a little worried looking at it LOL. but it was cool after a while, we took the steps up and entered the lift which took us up god knows how many floors. As soon as the lift doors pinged open there was this cool AC breeze that came in. However there was this pseudo looking westernised restaurant in front of us and i felt kind of bummed out looking at something so out of place with the rest of the city i'd seen. We had to take the flight of steps up to the top until we got this beautiful view of the city. My god, what a view too! you could see practically all of Cairo! i could even see the pyramids in the misty distance (caused by the smog!). Although there was alot of pollution, it was kind of cool to see the pyramids before we went to them - it gave me this feeling of grandeur associated with the pyramids and was heightened by the fact we could see them even though they were so far out of the city - and the city is bigger than London so thats saying something. I remember us spending like an hour up there before we headed off towards the muesuem. Now that Musuem was kind of funny because we were knackered walking around and we were talking about feeling high LOL. It was nice to see tutankhamun's golden mask - it has this really eerie look to it. Sort of similar to the Mona Lisa where you feel it's staring right at you from all angles. However, there seemed to be something really omnious about its look, something penetrating....Regardless, we got to see how many tombs were built for the pharoah and see the accesories he and his wife had - they had some really nice furniture - pure gold! Its amazing looking at the intricate detail involved at the sarcophogus - the artwork on it is truly spectacular especially considering this was done thousands of years ago with dyes that they invented at the time - pretty remarkable for their achievments. After the museum we were pretty hungry so we went out to Al Tahrir square where we got this really nice munch with these freshly squeezed juices (awesome juices - some of the best are out there - no joke). Now you see, at this point we were unsure what to do, so we just started walking around. For me, this was my favourite part of the trip because we just to get this real vibe of what the city was like and not in the touristy way. We just walked on and bought this 2gb memory stick that'd be needed for Aasim's camera. After that we walked on until we reached the old kings palace. Word has it that he was killed off in a coup de tat by the people and that sovereignity was killed off too and now it's a parliament involved. It was beautiful though, this really European design so juxtaposed with the city around it - children playing football in front of the palace - it was symbolic of the demise of regality and the uprise of the people - however these days the government is pretty corrupt :(, but the sight of children playing football in front of something so grand was kind of nice, sort of removed the strictness that you'd normally get in London. It was sunset too, so we took some pictures of the sun past the buildings - ah i remember it well - it was a really buff sunset too, setting on the city that never sleeps :).

We went back to the bridge that we started off after that and waited by the corniche (nile bank) for aasim's cousin to come along for a boat ride along the nile. This place was really funny - we were watching these poncy guys trying to serenade these arab women with their acoustic guitars - pretty hilarious watching it because they looked so gay. Once we met up with Aasim's cousin we got onto the boats and just took in the breeze coming up the Nile. Aasim's cousin is such a joker - giving me this gyal's number at his work place and getting me to try and chirps her up! he asked me what i thought of egyptian women but i couldn't speak any arabic. So i gave him the perfect sign =D where he started cracking up LOOOL!.

it was a brill first night out there.

The second day - my god, that was the most tiring day. We got up and trekked it to Giza on a microbus and walked it up to the pyramids. While we were there we got pestered by this lout who got me to jump on a horse! i paid the guy like 5 egyptian pounds and we were on our way. Now im going to try and keep this short because we actually trekked our way up in the desert to this spot where you could see all 3 pyramids. My god, that was the knackering thing ever. LOL we tried to get these horse shoes on the way, but the bloody bag we had kept breaking :( so we ended up with no horse shoes and water that was so warm it was disgusting. The only thing we could do with it was splash it on ourselves to cool ourselves down. It got so bad i was starting to see purple! and that was a cool day in cairo :S. we got so knackered we didn't even go right up to the sphyinx we just sort of stood on the outskirts and blagged the pics LMAO.

at the end of that, we just took this taxi and went to the zoo - still completely knackered and were walking around aimlessly feeding gorillas and pelicans. we took some funny pics and videos (one of me looking like im pissing into a body of water and watching this gorilla go schizo coz i was teasing it with food - which i do feel bad about but was funny :P). Man we walked for like 2 hours looking for these lions to which nobody could give reliable directions! once we got to see the damn lions they were in their cages with a couple looking agitated at the people looking back at them. Once we managed to find the exit (which once again no-one could provide a decent answer) we met up with Aasim's uncle and jammed at cairo university for a little while. Man what a fecking campus! lushious palm trees, lots of buildings and er...lots of sights for a guy LMAO. Its nothing like in the UK, you get this really nice and chilled out looking place on the outskirts of cairo. Now after the university what did we do.....we got onto a train and i think we went back but i can't remember exactly :S. I think we might have gone to a mosque at this point since it was on the way and just chilled til night time than went and got a munch and went back to yard to watch some MELODY HITS AND THE SOFTCORE PORN CREW.

3rd day and the rest of the time in cairo was alot of mosques. Now for this i think the pictures tell a better story than me describing it + i've written quite a bit so i might save writing about it another time.