Dinner in Cairo

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  Cairo, Egypt
Sunday, October 29, 2006

downtown cairo is the worst place on earth. there are crowds of people almost everywhere. the traffic is thick and chaotic. motorcycles run full speed and recklessly through crowded sidewalks. and the sidewalks are mostly occupied by beggars so you can't walk on them anyway. crossing the road over to the promenade along the nile river was an experience i hope i never have again. i almost died. in fact i may have died and i am now writing this in a parallel universe where i did not. along the banks of the river are indigents who appear to live there. a bag lady who resembled the wicked witch of the east began to throw stones at tourists. we made a quick retreat from that scene.

across from the hilton ramses is the much advertised and way way overhyped "shopping mall". it's a rather small building with six floors and escalators. some of the escalators actually work. the first five floors are crammed with tiny shops selling clothes and jewelry

Cairo chaos

. if that's not what you are shopping for you could go up to the next floor and find even more clothes and jewelry. and so on and so forth until you get to the sixth floor. there, finally, you get a reprieve from clothes and jewelry because what you get is a mcdonald's and a movie theater.

if you walk out of the shopping mall and turn left and then left at the big intersection, you will come across a computer store. above this store on the second floor is an internet shop with really really fast internet connection. also it is incredibly cheap. pencil and i both did some internet browsing just to have some time in a peaceful place away from the madness. after quite a while, we got bored and wanted to check out and the bill came to two egp. wow, really? is that all? is there a decimal point out of place?

there is a bookshop on the ground floor of the mall with one shelf of english books. we found a great little book with lots of pictures about the history and antiquities of egypt called "all of egypt". i wanted to know how much it was but the guy was watching football on tv and did not want to be bothered. i looked through the covers and the inside of the covers for a price tag and finally found one that said 50 egp. i handed him 50 egp and took the book. he said "55 pounds". but it says 50 egp here, i protested. government store, fixed price, he said. i went up and showed him the price tag but he was unimpressed. pencil said just give him the 5 pounds, sweetheart, and let's get out of here. so i did.

at the hilton ramses near the nile there is an indian restaurant upstairs called the maharajah. the prices are amazingly reasonable considering that it is located inside a five star hotel. the food is incredibly good considering that it is in cairo. and the wine list is incredibly impressive considering that we are smack dab in the middle of ramadam.

hilton runs a rapid and friendly shuttle between the hilton pyramids and the hilton ramses. after a great dinner of indian lamb biriani that will not soon be forgotten and a fine bottle of bourdeaux that will never be forgotten, we crawled back into the very cold air conditioned shuttle van for out trip back to sixth october and the hilton pyramids late at night.

on the way, i told pencil that i would like to return to cairo before we leave for another indian dinner at the ramses. pencil did not respond. after a few kilometers, she said, sweetheart, would it be ok if we did not have another indian dinner? you never want to go back to cairo again, do you baby? i asked. she gave me a kiss. ok, i promised. no more cairo. and that was that. we never went back to cairo.

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