The day after going to the Pyramids we decided to head to Khan al-Khalili, an open-air market area in an old area of Cairo, with several famous mosques nearby. (This is the same area where one tourist was killed and 20 more people injured in a
bombing this February, and where three people were killed in a bombing in 2005. It's an area where people, including lots of tourists, tend to congregate, and as such makes an easy target.) The market was incredibly busy, and filled with all sorts of things. We didn't buy anything, partly because whenever we'd even slow down while walking the salespeople would begin a forceful hard-sell routine, which didn't make it easy to browse.
The area was like a labyrinth, and we got completely turned around at least once. We ended up following narrow passageways up and down winding staircases, until we found ourselves in a neighbourhood selling only furniture, followed by one doing nothing but refinishing old furniture, followed by another selling only stationery, followed by another selling only cookware, etc. Here you can see the silhouette of one of the many mosques, as the alleyways (most of which had no streetlights) were getting dark. In the end, it was fully dark by the time we made it out of there, and back towards our hotel.
In the meantime, we'd finally gotten in touch with Omar. We hadn't wanted to bother him earlier in the week, as we figured that he'd be busy with wedding preparations, and we could just amuse ourselves by exploring the city. There were a number of other Canadians there for the wedding though, not all of whom were such adventurous travellers, and most of whom were staying out at the super-luxury hotel near the airport where the wedding would be held later in the week. The families of the bride and groom had taken it upon themselves and acted as tour guides for the week, arranging transport for groups to visit the Pyramids, among other sites.
That morning Omar had taken all the women to the same market that we were at, with the express purpose of getting them all belly-dancing costumes in preparation for the henna party that night. All the women who were attending the wedding, including those like me who had never met the bride, were invited to the local equivalent of a bachelorette party, called a henna party, which was held at the apartment of the brides' family. Meanwhile, the men were heading out for a bachelor night on the town.
I hadn't realized that I'd need a costume to go to the henna party, and I was already feeling a bit self-conscious going to a party where I wouldn't know anyone at all. After speaking with Omar, Jeremi had the address of the party I was to go to, as well as the restaurant where he was going to meet the others, but Omar suggested it might be easier for me to meet the other women first at the hotel where they were staying so we could share a cab to the hard-to-find residential area, since it was unlikely cabbies downtown would know where to find it, and I'd be hard-pressed to give instructions. The concierge at the luxury hotel would be able to explain to the cabbie where we were to go, he figured.
And so I decided to get a cab out to the hotel. Instead of grabbing a random cab by myself, I asked our hotel to get their driver (who also did airport runs) to drive me. It was more expensive, but I knew he spoke English, and they assured me he knew where the hotel was. Of course he didn't. He brought me straight to the airport, and then asked the people at the gate there where the hotel was. They didn't know, so he picked a random highway, and proceeded to drive incredibly close to other cabs at high speeds with his window down to ask for directions. The first five or so cars he asked didn't know, but eventually someone was able to bring him to the right road. At this point I was already half an hour late, and I was worried that the other Canadians would have left for the party already, and I'd have to negotiate yet another cab to a hard-to-find location.
I needn't have worried. Most of the girls I was meeting there were rather "high-maintenance", and they were all still busy flat-ironing their hair 45 minutes after we were supposed to be at the party. But I was happier to be travelling with them, as they'd actually been to the apartment before, and had managed to explain to a cab how to get there (or so I thought).
When I finally came time to get a cab, they had no idea what to do, as one of the locals had just put them in the cab the time before, and spoken to the driver, so I spoke to the concierge who wrote out the instructions and address that I had in Arabic, so the driver would be able to read it. Then it was left to me to negotiate a fare. He wanted to charge more because there were four in the back, but I argued that they were really skinny, so we shouldn't pay more. (All this without a single word in a common language.) I was in the front, as it was assumed that I was the one who knew what the hell was going on.
Eventually we made it there, arriving at 8:15 or so when we were supposed to be there at 7:00, but almost no other guests were in sight, let alone the bride, who we were told was preparing. Some more Canadians arrived after us, and all changed into the costumes that Omar had arranged:
I was feeling a bit left out having nothing to wear, but it wasn't the end of the world. The brides' mom looked around to try to find me something from her closet, but apparently there was nothing appropriate. And so we sat around eating chocolates, drinking pop, and waiting.
Eventually the DJ (who was a woman) arrived and set up an incredibly loud sound system in the living room, and then the female videographer came and set up her equipment. Once the music started some of the other women started dancing a bit, often brought into the circle by the professional belly dancer in attendance, and eventually the place was really hopping, a bizarre, women-only scene.
Part of what made it strange is that most of the Egyptian women came in conservatively dressed, most with full headscarf, and many wearing long black abayas. But upon arriving in this 100% female setting, they changed into their clothes for dancing, sometimes tradition-based belly dancing clothes, but often just revealing, tight-fitting clothes that you might see young women wearing to a club in Canada.
Finally, at around 10:30, the bride made her appearance, wearing a skimpy two-piece outfit, as seen here:
Honestly, she looked amazing, with perfect hair and make-up. And then the real dancing began, much of which seemed directly primarily at the camera. This was also odd, that these women who would never be seen in public dressed like this, were totally comfortable being videotaped dancing. I guess there must be an understanding that these videos are for private use only, but I really would have felt self-conscious if this had gone on at my bachelorette party (and I was hammered, whereas this was a 100% booze-free affair).
Here you can get an idea of the entrance, complete with a cone of incense carried by the bride's friend, and a platter with candles and some sort of food presented by the professional dancer.
