Daily Life in Egypt

Most of our trip was spent in Egypt. I have so many pictures that I've decided to split them up a bit. This post will show mostly random pictures or common sights we saw nearly everyday while we were there.

Susannah and Katherine are in front of the Cairo Museum. We visited this museum our first day in Egypt. It was incredible! They have tons of stuff there. My favorite was the mummy collection. We saw Ramses II, III, IV and a whole lot more. We also saw Seti and several queens.

There were lots of vendors with shops or walking around with their merchandise. This guy was selling bit soft pretzels. We all thought it was cool the way he was carrying them around.

Another of our favorites was the mango juice that many shops and restaurants had. It was SO good. It was just like they took all of the good parts of the mango and blended it for a couple of seconds. It had tons of mango chunks in it and I don't even think they added water. If you love mangoes, this is the drink for you!

Cairo is HUGE and everything is so close together. This shows one of the smaller streets.

I can't even recall what theses little cars were called, but we saw them around the less busy parts of town. This was taken in more of a suburb of Cairo. It has only 3 wheels.

Another common sight that we LOVED was the Nile River. I liked it so much that I even brought some of the water home in a bottle. It's definitely not the cleanest water I've ever seen!

We were pretty amazed with this bread vendor. I have no idea how he could carry so much bread without dropping it, let alone riding a bike.

Just outside of Cairo, there's tons of farmland. The most common crop we saw was corn. I loved the corn fields with all the palm trees around them. Most of the palm trees were date trees.

Katherine has family in Egypt. Her grandfather is Egyptian. He now lives in Houston, but his family is still over there. The woman on the left is Katherine's grandfather's sister, Nadia. I only met her once. The one on the right is her grandfather's cousin, Nazli (Zizi). These ladies accompanied us to the Khan el Khalili - the biggest market in Cairo. They bargained for us and told us when the prices were good. It was awesome having them there.

After the Khan, Nazli took us out for lunch at this restaurant by the Nile. She's so cute! We actually owe her so much. Katherine stayed with her the whole time. In Nazli's apartment building, on the floor above her, is an apartment that belongs to one of her friends that teaches at the University. The university provided her with the apartment. Her friend's husband also has an apartment and she lives with him, so her university apartment is vacant. We were able to stay there for free. It was so great and saved us a ton of money. Katherine also stayed there with us when we got back too late to get into Zizi's apartment.

It was fun to use the little elevator in the building. By the way, Nazli also cooked for us for many meals. She was fantastic!

The scariest thing in Cairo is the traffic. I would NEVER drive there and crossing the street is a dangerous endeavor. Cross walks mean nothing, and people may or may not stop for you. You had to cross the street one lane at a time. This isn't the best video - I was afraid for my life, but it gives you a small idea. In retrospect, I should have let everyone cross first and then crossed myself. Now you see a lot of Nazli's back. She was a pro!