Cairo

This city moves quickly - and the best way to slow it down is with tea and sheesha (hookah).


Cairo is so happy to see us - to know our name, to know where we live, and to know how we like it here. No, it's not our eager smiles and adorable personalities - it's because we're obviously tourists.



Sure, Cairo wants our money, and it wouldn't mind having yours, too; however, if you walk the crowded sidewalks, less than half of the people asking your name actually want to sell you something - the rest just want to ask how you're enjoying their city, point you in the right direction, practice their English with a brief joke, and continue on their way.

Our hotel, the Hormoheb, is equally - if not overly - friendly. It's kinda like we're the protagonists of The Rocky Horror Picture Show walking into Dr. Frankfurter's castle. Kinda.

The hotel restaurant waiters strongly urge us to return on their shift and the front desk receptionists want descriptive accounts of how we're enjoying every amenity. We also received a brief but very enthusiastic tour of the hotel spa - a 1/3-full swimming pool, a fitness classroom (complete with toilet), and a Turkish bath (read: oily bathtub). The spa attendants insisted we return the next day to attend in a personalized, complementary, fitness class.

We spent the morning at the Egyptian Museum which, like the Louve, houses more artifacts (including King Tut's) than you'd care to see in a day. Our self-guided tour was cursory, but we saw a baker's dozen of mummified royalty, their skin oddly preserved and smeared with red ochre, their eyes selectively replaced with monochrome semi-precious stones and mother-of-pearl, like a doll.

The strangest phenomenon is that the majority of the artifacts, reliefs, jewelry, and paintings were never intended to be seen again by living human eyes - rather, it's all instrumental in enriching the recently deceased's eternal life. If their religion holds any water then we, the observers of the entombed artifacts, may spend post-mortem eternity with our hearts gnashed in the mouth of Ammut "The Devourer," a large and beastly goddess. And Ammut has large teeth.

Although the infrastructure can't support the burgeoning population, there's litter on every corner, and parts of Cairo have the Earth's highest population density, the city has its pride, and above all, its ebullient sense of humor.