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| Cairo is, without a doubt, an interesting city. There exist in Cairo a mixture of the modern, the primitive and the ancient for all to see and enjoy. However, it might take some getting accustomed to. As mentioned on an earlier page, the traffic in Cairo is terrible. It makes New York traffic look tame by comparison. Short trips of only a few miles could take hours. Poverty is everywhere. Getting around can be difficult at best, but with an escorted tour you shouldn't have many problems. There are many interesting sites to see in Cairo itself, especially the museums. But the most interesting for Anne and I was just walking some of the local streets and alleys. As we walked we learned much about life in modern day Cairo and its people. | ||||||||||
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| The picture at right isn't really significant, but there is a story that goes along with it so I decided to include it as it gave me the opportunity to tell the story. We were on our way to visit a very old and famous mosque, I can't remember which one for sure. The tour bus was traveling on a two lane street and we were meeting a single body truck. Sometime in the recent pass there was some road work done where they excavated one side of the road and placed the excavated dirt in a mound on the other side of the street. As we approached the truck the driver could see that the truck would be forced to ride up onto this mound of dirt to pass our bus. When he did the body of the truck leaned toward the center of the road at a pretty steep angle and, in effect, positioned itself in front of the bus so that we could not pass each other without hitting. While the bus and truck driver tried to figure out what to do, the cars behind both became impatient and began honking their horns. Soon after they really got impatient and tried to pass the bus and truck. Now you can picture this ... a two lane street with both lanes filled with cars going in the same direction until they butt up against each other. It was a mess to say the least. The solution ... we left the bus and walked the few remaining blocks to the mosque while the bus driver somehow removed himself from the situation. |
 Anne (left) and Zenab, the tour guide, walking toward the mosque. Notice the condition of the street. |
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Scenes of the mosque that we visited
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| Continue to the next page to see more of Cairo. | ||||||||||
