Today’s adventure started around 10am when we left for the
Ibin Tulun mosque. It’s the oldest in Egypt and is the only mosque with an
outdoor staircase up the minaret. It took our taxi driver a while to find the
place, but once he did, the place was gorgeous!
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| Gorgeous architecture in the mosque. |
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| You could see the Mohammed Ali mosque at the Citadel (the highest point in Cairo) from the Ibin Tulun mosque. Remember that one, Dan? |
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| The minaret with outer spiral staircase. Yep, we went up top. |
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| View from the top of the minaret. You could see quite a ways. |
After walking about the mosque for about an hour, we grabbed
another taxi and headed out to Ma’adi, which is basically a really nice suburb
on the other side of downtown from Zamalek. While Zamalek is full of European embassies
and residences, Ma’adi holds more of the American things. We even passed by “Little
America”, which had a Hardee’s, KFC, Papa John’s, Pizza Hut, Little Caesar’s, Starbuck’s,
and Burger King basically all in one strip mall. It hurt a little bit knowing
that the best we can export to a foreign country is fast food, bad coffee, and
pizza. We had lunch at Lucille’s, an American-style diner (NOT in Little
America) where I was able to get a grilled chicken burger! And fresh,
bottomless iced tea!
After lunch we did some shopping in Ma’adi. The main reason
we went down was to find some supplies for drawing, which we did. But we also
found a little hole-in-the-wall shop with a very nice old man who sold
alabaster for cheap. I really wished
I had a justifiable reason to come home with more trinkets, because the stuff
was gorgeous and very inexpensive. Since I didn’t think my husband would be too
thrilled if I came home with yet another candle holder or pretty thing that
takes up horizontal space in our tiny apartment, I stuck to a beautiful black
and white mortar and pestle. It’s prefect herb size, incredibly heavy, and only
cost 45 LE ($7.50). For that price, I couldn’t NOT get it. I’d show you a
picture but it’s all wrapped up. Lindsey got a few Min statues as gifts and the guy told us the whole story (we think) while wrapping them up for us.
After shopping, we headed back to Zamalek. Just as we got
out of the cab and were heading across the street, we heard someone yell
Lindsey’s name. We turned and it was one of our old professors, Hratch! He was
in Zamalek signing papers with the SCA for the Abydos project he’s doing with
Kat and Greg and just happened to be coming down the same street we were on. He
took us to the Marriot (where Dan and I stayed on our honeymoon!) and bought us
fresh strawberry juice while we chatted. It was great to see him and catch up! He’s
currently teaching in Copenhagen, so I hardly ever see him.
It’s now heading near dinner time, but we’re all pretty
full, so we may just do Subway. Last night we watched The Princess Bride over
some chocolate cake, so maybe tonight we’ll watch something else and eat the
cupcakes we bought in Ma’adi so that Lindsey could use the bathroom.
(Seriously, at some point we need to do a cupcake taste-test from all the different
places and rank them. They’ve sprung up quickly, apparently, and are all over
the place!).
