Sayonara Cairo!

Sadly, this is my last Egypt post for the time being!  I will return to the land of soup and teen lit with vigor asap with some exciting new recipes and tasty books.  I arrived back in Cairo bright and early in the morning, just in time for rush hour!  Thusly, my epic Egyptian adventure had to come to an end.  But not before I did a few things.  Here are the things I did, followed by a few traveling to Egypt tips.


Thing 1:  I got my shoes (Dansko's) shined!  It was fabulous; they now gleam like the blackest onyx in all the lands.  I may have to start calling them my Black Beauties. We carried our own shoes there because it probably would have been really weird for the guy to shine our shoes with them actually attached to our ladylegs.  It was already taboo enough; he apparently got heckled while shining our shoes.  We gave him a large tip!  If you live in Egypt, the nameless faceless shoeshiner of Dokki is the best shoe shiner ever.

Rain and foreign book covers

 Hello friends. Shockingly, after an overnight train followed by a day in Cairo followd by leaving for the airport to travel 18ish hours home, posting was not a priority. I will update fully later so you'll get to know allllll about my adventures.  But to tide you over enjoy these phone pics from my last day in Egypt.

This picture? Evidence that it does actually rain in Cairo.  I was shocked! It lasted approximately 2 minutes, but I still think it counts, no?

Mmmmachiato @ Pottery Cafe, Cairo's hipster cafe.  Yes, they DO have sheesha and skinny cigarettes to accompany your skinny jeans!

I like the American cover sooooo much better.  Doesn't Katniss look like a Hogwarts bad girl?  There is no magic in the Hunger Games, cover artist!

Wall o'teen fiction at a Zamalek bookstore (yes, these are all in English).

Cairo is calling!

You guys. 

True story: I bought a ticket to visit a lovely high school friend in Cairo in December after much hemming and hawing and near purchases and near purchase panic attacks.  Plane tickets to Africa are expensive, yo!  As I'm sure those of you not living under a rock are aware of, some pretty serious stuff went down in Egypt in January and February, which led to my friend being evacuated, things looking like they could go really sour, my discovery that travel insurance doesn't cover acts of war or civil unrest (but yet it covers injury evacuation and death...kind of counterproductive, no?), and my fleeting hope that things would get better.  And get better they did!  The Egyptian people prevailed and my friend was able to return from her extended stay in Istanbul.

Thusly, I am traveling to Egypt today!