Well, we thought we were tired yesterday – that’s nothing compared to today! After sleeping well, we had breakfast and then four of us, Nicole and me, and Fiona and Anthony from NZ, headed off downtown to explore Khan Al-Khalili market. After a strenuous argument with the taxi driver over the price, and then another over where we actually wanted to go (he insisted that we did NOT want to go to Khan Al-Khalili, we got to the Al-Azhar Mosque, founded in 970AD. After having a guided tour through the mosque (free, but baksheesh- or the almost compulsory tipping – of about 40 Egyptian pounds), we left and outside a man told us to go in another direction to have a look at a school… so suckers that we were, we went that way, and then he offered to show us the way. Well warning lights should have been flashing at this point, but of we went, round and round the backstreets of Cairo into places that we would probably have never have gone to. It took several hours and a visit to a ‘factory’ where we watched two men making the inlays on jewellery boxes- absolutely beautiful painstaking intricate work, cutting tiny pieces of mother of pearl by hand and then placing each into a pattern. And yes, we did buy some things, after a great deal of haggling over the prices and growing frustration on our part. We finally got back onto a main road after more baksheesh, and with the help of a police officer, found our way back to Khan Al-Khalili. There is so much there to see, with whole sections devoted to perfumes, jewellery, spices and so forth, that I think we will go back another day when we’re not so tired!
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