Cairo and Alexandria

Email that I sent to my friends from Cairo:
Subject: new years in Cairo
Sent: Thursday, January 1, 2004 5:24 PM

hey! so... to all of you who I emailed over my trip this past year, I've kept you on this list since all of you gave me really good feedback about the emails (2 of you even used them for reports!)... I've added on a bunch of people from MIT, but if any of you don't want to get these emails let me know. anyway, after elegantly passing out on the toilet the night before my flight, I somehow managed to make it on - incredibly hungover. Had a stopoff in Switzerland - the Alps are fucking beautiful. Got into Cairo, and after the taxi driver drove me around the airport in circles for over half an hour yelling "Five Ticket!" I managed to find a really chilled out hotel just a minute's walk from the Nile. Cairo is a crazy city- its fucking huge - nearly 3 times the size of New York, and New York is pretty damn big. The traffic, as expected, is also insane, and I've already gotten hit by a cars a couple times. Its sorta counter-intuitive, but the only way to cross the street here is to walk directly in front of speeding traffic. Its playing frogger with your life, which is always fun. One morning I set out to take a bus to Giza to see the Pyramids. Ended up getting really lost in a car park full of hundreds of Arab men. One man was really nice and helped me out- I ended up going back to his Bedouin village for tea and sheesha (hookah). He introduced me to his brother Abdul. Then I took a camel around the Pyramids (big) and Sphinx for a couple hours. Abdul turned out to be an awesome guy, and I spent the entire day with him. Somehow I ended up driving around the desert, visiting ancient ruins and all sorts of Pyramids, listening to jazz. We chilled in Arab cafes all night, smoking sheesha, and then went for a traditional dinner with his family back in the Bedouin village. We all got along so well that he offered to drive me up to Alexandria with his American-born wife, Chris, and their two cute little boys. So, the next day we did the three hour drive through the Sahara to Alexandria, having intense religious, political and philosophical conversations. Alexandria is a beautiful city in the Nile Delta, on the Mediterranean coast - its very clean and it has a really Greek feel to it. Visited the site of the oldest library in the world, went to some amazing Roman museums and forts, and ate delicious fresh seafood. Went to the Egypt Museum- a building the size of a city block housing thousands of ancient artifacts. Saw the famous gold mask of King Tut and all the treasures in his tomb - this dude was seriously hooked up - just SHITLOADS of gold, intricately carved and painted items- really overwhelming. Then saw the mummies of 10 famous pharoahs- they've unwrapped some of them, too. Ramses II had a really small head with white hair. I think they stuck wigs on some of the Queens, because there's no way those kind of curls can last thousands of years. Chilled out with some awesome people on New Years - an Icelandic filmmaker, a Brazilian who's been cycling around the world for over 2 years, and some Germans... went to the Cairo Opera House to hear the most famous performer in Egypt - Muhammed something or other - play Nubian music... the music sucked, but it was quite a scene watching ten thousand Egyptian men go crazy. After I went up on a friend's shoulders, the men went a little too crazy and things quickly got ugly (everyone was rushing and grabbing at us) so we had to leave... got a boat on the Nile, and went bar-hopping around Cairo for the rest of the night... visited the synagogue here today - insane security- about 30 policemen/military, and I was escorted onto the premises by two men with giant machine guns, but they decided not to let me inside... leaving cairo tomorrow...
hope you all had a happy new years!
peace
-Anna