Egypt: Day 6 (Spiritual Cairo and Kahn El Kalili Bazaar)

FYI - this is Dave blogging today.

We took the optional "Spiritual Cairo" tour today. Our first stop was the Citadel and the Mosque of Muhammad Ali (no, not the boxer). Muhammad Ali was the founder of modern Egypt and started a line of rulers that lasted from ~1800 to 1952 with the abdication of King Farouk I. The mosque is pretty large and evidently was built in more the Ottoman style. The mosque has an outer courtyard and interior area. The area outside has a fountain that's used to perform various washings before daily prayers.

The courtyard / fountain on the left.Lots of arches.

Pretty much anywhere you are in Cairo you can hear the call to prayer. It happens 5 times a day starting 1 hour before sunrise and ending 1 hour after sunset. If possible a Muslim is to go to a mosque for these prayers. The mosque was pretty impressive on the inside with it's huge domed roof and massive stone pillars. If only we had a wider lens...

For scale, the set of stairs on the right was about 15' tall.

The area outside of the mosque gave us a panoramic view of the whole city.

View from outside the mosque.
Quite hazy on the horizon.

Outside of the mosque, a panoramic view of Cairo.
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Coptic Cairo is an area of the city with the most churches and synagogues. You have to descend a flight of stairs to go from the 21th century to the 5th century. The elevation difference is due to the buildup of silt from the annual flooding of the Nile.

Unfortunately, no pictures allowed in the places of worship we visited. We did learn quite a bit about the Coptic Church from our guide. Coptic was the language of ancient Egypt and I think actually means Egyptian. After the Arab's conquered Egypt in the 7th century Christians were simply called Copts because they did not intermarry with the Muslim Arabs. The Coptic language is still spoken during the services but most attenders do not speak it (half of the service is spoken in Egyptian Arabic). The Coptic Church has it's own pope and we were told it is similar Orthodox Churches.

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Our next stop was the Khan El Kalili market (in the Arab world it is a souk). It was supposed to be pretty intense with the vendors all over you trying to get you to buy their wares. We didn't think it was too bad, but the prices seemed high even after bargaining. It was fun to walk around the small twisting alleys of this market that was established ~600 years ago.

Our tour group went into the souk together, I think the vendors smelled fresh blood.

A view from the stall that we purchased a shirt from.

The only thing we purchased was a t-shirt for Missy (not the one shown below). The reason she bought it from the shop was the young boy that worked in it. Instead of the typical sales pitch as we were walking by he just said hello. I would guess he was about 8-10 years old and was excited to try speaking with us in English. He worked in the stall and was not related to the shop owner. He had to run to get another size shirt for Missy and the shop owner was respectful to him. After the transaction Missy asked if she could give the boy a dollar, the owner said OK. We continued to wander the market in search of other items and happened to come back to that booth (it's very easy to get disoriented here). The boy was basically standing in the same spot since we left there holding the dollar in both hands studying it. It brought a smile to my face.

This is the t-shirt a sales vendor wanted me to buy because he didn't have the shirt I wanted in my size. We don't think he knows what it says...the bottom of the t-shirts says "but I can't".

An area away from the main touristy section.

Video of walking through the bazaar.
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Being on a tour we were fairly separated from the locals to and from our destinations. We did get a good view from the bus of how busy the city really is. The pictures below we were driving from the market back to the hotel.

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Day 6 felt like quite a long day for us. Per usual it was pretty hot out and Dave was not feeling the best after lunch. We took a fantastic 4 hour nap before heading out for dinner. We had a traditional Egyptian meal...pizza.

The waiters just sit at the counter and watch you eat...(we weren't taking a picture of the pizza, just the waiters staring at us...sneaky)
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Missy is happy about the level of our water bottle supply.