Koshary and Kahlili

Trip Start Sep 07, 2008

148

Trip End Dec 09, 2008

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Flag of Egypt Cairo, Egypt
Wednesday, October 29, 2008

When Said picked us up after our Citadel tour, we asked him to find us some good but inexpensive Egyptian food for lunch. We parked in front of a little restaurant, and he told us to wait inside the car so he could order the food without being charged tourist prices. He came back with four cartons of koshary. None of us had ever tasted koshary before. It was a dish of macaroni, noodles, garbonzo beans, lentil beans, tomato, and spices. It's difficult to explain, but it was really delicious. Said takes care of us!

Bellies pleasantly full of koshary, Said drove us past the City of the Dead. This is a vast Muslim cemetary in which, according to the guidebook, three million people live in such poverty that they make their homes between and inside the funerary mausoleums. There doesn't seem to be much of a middle class in Cairo, only an extreme divide between very rich and very poor

Wreath of Roses eating koshary!

. Tourism is the number one contributor to the Egyptian economy, but we're not sure which end of the economic spectrum our tourist dollars are really helping.

The last stop on today's trip was the Kahn al-Kahlili bazaar. This is a market so vast with shops of perfume, gold and silver jewelry, copper pots, fabric, clothing, shoes, furniture, sculptures, rugs, trinkets... that it covers many blocks. The problem was that Said had to drop us off a few minutes away, and we weren't entirely sure where we were going. We found a street or two with shops, but we knew we had not yet found the real action. Thirty minutes before Said was scheduled to pick us up and take us back to the hotel, Click and I happened to walk in the right direction, and we hit the mother lode. The narrow street exploded with colors, smells of incense and food, and a million shop owners hollering at us to buy their wares. I didn't buy much. What I can afford would just be kitchy souvenir crap, and the beautiful lanterns and rugs I'd like to get I can't afford. But the bazaar elevates window shopping to an Olympic event. We barely saw a fraction of the shops. On the ride back to the hotel, we all agreed we need AT LEAST four more hours at the bazaar, so we're going back tomorrow.

For dinner, Salim ran to get us takeout Egyptian food. Salim is the assistant of Walid the hotel owner. I would guess Salim is about sixteen. Very sweet guy. He brought back for us more koshary, lamb kabob stuffed in pita pockets, and schwarma, which was a sort of moist, sweet chicken sandwich. Walid made us tea. Egypt was colonized by the British before winning their independence, so they drink a lot of tea, and boy do they know how to make it yummy. Wonderful.

I decided to end the evening with some quiet blogging, but Blink Blink, Click, and Wreath of Roses just left with Walid for a sheesha bar, aka hookah smoking. I can't wait for tomorrow morning to hear what that was like.