Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Almost the end...


Well today we did downtown Cairo, and went to the museum, souk and a few mosques.

The Cairo Museum is really wicked...it is so cluttered with Egyptian artifacts and history, that it is almost bursting with objects. Apparently, they are building a new state-of-the-art museum near the pyramids in Giza, which will replace this older one.

Some cool things we saw, were the Royal Mummies, which are in their own private room, with special entrance fees to get in. Mummies are always cool to see!!!

Also, half of the entire second floor is dedicated to the treasures found in King Tut's tomb!! The room where you can see the Death Mask was busy, I mean really busy...with people pushing themselves just to get a closer glimpse, as if the mask is going anywhere!

We then went to the famous Khan El Khalili souk, where you can buy anything and everything, and is one of the oldest in the world, and dates back to the 1300's. We walked around, and I finally found the Death Mask I wanted to buy...we bargained hard for it.. ;)
Aneta of coarse, was looking at jewellery, and bought herself a nice silver bracelet. She really bargained hard, and at the end, the guy called her Ali Baba!!!

To end the day, we went to visit 3 of the biggest and oldest mosques in the city...the architecture was really amazing, with wicked arches and stone work.

We also took a nice long walk in downtown Cairo, looking for this store that sells Egyptian alcohol (to add to Aneta's collection of coarse), just to find out the store was closed, which to begin with wasn't really easy to find. :(
We have to make the walk again tomorrow, and crossing the street is a challenge...Cairo is famous for it's traffic, and everybody makes their own rules, but somehow it works.

Now we are relaxing at our hotel....and think we might call it a day...maybe some dinner first...

Tomorrow, we really have nothing planned, I may walk to the museum early in the morning, and look around some stores, but other than that and the alcohol, I think we will just take it easy for the first time this trip.

Later

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wasn't Khan El Khalili the name of Superman's dad or something? :)

Anonymous said...

ya, I think they were selling some kryptonite at the souk as well...at least the guy selling it, said he guarantee it's real kryptonite...and these guys selling stuff never lie..lol