TOURING EGYPT: "Tasharrafna"
Tasharrafna means "nice to meet you" in Arabic.
Dear Foodie Fam,
We touched down 2 hours late in Cairo thanks to London fog. We'd been conversing with an older gentleman on the plane who was visiting family in London and returning home to Egypt. He was curious: why did we want to visit Egypt?
Why wouldn't we want to go to Egypt?
Dutch has always been deeply interested in the pyramids since he read about them as a child. He decided we had to visit them before we had children.
And me? I'm an art history nerd. In fact, I brought copies of spreads from my art history college course book to review on the plane so as not to take a single detail of our tours for granted.
Additionally, both of us had never eaten a single Egyptian food and we realized we had a lot to learn.
The lessons began at touchdown: Don't photograph the airport, don't photograph the security, don't photograph anything, change your watch's time to local time, do not get into any other taxi as there are so many of them hungry to steal a tourist from a prior arrangement, call the taxi driver because we are late.
We had to use the man-on-the-plane's cell phone. He was patient trying to help us contact our taxi driver and several other young men also stopped to take notice of our issue and try to help. Eventually, our taxi driver arrived.
The young man driving our taxi raced down the overpasses through Cairo with Moby blaring through his speakers. I think we were at first disappointed that the first young person we met wasn't in a conversing sort of mood but that makes sense because it was early morning.
Besides, it was nice to be introduced to Cairo in a way where her buildings, neon lights, billboards, businesses and architecture did all the talking.
We barreled toward Pyramids Loft Homestay, a home away from home accommodation Hot Pink Travel found us. Entering Giza, the car rattled softly along the reddish dirt road, chased by barking dogs and the yellow warmth of the street lights. We passed markets with old men sitting outside talking and more men preparing the day's bread in their stalls for the crowds the impending dawn would no doubt bring.
We passed a police barricade to get to our homestay, located right outside an entrance to the Pyramids. Thomas, the manager of the building, met us outside. He was helping us navigate the mosaic-tiled floors and winding staircase to our suite when he realized we probably had never seen the Pyramids, yet.
That's when my world changed.
Thomas took us directly to the rooftop veranda with the quiet confidence of a great master about to reveal his oldest and greatest creation. Just as the sound of 1,000s of calls to prayer rose from the city, we turned to see three Ancient masses standing sovereignly in the distance. They were miles away, and yet their presence was so stately and overwhelming that I felt I couldn't breathe- like I'd breathed in too much of their magical dust: the Pyramids.
I'll never be the same.