But then, only about 10 minutes after her arrival, the bride disappeared back into the back room. I figured she might be getting changed into something more comfortable for the rest of the party, but boy was I wrong. It was just time to change costumes, and she emerged a quarter of an hour later dressed as a flamenco dancer!
This was then followed by this lovely two-piece number...
And then, of course, the hula-girl outfit!
Finally, she ended the evening in this slinkly dark-red outfit, with open beading at the sides. (I have to admit, this outfit was pretty awesome, and if I'd seen it at the market in the morning, I might have been tempted to bring it home with me.)
After a couple good dances in the final outfit (for the video, of course), the dancing continued for a while longer, before the other Canadians started thinking about heading home. Actually, they really wanted to leave at midnight, and had already called a cab to pick them up at that time, but the bride's mother and sisters would hear nothing of that plan. They couldn't let the guests leave before they'd eaten, and of course the meal wasn't served until 12:30!
I was in no big hurry to leave, as I really wanted to try the food, but some of the other women weren't impressed. Still, they arranged to have the cabbie come back later, or to call another one, or something like this. I sort of wanted to leave at the same time as them just because I didn't want to be wandering the suburbs by myself at 2:00 looking for a cab, so I was glad that they were compelled to wait around a bit longer.
It was worth it - the spread was amazing:
Just to give a small overview. It was way more than the 50 or so people in attendance could eat, and I have no idea what they did with the rest of it, but it was truly delicious. I only wish I could have eaten more!
And of course there was a wide selection of desserts as well...
Finally, it was time for us to leave. Unfortunately the cab that was supposed to be coming at 1:30 or so was going to be really late, so they opted to walk to the main road so we could try our hands at hailing cabs. Again, we were five to fit in a cab where only four really fit, so I thought I'd just grab a cab by myself and head downtown since the rest of them were going in the other direction, but I felt a bit badly leaving them, most wearing inappropriately low-cut tops, leaning in the window of the cab to find out if the cab knew where their hotel was and trying to arrange a price. At least there was one girl with them who had some common sense, but none of them had thought of bringing the card of the hotel, or the address written in Arabic.
In any case, I found myself a cab, and was able to get dropped off at an intersection really close to my hotel. I was tired and alone, so I was willing to pay more than I knew I had to for the cab, and I really didn't want to haggle, so when he discussed the price I said I'd pay 50 Egyptian pounds (which was easily twice what I should have paid, but was only about 7 euros). The driver refused, said it was too little, and then asked me for 20 instead. Because he thought I'd said
fifteen rather than
fifty, he thought I could actually haggle properly! I was quite proud of myself, even if I'd only managed it through a misunderstanding.
And so I met Jeremi back at the hotel, where we swapped stories about our gender-separated evening. And here's his tale:
I walked from our hotel to the restaurant where we were supposed to meet. It was a very nice place called Sequoia, at the northern tip of the main island in the Nile. We ate traditional Egyptian fare right on the water. We all signed Omar's bachelor T-shirt that said "Nice legs! when do they open?" on it and then asked Omar's little cousin to transcribe it into Arabic underneath. We also did our best to hide it from Omar's new father-in-law who also made an appearance for supper.
After that we filled three cabs and went to 'LaTex' the club in the basement of the Nile Hilton. We had some beer and danced. After a while we decided to maybe move to another location but then after hearing the other cabaret/belly dancing options (which were a little expensive) we decided to stay at LaTex for a while longer.
We had lots of fun and got some pictures of Omar in proper bachelor party attire seen above. This was however short-lived given the looks that we were getting in one of the poshest hotels in a Muslim country. But we had lots of fun all the same.
From there we went to the Schossberg, or palace hill, to visit part of the local castle. We went up the watchtower there, which had a brick ramp instead of stairs, apparently to make it easier to bring supplies up to the watchman who lived at the top. (At least that's how I remember it - there are downsides to writing this stuff up 6 months after the fact.)
At the top we were able to check out the view on all sides...
...from the various windows surrounding the tower.
From there we headed back down the hill, and headed towards the two ponds in the city center. One of them had an island in the middle, which housed a small zoo that we went to visit. Here you can see a couple meerkats. (A linguistic aside: the name totally sounds like it comes from a Germanic source, probably dutch with those double-"e"s, but in German they're called Erdmännchen, or "little earth men". I checked the dutch name, but then they're called stokstaartje, or "little stick-tails". There's a complicated explanation for how we're using the wrong Dutch word, found on Wikipedia.)
And there were some monkeys...
...and a pissed-off peacock that only I got to see while I'd temporarily lost the others.
In the meantime, Jeremi was making friends with some very friendly goats.
I loved this little pheasant-type bird which is native so somewhere in China, because it just looked so Asian, like an animal that you might see depicted in east-Asian art but assume that it's highly stylized, because no bird really looks like that, right?
And yet another Asian-looking bird. 
There were also wacky Asian porcupines with incredibly long black and white quills.
Then the zoo was closing, so we headed back into the city to look for some food. Here's the view from the bridge that led to the island-zoo.
The city was quite pretty overall, particularly complemented by these incredibly lush planters. There were five or six of them lined up all in a row, each with a different selection of plants.
I also saw, for the first time ever, an ice cream vending machine set up outside a closed ice cream shop. Germans really do love their ice cream (which is one aspect of the culture with which Susanne heartily agrees).
We ended up heading back to the city square and eating at the restaurant in the Rathaus, or city hall. These restaurants usually offer reliably-decent German fare, but this place was really a step above normal. The food was still typical traditional Thüringian dishes, but they were really good. (Just going to show that the problem with German food is not the actual dishes or ingredients, just that the preparation too often is lacking.) Even their super-dull schnitzel, fries and peas (see Calin's plate, at right) was better than usual. All in all, a nice afternoon.
