Canadian Hostel Cairo

Well, there was a reason why the flights only cost 300 return - it was a red-eye journey in every sense of the word. Left the house at 1:30am on the 25th and had pretty much no sleep till about 12pm the next day. Cairo is loud, polluted and huge. Flying in the city looks more like a computer-generated texture stuck in the middle of the desert rather than anything real. The thousands of almost identical high-rise blocks in drab sandy-brown bristle all over the urban sprawl, and the pyramids lo...

After a couple of nights in Alex there wasn't really much to do apart from head back to the capital to wait for our flight. In retrospect we should have planned it better in the first place - we could probably have managed to fit in a trip to Aswan or Luxor, or at the very least seen Siwa oasis by bus from Alexandria, but in the end we figured it was too late. Really I don't have a lot more to add about Cairo. Spent more time in ahwahs, drank more coffee, smoked more shisha, got hassled a bit...

I flew to Egypt with my friend Shukri on Wednesday night. We arrived at around 9 PM and drove to our hostel, The Canadian Hostel (I guess the owner is Canadian), that was located downtown. That night we hung out with the young local Egyptians who owned the hostel. They were all very nice and fun to hang out with...it was also nice to practice my Arabic with them. The next morning we woke up bright and early, got breakfast, then went to the Egyptian Museum. I was not impressed by the museum an...

hello, I'll be back later.

Uneventful plane ride to Cairo this afternoon. Said final goodbyes to a Turkish guy that I had been spending time with each time I was in Istanbul. Hard to bridge those vast cultural divides and expectations... Huge haze over Cairo as we landed...zoomed through immigration, got my luggage and found my ride holding a sign with my name on it! I followed him closely as he pushed my luggage cart down the center lane of traffic out to the parking lot. They aren't big on staying on sidewalks here t...

On the 5th, I arrived exhausted back in Cairo from the Red Sea, I wandered over to the American University area and walked into McDonald's...because so many restaurants are closed during Ramadan. I ordered my dinner and stood in the dining room and there was no place to sit. I looked around, the locals looked at me, looked down and it was an entirely awkward moment. Being a single woman, its highly unlikely that any men will let me share their tables and the few people sitting at their empty ...