Today was a travel day, just a flight from Cairo to Amman. We are ready to leave Egypt. We hadn’t seen everything, but we saw a lot!
Since there isn’t much to activity to write about today I’ll will publish a couple of notes I’ve been meaning to write about.
- I mentioned that it was hot in the sun in southern Egypt. The temperature is very comfortable in Cairo at this time of year. It was sunny every day although often hazy in the morning
- Driving in Cairo is crazy. Nobody uses lanes. Everyone is trying to edge around the car in front of them. There are very few traffic lights and it is a miracle that the city isn’t in constant gridlock. The cars tend to be older and they’re all dented. We didn’t see any body shops because what would be the point. The car would get redented as soon as it was fixed
- Many of the buildings are partially finished. For instance, some apartments have windows and some are clearly not finished and don’t have windows. Most have rebar coming out the top so they can add another floor if they want. Nahed told as that much of the building happened shortly after the revolution because there was no government, thus no permits were required to build.
- Many public places, including restaurants, allow smoking. It seems there are a lot of smokers in the Middle East.
- In the public bathroom in the hotel they have an area for ablution.
- When we asked about the government we had one guide who liked it and thought they were doing a good job and two who did not want to discuss politics. Clearly there are repercussions for negative comments about the government.
It was a leisurely morning because we weren’t being picked up until 9:30. The ride to the airport was uneventful as was to plane ride to Amman.
We were picked up in Amman by Marwin whose English was great. Jordan seems a little more western than Egypt. The traffic isn’t so crazy and, at least where we were, the buildings looked newer.
He took us to the hotel and got us checked in. In our room there was an arrow under the glass on the desk showing the direction of Mecca. We didn’t see that in any of the hotels in Egypt.
There was a supermarket next to our hotel so we walked over to check it out. We like to go into supermarkets to see what’s available and to check out the prices. The first noteworthy thing was they had Christmas decorations up. (Interesting for a country that is 95% Muslim.) We were told many people celebrate Christmas in Egypt. Jesus is a prophet in the Muslim faith, so why not. The supermarket was as big as our supermarkets and the product selection was great. The prices seem about the same as ours, maybe a little higher. They did have a case of lamb carcasses which was a little different.
Then we checked out the neighborhood. There were a lot of fast food places, mostly hamburgers and wings. There were also a lot of shisha, or hookah as we would call it, joints. We were surprised to find several liquor stores since strict Muslims don’t drink alcohol.
We didn’t find a restaurant that excited us so we ended up going back to the grocery store to get food for a picnic in our room. We stopped at the liquor store too, for a bottle of wine and some beer.