Reading Time: 10 minutes

We are starting this year off with a trip to one of Sandy’s top ten locations in our combined top twenty. It’s a location that we are both surprised that it didn’t make my top ten given the history that we plan to learn firsthand while here. It’s the land of the pyramids and pharaohs – Egypt!

We left Minneapolis last Tuesday and the journey took around 24 hours on the clock, but we also moved our clock forward a total of seven hours during the journey. Departure from Minneapolis was at 10am and the temperature when we left was a brisk three degrees below zero. We stopped at DC’s Dulles airport and had subs at Jersey Mike’s and then checked out the Capital One lounge there. We have had the benefit of many lounges in airports during our travels, but this was the first time we got to try one that is branded with our primary credit card and we were impressed. From DC we boarded a Saudia Air 777 airplane that took us over the ocean and landed in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia on Wednesday afternoon. We were impressed with Saudia – nice amenity kit, the bathrooms are a bit larger, carpeted prayer area for the Muslims to pray at their various times through the flight, snacks or meals every couple of hours – and there was no one sitting next to us – a very pleasant flight. We slept for a little bit on the flight but not as much as we would have liked. Sandy watched a couple of movies (Soul on Fire and A Big Bold Beautiful Journey). I read a book that I have wanted to read since Iceland, and I am getting close to finishing it (Independent People by Halldor Laxness – it was recommended to me by Iceland’s most recent past president). That flight was 12 hours, and we had a couple of hours to enjoy the airport lounge in Jeddah. The last leg was a two-hour flight into Cairo, which landed around 6:30pm local time.

It took a while for our bags to show up on the carousel but then it was very easy to get an Uber to our apartment, which is in the Heliopolis area of Cairo, and we were settled in and unpacked by 11pm. The grocery store is right across the street and stays open late, so we walked over and picked up some groceries to get us started for our first few days here in Cairo. The time zone is going to take some adjusting – I didn’t go to sleep until 2:30am and Sandy was up until 4am.

We were up by 11am on Thursday. It took awhile to get the TV going – we have to use a VPN for some of the apps we use with out firestick and Egypt can make VPNs challenging. We got it working eventually so that we can watch the things we enjoy watching as we travel. We signed up at the gym right around the corner from the apartment, got some cash from the ATM, and walked around Merryland Park, which is close to the apartment. The park isn’t as nice as we would have liked – certainly not like the park we had in Tirana. It has a carnival-type area that you pay around 50 cents to visit and we enjoyed exploring that area.

We had our Greek salads at home while watching one of Brian and Carrie’s latest YouTube recordings. Tres Bon is a restaurant less than 100 meters from our apartment and we went there for dinner. They have a great menu and we both had salmon teriyaki and shared a Caesar salad. I was able to get to sleep around 1am and Sandy was up until 5:30am. I was awake from 5:30 to 8:30am and then went back to sleep.

We were both up again by 11am on Friday. We had bananas and cereal and then went over to Nox Fit gym for our workouts, but they were closed – not sure why because they are supposed to be open 24/7. We went back home and got our stuff to go out and explore the Korba Square area. Lots of shops and restaurants and buildings built from the early 20^th Century. When they were built, they followed a Parisian model with wide boulevards and ornately decorated buildings. We walked back to our neighborhood and saw that the gym was open. After we stopped at home for Greek salads and Amazing Race, we went over to Nox Fit for our weights and cardio workouts. We then walked to Bob’s Bar – it’s a 40-minute walk from the apartment, but we wanted to see the area and get information at the metro station on our best options for using the metro for a month. While in the station, we met Mohammed and his younger sister, Nudy. He was incredibly helpful as it was hard to hear and translate with the station workers through the glass windows. He speaks excellent English and he translated everything for us as we got the information. For our purposes, it was best to buy a wallet card for the equivalent of $1.65 and then we loaded the equivalent of around $8.50 onto the card. We can both use the same card and depending on how far a trip is, the cost ranges from about 17 cents up to 30 cents per person per ride. That will last us a good amount of time and it is supposed to be very easy to load more funds if we need to while we are here in Cairo. In the picture, we live on the green line at the El Ahram stop.

The metro station was very close to Bob’s Bar. It’s a little like a speakeasy – you must ring a doorbell to enter. We tried three different beers at Bob’s – Sakara Gold, Meister Max, and Desperado (beer and tequila mix). They were all good, but Meister Max was our favorite – a little more of the darker flavor that we like. The Desperado would be a good beer for race day at the Indy 500. For dinner, we both ate cheeseburgers that were good, French fries, and awesome homemade potato chips.

We took the metro home – just two stops and 17 cents for each of us. We watched a Frasier episode before bed and we were asleep by 1am.

