We got here last night, after one of the world's longest and most unnecessary trips. But that aside, since there's nothing particularly interesting to note about it, I'll get on to Egypt. We got here about four in the afternoon and met our guides who took us to the hotel. I noticed that the airport was very new and clean. My guess was that it was tourist dollars at work. On the flight in I was looking down from above and the land use patterns were really interesting. Instead of spreading from an urban core outwards, there are many little satellite areas around the city. Because of the scarcity of water, in between there is nothing but desert. Some rocks, some sand, maybe a dead plant or two. So we drove in to town and made it to the hotel. It's in a really nice area, in the sense that this is definitely not where the average Egyptian family lives. We're right across the street from the Syrian Embassy and have to walk through it to get to our hotel from the main road. The streets are kind of beat up, even here, with sidewalks and roads that have seen better days. Egypt is another country that has a circular trash mentality. The streets have garbage on them, so we might as well throw more on them. Not only is there garbage all over, but it's not a big deal to throw more all over. Our neighborhood is nice though, in comparison to some others, because it has a decent number of trees that give it some space and shade.
Many places we drove past were nothing but apartment blocks. Here, these are very close together, with few differences in their design. It's the type of city that has so many people it is just struggling to stuff them all in. Thousands upon thousands of apartments that all look the same, the only difference is in the laundry hanging outside. Which is a good reminder of the individuals that make up Cairo. There are about 18 million of them in the wider metro area and it felt like we saw them all today. In the developing country way, everyone is out in the streets. The streets are where lives take place, where business is done, and where things happen. We saw people on their way to work and school and home and anywhere else you can imagine. I like it. It feels real. It feels alive. It isn't so sterilized and perfect, instead it's colorful, you can tell that people actually live here and use this place. The billboards and signs proclaim everything eastern and western in Arabic and English that you can imagine. The power lines are a tangled mess, the streets are poorly marked, the drivers above the law.
So to get back on track, we took a cruise on the Nile. In a way, we all said it felt like prom. Sort of fake, a little class, really awkward, and yet, a lot of fun. We had a great time and a good dinner. The food was set up buffet style (probably not an Egyptian tradition?). The boat was decorated like a tomb, with lots of ancient Egyptians walking around on the ceiling. As soon as we were done, though, things got awkward. A belly-dancer showed up. So we left. We went up onto the top deck and sat out in the breeze and watched as we cruised around in front of the city. It's quite nice, there are a lot of apartments and hotels along the river, but there are also a lot of good views of mosques and fortress walls. We sat out for a couple hours and watched the lights and sailboats. It was amazing how thick the air still was even after dark, not muggy and humid thick, but like you're sitting in an oven. The whole event was strange because it was so un-Egyptian. The belly-dancer, the whirling dervish who came out next, neither of them are Egyptian, nor were any of the people taking part in the whole night. The only people who were, were the people working on the boat. I'll talk more about this tomorrow, but it was such a selling of one's cultural history for profit. That's all for now, more on the morrow.
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