December 5 -- Home Away from Home (Roger)

Fun day yesterday, and we decided to continue the "chores" part of the trip today.  Of course, things don't always go as planned.


To motivate us to get out of bed at a decent time, we got up early and went for a walk in our Belle Epoque neighborhood to take some photos of movie theaters.  Cairo excels at quick innovation followed by slow decrepitude, and the movie theaters around our Roma hotel run the gamut from Deco dawn of theaters to the 80s.  In the cool morning, we beat the pedestrian crowds, the sidewalk vendors and most of the tea touts.  But most importantly, we beat the shadows that the sun quickly stretches across the buildings of this old downtown.  And it was clear that Cairenes treat these 20th century buildings exactly the way they do the 10th century Islamic structures of Old Cairo — they just keep using them like they were built yesterday.  This attitude might be the heart of why Lou and I keep coming back to this city.

It was an easy walk around to these testimonials to Cairo’s ongoing domination of Middle Eastern cinema, and it was even more enjoyable with most streets empty of cars and only a few jammed past capacity with traffic.  (There’s clearly a traffic pattern that us tourist pedestrians don’t understand.)  We stuck largely to the emptier ones as we stopped by theaters to take pictures of their facades until we eventually landed at La Chesa, a Swiss-themed restaurant along the way, for a hearty breakfast.

Turned out that excursion wasn’t the start of a completely productive day as we were soon napping.

Happily, we didn’t sleep the rest of the day but roused to look for some trousers fabric for Lou just as midday passed.  We spend the afternoon remembering places from earlier visits, and we found just what Lou wanted at the same store where I’d bought linen a couple of years earlier.  And then we found some shirt material at another store, one they’d recommended at the pants place.  All this within a couple of blocks of Opera Square, an easy walk from the hotel.

But jet lag soon asserted itself again, and we ended up with yet another nap.

It was mostly dark by the end of our second nap, but we went out again for some shopping and dinner anyway.  I got a couple of pairs of shoes I’d admired the previous day, and Lou found a belt he liked but that was a touch short.  Such drawbacks are not a problem in Egypt, and the store clerk simply pulled out a leather punch and added a hole to the belt.  You have to love the practicality of this country.

I was ready to retire at this point, but Lou wanted to have the national dish of Egypt for dinner, koshari — a mix of macaroni, vermicelli and lentils.  So koshari it was for dinner.  We went to a fast-food koshari place that was robust — hard to get a seat, hard to get service and hard to order — and we had our koshari in noise, tumult and camaraderie.  Then went looking for a cafe where I could have a quiet table and found a little cafe we’d frequented on former visits with both WiFi and tons of kittens.

Our goal at this point was to head back to the hotel, but along the way we stopped into our favorite place for eyeglasses to see what new frames they’d gotten in for us.  The story of eyeglasses here is partly the story of what’s been happening in Egypt over the two years since our last trip.  In 2017, the government had just caved in to the IMF and begun to float the Egyptian pound; everything was a remarkable bargain for those of us with dollars.  In 2019, things are still reasonably priced, but they are no longer the ridiculous bargain they once were, eyeglasses included.  It’s starting to look like we might not each take three pairs of prescription, titanium-framed, progressive lenses back to the US with us this year.

Our optical place is next door to the hotel, so we were soon tucked in our room and, yet again, asleep.