Jihad, Shmahad: Cairo

Warning!! Long post ahead...but there are pretty pictures...Read at your own risk!!

I spent nearly a week in "the city of a thousand minarets," which a nickname I agree with, the calls to prayer sounding so close it is if they are being sung/screamed literally within your head most of the time. Although a more accurate nickname would be, "the city of a thousand crappy minaret speakers." You'd think with the billions of dollars America gives Egypt every year, they'd put a Radioshack in somewhere...

So, I arrived in Cairo by way of Royal Jordanian airlines (the only way to fly). I mean it, it is the only way to fly. Not only did I get to pick my exact seat, but I jokingly selected a gluten-free meal for the hour-long flight from Amman to Cairo...AND THEY ACTUALLY SERVED IT.

Delta airlines meal service seems a bit less hospitable...

So, after my $20 ride from the airport, which is apparently the standard rip-off rate in every country (except Israel, where it's $60 from the border to Jerusalem...no comment), I arrived at my friend's apartment on the island of Zamalek, on the Nile between Cairo proper and Giza.

I need to learn to use better editing software...

It was Eid, and Katie's apartment had the unique benefit of being located above a butcher shop. So I got to see this every morning...

Mmmm...fresh holiday entrails....

Zamalek is home to a lot of international students and ex-pats, and has most of the embassies there as well...

Oh Ethiopia...come on guys...

So it has a distinctly cosmopolitan flava. It also had some of the greatest views of the Nile I was never expecting to see.

Those are rentable apartments...ON THE NILE

It was very green. Here's a mosque. That's all I got.

Being a total Stargate nerd, I demanded that we had to see the pyramids (or alien landing pads, which is what the government doesn't want you to believe). I had been warned that the soliciting of tourists was going to be the worst there, but when an Egyptian man jumped onto the trunk of our taxi trying to get us to ride his camel, it took my friend Katie screaming Imshee!!! (basically telling him to f*ck off) to get him away. The taxi driver loved how badly the wee lass had emasculated him.

This kitten's got claws!

The pyramids do look pretty intense, and pictures don't do it justice. They rise out of the desert and look totally unlike anything I have ever seen...except for the other pyramids