Greetings From Cairo

Hello everyone. This will be a short post as Alex and I are about to leave for lunch. I just wanted to let you know that I am happy and healthy and having a great time in Egypt. We have decided we will be returning to Israel on Monday, so I will write up our entire trip next week.

Dude, Where's My Passport?

I'm in Petach Tikva right now, spending the night at Alex's flat before we leave for our vacation in Cairo tomorrow night. Alex and I are both scatterbrains. Needless to say, things have gotten off to a (predictably) poor start for us. This morning we caught a bus to Tel Aviv around 9:30 with 3 goals in mind: We were going to handle our tourist visas at the Egyptian embassy, then go buy a guidebook to Egypt, and finally go to H & O to spend a fat gift card the army gifted to Alex upon his discharge. Halfway through Ramat Gan (and only 15 minutes to our destination), Alex turned to me, swore out loud and alerted me that we had forgotten our passports back at his apartment. Sound familiar? We busted back to his place, got our passports, caught another bus to Tel Aviv and made it to the Egyptian embassy at 11:15, well before the noon closing time he was quoted on the phone.

Alex and I on our travels in TA

Of course, the bastards like to play games with silly American tourists, and they were determined not to make things easy for us. There were 4 older guys sitting on broke down furniture outside the embassy. They arrived around 9:30 or later, and were told to come back at 11. The Egyptians never reopened for business. We sat outside waiting until noon, at which point we got sick and tired of waiting and walked off to get lunch and deal with our other business for the day. At least we can be comforted knowing that it probably wouldn't have mattered if we had remembered our passports initially. We would have been late anyway.

I can't tell if this is vulgar or not.

We had sabich sandwiches for lunch and then arrived at Dizengoff Center, a big mall in the trendy part of town. Alex wasn't too keen on the walk, but I talked him into it. He's gonna have to get used to walking a lot anyway, as I don't want to just see Cairo from the window of a cab. We played around at this indoor playground before we tackled the bookstore circuit. We visited 4 bookstores, and not a one had the damn guide book we needed. How perfectly frustrating. In an even greater stroke of serendipity, the mall doesn't have an H & O either. We had bad information from one of Alex's friends. Such is life. We made some calls and found out that the closest location was in ................ Petach Tikva!!! At the very least, it was quick and easy to get back, and we had a lot of fun once we arrived to the store.

Fun with the pricing gun.

We splurged hardcore at the clothing store. 1000 shekels is a lot of money. Alex bought himself a really nice middle weight jacket, a pair of designer corduroy pants, and 5 or 6 new shirts. He even got me an early birthday present, picking out a really nice new sweater and a long sleeve T shirt. Needless to say, I did quite well. We grabbed a sherut back to his flat where we settled in for an evening of movies, relaxation and food.

Alex stylin' and profilin' in his new jacket and a snazzy new shirt.

I want to wish everyone a nice Tu B'Shvat. We have shared some nice varieties of fruit this evening. Tomorrow morning, we are going back to Tel Aviv even earlier, and hopefully with our passports, so we can handle the visas. Our bus to Eilat leaves from the Tel Aviv central bus station at midnight tomorrow, and we cross the border into Egypt the following morning. I may or may not have the chance to update my blog between now and when I return from my trip, so I'll leave you now with the promise of good stories, fun pictures and wild experiences when I next update this page.