Egypt - Cairo Edition

I’m still rolling down the Nile and watching Egypt slowly pass by me while I summarize the trip. Now that I’m out of Cairo, it is truly a beautiful place. Cairo, on the other hand, wasn’t particularly beautiful.

That leads me to this – the Cairo Entry.

My hotel in Cairo wasn’t in Cairo proper. Rather, it was in Giza, which is on the west bank of then Nile, but is considered part of Greater Cairo. According to my Egypt tour guide, Cairo has around 22 million people and Giza has another 18 million. That sounds a little high, but what do I know?

I love cities. If you’ve read my prior entries, you know how much I love cities. In my brief two-day stay in Cairo, I have to say that I didn’t like Cairo at all. Granted, I didn’t see a ton of it and it may be unfair for me to say that I didn’t like it, but I didn’t like it.

As far as observations, I think the first thing I noticed was all of the clothes hung up from the buildings in the city. It sort of reminded me of what I imagined New York would have looked like at the turn of the last century. It was just something that caught my eye.

Another thing that caught my eye are the number of unfinished buildings that I saw. I saw numerous buildings that were occupied but had a column jutting up from them or otherwise appeared to have another floor in an early state of construction. I was later informed that this is common because people in Egypt do not have to pay taxes on buildings until the building is completed. Because of this, they make the buildings appear to be incomplete. I also heard from others that this is common in Italy, Greece and Turkey as well, though I don’t have any first-hand information about that.

Like many big cities, much of the city appears to be under construction. This doesn’t make any city very attractive. On top of this, the city is a mess. There is garbage strewn everywhere. I know I had some complaints about Buenos Aires being dirty, but Cairo is much, much worse.

Speaking of amplifying a negative aspect of Argentina, the streets in Cairo were the craziest I have ever seen. I walked a few miles in Giza down a street and there were no traffic lights. The street was six lanes, three in each direction, and there were no lane markers on any of the streets. Crossing the street required great skill, great luck, and blind faith in an almighty being. I did it once, well twice because I went back as well, and I anticipate that I will now be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder for years to come.

Lest I sound like I’m coming down hard on Egypt, I think that everything I have seen in Egypt, well most everything, has been awesome since I left Cairo/Giza. But as far as Cairo is concerned, I believe that my two days there were more than sufficient.