Another early morning - flying Egyptair
It’s Tuesday morning and neither Wayne nor I could sleep past 3:30 am. Breakfast was at 5 am and we were on the bus at 5:45 am. The flight from Luxor left at 7:45 am. A few humorous moments. The safety announcements were in 5three languages, French, Arabic and English. It was only an hour flight. I thought we would still be listening to them as we landed. And as soon as the last person boarded, almost before they were seated, we pushed away from the tarmac; no jetways…buses from terminal to plane and then a walk up the steps into the plane. The overhead luggage containers weren’t even closed before we were taxiing down the runway.
Odysseys unlimited handles all our luggage and hires people to claim them on the carousel and to load them into carts and then to the bus. Thus tour company is amazing.
Direct from the airport, we headed to our guide’s favorite restaurant where he bought us all falafel sandwiches. These are made from fava beans fried into patty shapes and inserted into pita bread with some grilled eggplant and tahini sauce. He gave each of us two sandwiches. I ate and enjoyed one but no way could I eat two. Wayne didn’t touch his which is rare for him not to eat anything put in front of him. We ate them in the bus as we headed to explore Old Cairo.
This area of the city is even more crowded than others, which is saying something but you haven’t seen anything until you get to the market or bazaar area.
Today, instead of visiting temples and tombs we visited churches and a synagogue. The bus let us off and we first walked to The Hanging Church. It is built on the foundation of the old southern gate of the Roman era Babylon Fortress. When it was constructed, it spans a passageway of the fortress, makes it appear to be “hanging” in mid air. It has a wooden roof in the shape of Noah’s Ark. The famous miracle of moving the Moqattam Mountain is closely related to the church. Matthew 17-20 gospel “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you shall say to this mountain: Remove from hence to yonder place and it shall remove” This is the oldest Coptic church dating back to the 7th century AD.
We walked to St Sergius and Bacchus church which dates to the 4th century believed to have been built on the spot where Joseph, Mary and the baby Jesus once rested. There’s a well and as the picture of the opening to the well suggests. This is where the holy family drank.
Thus door is over 1,000 years old
As you go down a few steps, the sign above the door way says “the cavern where the holly family stayed for three months”
As you go down the steps, you reach their resting area
Sam stopped at a map to show us relation of Egypt to the Red Sea and to Mt. Sinai and Joseph, Mary and Jesus travel. And the relative closeness to Mt. Sinai where Moses received the 10 commandments.
Our last stop was at the Ben Ezra synagogue. It is not an actively used synagogue as there aren’t many Jews left in Egypt since the 6 day in 1967 when Israel captured the Sinai peninsula and Gaza Strip from Egypt. It is largely a museum and tourist attraction. As the stories are told, the synagogue is located on the site where baby Moses was found.
The storeroom below ground was found in the 19th century to contain A treasure of forgotten stored away Hebrew sacred manuscripts. Approximately 40,000 items.. They were taken to the university of In England. We weren’t allowed to take any pictures inside at the request of the operators.
Here are a few interior photos I pulled from the web.
Now on to a more secular part of our day. We were taken to Cairo’s bazaar or market. Everyone trying to sell you something. 20 purses for five dollars. 100% Egyptian cotton for five dollars. There was a lot of alabaster for sale and statues of cats and untold amounts of scarves and jewelry and alabaster boxes and of course, don’t forget T-shirts.
We were told to bargain hard. If they asked for $20 US we should start at $10 and negotiate from there. I found a piece of fabric, identical to the colorful covering on the feluccas we sailed on earlier in the trip. Rough measured, it was about 2 1/2 yards. They started at $35 US and I countered at $15. I wound up buying it for $17. I was with another woman in the bazaar and we were taken quite a number of streets away through small alleys to the shop where the fabric was. Again, I didn’t feel afraid and was promised to be taken back to the main strip of stores where we started. And of course we were. So we had a little adventure of our own.
Sam walked us through a few streets of the bazaar And then we had free time to shop; one hour. Here are some photos of the bazaar.
I finished shopping in about 35 minutes and met Sam as instructed at a café. The only thing I could think to order was a Coke zero. Note the Arabic writing on it.
As we left the bazaar on the bus, I took some photos of the traffic just to give you an idea of how crazy it is here.
Our bus driver navigated down the street and the people don’t even have any concern for the bus that’s 3 feet from them.
The car in front of the bus dashboard just backed right out in front of us. It’s the only way you can drive here stick the car out in front of everything. No one seems to hit each other, but it’s the only way to get your car into the traffic
Cars, motorcycles people nobody cares about any white lines that might be on the road
Just another day in Cairo.
Here’s a few pictures of some apartments as we drove through the streets of Cairo. If they don’t have windows, it’s because until they finish the apartment, meaning put windows in them, they don’t have to pay taxes on them. People buy their apartments. They don’t rent apartments. This is a typical middle class neighborhood we were told.
Dinner is on our own tonight. We are back at the same Hilton we started at when we arrived in Cairo. We’ll be here two nights before Wayne and I fly to Amman Jordan on Thursday. Homeward bound on Monday morning.
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