Another Cairo Day

Cairo Tower
Originally uploaded by kden604.

Today started off a little slower than normal... I slept in until 830am which is normally the time I have already ate breakfast and am out the door...

I went for a really long walk up and down the nile for about 8 km each way and stopped at the Opera House area to see some of the sights.

The Opera is a very beautiful area with well manicured gardens and landscaping. I went to the Modern Art Gallery and spent about 45 minutes or an hour wandering around that. I'm not really big in to art, in fact generally speaking it does nothing for me... but I do like sculptures quite a bit... There was quite a few scuptures and some were really neat... I don't know squat about art, I don't stand there and contemplate what this or that is... but if it looks cool and it does something for me, then I am happy.

About halfway through my walk I sat down in the shade to relax and drink some water... When suddenly out of the blue two taxi cabs smash in to each other, one spins around and the others front end is almost half normal size. I was pretty surprised about how the whole thing unfolded, the taxi drivers were right out yelling and cursing each other... both of them had customers, one was fine and leaning agains the car and the other was still sitting in the seat holding his head, which he probably hit during the abrupt stop.

The traffic police finally got him to get out of the car and sat him on the park bench and gave him some water, the cabbies continued to curse each other and then everyone got on to their cell phones and started yelling in to them.

I didn't stick around too long, but it seemed very unorganized, there wasn't any clean-up crew, tow truck, police (other than traffic police, which are every block and are basically the stop and go lights of the city), or ambulance...

On the way back to the Hostel I was harrassed by this one annoying kid about 14 or 15... first he asked me for money, then he grabbed my shirt on the sleeve and started pulling on it... so I yelled "LA" (NO) at him... and he didn't go away... So then Piss off... but still he kept on... I cocked my arm as-if to punch him in the head and he finally ran off... it's not very often you get really bad beggers but sometimes they can get a bit carried away... That said, in most touristy areas of Cairo they have tourism police which do a couple things... one they make sure that the tourists are behaving and two, they stop people from harassing the tourists...

I decided to calculate how much I spent today and this is how it breaks down:

25 EP - Hostel (with Breakfast)
3 EP - 2 x 1.5 L of water
7 EP - 1 Hr 30 min on Internet Cafe
3 EP - 3 x Tea
5 EP - Modern Art Gallery
2 EP - Tip to Baggage Guy at Gallery
40 EP - KFC 6 Piece (LOL, cravings, wonderful cravings)

Total Cost for the day: 85 EP ($18.48 Canadian)

It's probably closer to $18 because I always use 4.6 EP for 1 CDN but the official rate today is 4.87... I think when I used the bank machine my rate was 4.8 that day.

Well that is pretty much my day... I racked out around 3 pm for a couple of hours because I was beat from all the walking... it's 8:30ish in the evening now and I'm going to drink my 3 teas (that I already accounted for in the budget) down at the local hang-out.