When my friend suggested that our next biannual trip be Egypt, I have to admit I wasn’t overly excited at the idea. I mean, I love the food and the ancient and exotic cultures of the Middle East, but I also had visions of swarms of tourists driving past the Sphinx in their air conditioned buses. To mitigate the imagined crowds, we chose to go in March, after the high season ends, and our plan worked beautifully. I found Cairo to be very calm and relaxing, sort of like life is a warm summer day over and over, its people stoic but shy, and aside from the truly famous things like the Pyramids at Giza, we encountered very few tourists.
We stayed in the Ezbekieh quarter of the city, about twenty miles east of the Nile and the tourist strip, close to the peaceful Ezbekieh Gardens, Opera House, Central Railway Station, and downtown commercial drag. Walking around the immediate hotel area was extremely pleasant, with a marked absence of touts, a plethora of coffee houses (ahwe), and local places to eat. The coffee houses are filled with men at outdoor sidewalk tables, enjoying sheesha (waterpipes), shai ala bosta (tea) and a game of dominoes, watching football (Champion’s League was going on) or just talking. Women are rarely seen in the coffee house, but otherwise are plentiful on the streets, some wearing the hijab and some not.
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