Cairo. "Shokran, habibi!" "Thanks, my sweetheart!"

"Cairo is the glory of Islam, and is the marketplace for all mankind." - Al-Mukadassi

Cairo was a surprise highlight of our trip for me and Craig.  Yes- as expected--  It's filthy, congested, dingy.  It does take forever to get anywhere, and especially when driving, to get anywhere you must first travel many miles in the wrong direction in order to find the correct unmarked turn or onramp. But what a love.  The food is delicious, the old downtown buildings are all evocative and mysterious, 

and mainly, the people of Egypt, in Cairo as in the countryside, can be so surprisingly kind and helpful to each other. They seem to stay good natured even when also yelling at each other. "Thanks, sweetheart !", "shokran  habibi" rings out over and over even when complete strangers have exchanged info through open car windows, stopping traffic behind them completely as they figure out how to get where they wish to be.  It's a guy thing for sure-- only men can play the sweetheart card-- but lots of fun.

“Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt”…attrib. Mark Twain

We felt very lucky with our choice of a downtown Cairo semi-budget hotel, the Windsor.   It doesn't overlook anything and it's far from the Nile.   It's a seven storey Edwardian gem that has definitely seen better days, whose entrance is impossibly isolated down a few alleys.  But despite a very frumpy basement type lobby, and an elevator and old phone system not replaced since 1920-something, it actually  has the grand staircases, high ceilings, carved wooden screen shutters and luxurious fittings of a hundred plus years ago. It also has a very plush and soothing expansive Englishman's club type bar, with free wifi and copies of today's International New York Times, tucked up on the mezzanine level, that definitely helps a lot to wash away a little of the fatigue of Cairo streets.   Locals like this bar too.  It's active til 1 am, though we never heard it from our corner room on the sixth floor. 

Our room...

Original 1920s phone

  The hotel could have used some fresh paint, and traffic and street caller noise is pretty abundant  but our enormous room's 12 feet high ceilings, antique furniture and nice towels made up for all of that.  Every floor has the sitting rooms and fittings you'd expect of a fashionable British hotel in 1906. And it must have been packed.  At the moment it's just about empty however. 

Michael Palin was here!

"Egypt is the Nile...the Nile has created its limits and gifted it with opulence." - Samuel Cox, 1886

 The local streets around it are great too-- behind the Windsor is the local smoking hangout, and quite near the Windsor are several blocks of busy pedestrian only streets and plazas where cafes and shisha shops and sidewalk vendors and ice cream stores and fresh fish restaurants and patisseries care for Cairo families out to enjoy the evening or weekend.  Here traditional flatbread is sold from sidewalk stalls replenished very often by energetic young men bicycling around fast while balancing huge bamboo cages full of fresh bread on their heads.  Fresh sweet baked morsels of honey, coconut, pistachios and nuts are also sold by roaming vendors and even better candied items are available from the fancy bakeries. 

“In Ancient Egypt: Under no conditions, under threat of death could anyone kill a cat. People were exceuted for even killing a cat accidentally. And when a cat died, the whole family, and probably their closest friends, went into mourning, the measure of their personal loss signalled by their shaving off their eyebrows.” 
― Roger A. Caras, A Celebration Of Cats

We spent today visiting some of the mosques and climbing the minaret of one built seven hundred years ago.  And then we found the Gayre-Anderson museum, which is a pair of elegant three-story houses from the 1360s built right up against the mosque that a rich British official brought completely back to their historical Ottoman Empire splendor by furnishing them with tiles, calligraphy, antique furnishings, ancient Egyptian and Turkish and Iranian and Indian treasures. The warren of rooms were already magical because they feature their original incredibly high carved wooden ceilings, traditional harem screens and shutters, and marble floors and fountains.  There are hidden patios to catch the evening breezes and hidden entrances disguised as bookshelves where the women of the house could access  small screened salons from which the women could spy, in seclusion, on the social meeting halls a floor below them.  Just like in old Turkish novels.  Plus in a few chambers there were entertaining photographs and mementoes from R.G.Gayre-Anderson's life in the British Army and then Egyptian administration, so you could get a feel for the life of this eccentric collector who finally went home to England in 1945, leaving all these riches to the Egyptians as a museum.  Quite a wonder. 

From there we went to one of the ancient city of Cairo's most ancient gates, and to the nearby Street of the Tentmakers where you can see beautiful fabrics and panels of appliqués.

 Unlike the famous tourist area, the Khan el Khalili, in this area not a single person hassled us to buy.... we were graciously allowed to look at anything we wanted and people would come over from one shop to another to help us with translations.  Around noon everything shut down for Friday Muslim religious services so we went off to enjoy Turkish coffee and watch the ever changing scenery in 

our lane.  Over the PA system we could hear today's sermon which sure sounded like any sermon from its tone... be kind to your neighbors, money isn't everything, please try to behave.  Shokran, habibi...  soon it was over and the men disgorged from the two local mosques and shop life returned to normal. 

“Same dog I got too. We call him Egypt.  Because in every room he leaves a pyramid.” - Rodney Dangerfield

Then we did walk up to the Khan al Khalily and beyond to the north gate of the old city, which was a lot of fun on this day, a Friday, because most locals are off work, and lots of country Egyptians bring their families in for shopping. So lots of young visiting Egyptians were scoping out fancy glitzy traditional costumes and were taking lots of group shots and selfies,

 marveling as much as we were at just how much beautiful glittery stuff is for sale there.... gold jewelry, brassware, perfumes, glassware, refrigerator magnets.  The street running north south has lovely buildings, the alleys running all around are dark and about wide enough for a loaded donkey to get through

. 

After, we walked home along the Al-Muski, a long lane that crosses much of the old city... perhaps a car could get through, not sure. But at least today the ancient thoroughfare which is lined with blue jean and clothing shops open to the street anyway, today was nearly completely blocked with stands on both sides  selling everything from fruit to underwear to tea kettles, and as we shuffled along home we were pressed up against hundreds of Cairene shoppers with their babies and bags, from time to time letting an overloaded cart or impatient merchant through, traveling single file, and everyone was so good natured. Later, when we got disoriented in a giant outdoor book market and needed help finding the right street for our hotel -- very few streets are marked with western letters-- everyone helped us find our way.