We are still adjusting to the time zone and so yesterday (Saturday), we were up by 9:30 at first. We did our morning reading and then we were both still tired, so we went back to sleep on and off until we finally got up around 3pm. We are starting to wonder if we will ever adjust. We ate our bananas and had some yogurt with fruit mixed in and then left the apartment at 4:15. We took the metro to see the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, which is also where President Anwar Sadat and his wife are buried. He was assassinated in 1981 at a viewing platform across the street during a parade celebrating Egypt’s victory over Israel in the October 1973 war.

There was a military soldier at the Tomb and he asked to hold one of our passports while we took pictures in the area. He attempted to get money from us to give the passport back, but we firmly said no and he gave the passport back. That was frustrating – no harm and we are very aware that there are many scams here in Egypt, but it’s so unnecessary.

We then walked about 30 minutes to the October 6^th Victory Memorial and War Panorama. They checked our passports there but immediately returned them. We got our tickets and then Mohammed (not the same one as last night) basically escorted us throughout the experience. It was great. We were the only two people out of the 150 or so who were there who spoke English. He gave us audio guides (we purchased them with our tickets) so that we could listen to two of the three presentations in English. The first presentation was a movie in a normal movie theater setting and I think we were too late for it to be able to catch up with our English audio guides. The second presentation was the panorama presentation – we sat in theater style seats and the bank of seats rotated to take the viewers through the story of the war depicted with three-dimensional displays, backdrops, music, lots of war sounds, and commentary.

The third presentation was sort of like an IMAX experience and again we could follow it with our audio guides. It seemed like all three presentations told the story of the war, just in slightly different formats. The experience was very interesting. It was heavy on the propaganda. I suspect if the war were discussed in Israel, the perspective would change considerably. At the end of the day, the result of this war led to the Sinai Peninsula returning to Egyptian hands. We then took an Uber to Buffalo Wings n Rings. This is the same chain that we have visited now in Amman, Jordan and Portland, Indiana. It’s quite similar to Buffalo Wild Wings, but I think they started a year before BWW. We had Stella beers and onion rings. Sandy had a chicken quesadilla and fries. I had wings with fries and everything was really good.

We got an Uber home – Uber is very inexpensive here. We don’t mind the metro at all – it’s just that sometimes we are quite far from the metro stops. We were asleep by 3am.

In Muslim countries, the weekend is Friday and Saturday, so today was Sunday and it was back to a normal workweek for the residents. We’ve been messed up with our body clock since we arrived and the days of the week don’t feel right either. At any rate, we set our alarms for 9am, had our bananas and yogurt with fruit and then headed to Tahrir Square. This is the main square in Cairo where the revolution started in 2011. There isn’t much to be made of the square – it is of course surrounded by many downtown buildings and is a meeting point for various main roads in Cairo, but it’s not an area where a lot of people are sitting around chatting or filled with shops and restaurants. The Egyptian Museum is on the north side of the square and that was our main destination for today. Other than stopping midway through our visit for lunch (we had chicken shawarmas and fresh juices in the museum courtyard), we spent around 2.5 hours exploring the museum. Some of the pieces that used to be housed in this museum now reside in the recently opened Grand Egyptian Museum, which we plan to visit in the coming days (including King Tut’s mask). There are still thousands and thousands of artifacts to see. Highlights for us were a beautiful sphinx from 5,000 years ago, a couple of pyramid capstones, many mummies (including pets that have been mummified), and many beautiful tombs. It was all a pretty incredible introduction to the history we will see here – not only for the quality of the artifacts, but also the crazy quantity of what has been found.

After the museum, we walked toward Gezira Island. We wanted to get information at the opera house and check out an area to possibly go for a run tomorrow. On the way, we shrugged off another scammer – he said he was showing us the way to cross the Nile, which we didn’t need to be shown the way, but instead took us to his store to try to get us to buy artwork. It’s so unfortunate that these tactics exist. I know people are just finding ways to put food on their table, but I only wish that it could be done ethically. We eventually did get to the opera house – seeing and crossing the Nile River for the first time along the way. That was fun.

We are interested in seeing a ballet at the opera house, but they are strict on their dress code and we do not travel with formal wear in our small carry-on bags. We have decided to investigate buying clothes in order to go to the ballet – we’ll see what the options look like and then decide later in the week. After the opera house we found the corniche, or promenade, along the river and walked it as far as we could. It’s about a mile long and we determined that it would be a good spot for tomorrow’s run. There are quite a few large boats along the corniche and they each house various restaurants. We have been craving sushi and one of the boats (Le Pacha 1901) includes a restaurant called L’Asiatique. We enjoyed a sesame salad and five sushi rolls that were delicious. The prices there were comparable to Sarasota and I’m sure that is because of the area and the fact that we were anchored on a boat on the Nile. After dinner, we headed to the Opera metro stop and made our way home by 8pm. I watched the Patriots/Broncos game before we went to bed a little after 1am.