Hello!  It’s Meredith here taking over for Emily while she is at class.  I’ve been in Egypt for about ten days and I love it!  It’s really great!  I’m so thankful Emily and Brandon are letting me stay with them for the month because in addition to being great tour guides, they also make great hosts, chefs, and Scrabble players.  It’s been so much fun!

After recovering from a good bout of jet lag, I decided posting some photos from the past week is quite overdue.  We’ve spent a lot of time hanging around Emily’s neighborhood in Maadi, where even going out to buy groceries is an adventure to me.

Sunday was my first excursion to downtown Cairo.  Emily and I took a cab to the metro station where we rode the very crowded women’s car to Tahrir Square.  Now, when I say very crowded, I mean packed in like sardines.  It was quite an experience!  Once we got to our stop, we saw the old AUC campus and the gigantic Egyptian Museum but we are saving that for another day. Navigating through crazy traffic – which the locals describe as “organized chaos” (I’m yet to figure out the “organized” part) –  we made our way down a side street lined with sheesha bars, coffee shops, and adorable kittens.  I never knew there were so many cats in Cairo.  I don’t really think of them as strays – they are more like domestic pets who sleep outside and do a little foraging for food.  Anyhow, we were on a mission to find Koshari Abou Tarek.  It’s known as the best Koshari restaurant in Cairo (which I think translates to the best in the world) and Anthony Bourdain even dined here when he visited Cairo for his travel/food show. We found the restaurant, got our Koshari, and hopped in a cab to head back to Maadi. The cab ride was a great tour of Cairo.  I had my first glimpse of the Citadel, the City of the Dead, and the Khan al Khalili. Once we got back to beautiful Maadi we scarfed down our delicious Koshari and I “helped” Emily study for her Arabic midterm – as much as someone who speaks no Arabic can help.

And last night we went to the Khan al Khalili – a market that dates back to the 1300s – it was absolutely incredible!  It was amazing seeing the really old, beautiful architecture and browsing around through the shops.

And that brings me up to today…  Oh yeah, and we saw the Pyramids and Sphinx at Giza, too… Did i forget to mention that? It was pretty awesome…

So Friday is the best day to visit Giza.  Emily and Brandon were out of school for the weekend and we left their apartment around 7:30am and swung by the neighborhood convenience store to pick up some water to take with us…  Have I mentioned how much I love Emily’s neighborhood?  This is their version of a QuikTrip.

And here are a couple of shots from the cab ride.  As we approached the Nile we started seeing bright green patches of farmland mixed in with urban apartment buildings.  It was a beautiful glimpse of green.

My first glimpse of the pyramids!  I was excited!

We started the morning with a horseback ride through the desert around the pyramids.  It was the most beautiful day since I had arrived – the weather was gorgeous and perfect and wonderful and all kinds of goodness.  I was given a nameless rogue horse with a mind of his own.  These are his ears.

And then we stopped for some obligatory snapshots.  Our guide was quite a creative photographer, complete with pose suggestions.

Emily and I went full out nerdy with this one…

So after the fear of death was put in me thanks to galloping across rocks and sand at full speed with hardly a thing to hold onto (I’m not really an “experienced” rider), I finally got the hang of riding and it was time to head back.  It was SO much fun!  It was a great way to experience the pyramids and I recommend it to anyone who is either a fearless thrill-seeker or someone capable of bringing a crash helmet.

And this is what the desert looked like.  After a week in Cairo, it was nice seeing such a vast expanse of emptiness.

After our horseback ride, we headed up to the park entrance to actually go see the pyramids up close.  We took a ton of photos at the pyramids so I think I’ll save the rest of our Giza experience for another post…. so stay tuned!