December 7 -- Shoppin' & Droppin' (Roger)

If I’ve learned nothing else this trip, it’s the appeal of shopping tourism.  In the UAE, I didn’t understand why people would fly all the way to Dubai simply to shop, but here in Cairo now, it makes sense.  This ancient city is not only historic but also cosmopolitan and stylish, and the dollar generally goes a lot farther here than in the US.  So you can find cool things here that you can’t find in the US, and you can afford them.  That’s a big appeal.  And we dedicated yet another day to shopping.  

I’m finally biting the bullet on eyeware here, but I feel like this might be the last time.  For the price of one pair of glasses now, I used to be able to get two.  Add to this situation the departure of the helpful, English-speaking, bi-cultural guy with good taste who used to work here, and I’m not feeling a lot of enthusiasm about getting glasses in my old-time favorite shop.  But I’m doing it this one last time because I’d counted on getting them and have no back-up.  So into the fray we went at the beginning of the day, and I picked out and ordered my glasses.

From there, it was back to Opera Square to find some material for shirts for Lou.  And what a blast that turned out to be with the guys throwing around rolls of fabric while the two of us tried to imagine that same material as a shirt.  Neither of us is much the sort who’s going to wear shiny, reflective, patterned shirts, but we’d eventually find a fabric that was ideal for a shirt and be happy with it.  At that point, one of the clerks would pull out yet another beautiful and perfect material, and we’d go through our decision-making process again.  We eventually left the store with fabric for five shirts.

Our idea was to amble back to the hotel from there, but in no time, I’d been distracted into a big Golden Man shop for pants.  I thought I was going to look at something close to denim, but the gaberdine just felt great, and there was a cut I could wear.  So I figured out my size, tried on seven pairs (since the quality control obviously isn’t great, a given size in one pair of pants isn’t always the same size in another), and I ended up with four pairs of pants that fit.  And felt good.  Needless to say, I was happy.

Then we hit yet another detour on the way back to the hotel as we walked past the access alley to our barber.  Lou needed to have a beard tune up to get his mustache out of his mouth, so we stopped for a brief minute there.  The pants had me major shopping mode though, so I left Lou to the tender mercies of the barber while I window shopped at yet another Golden Man.  I really liked several of the winter-weight cotton shirts and have a feeling I’m going to end up with one or, maybe, two.

Having dealt with all these delays, our next stop was….the ATM for me.  But after that, we finally got back to the hotel and took a nice, long nap.  It feels like we’re still in the throes of jet lag, though in an odd way.  We have great energy on some days, yet on others we’re lethargic and need a couple of naps.  This was an in-between day, and our single nap didn’t last an overly long period of time.  We hit the sidewalk again.

The bargain that hasn’t changed in Cairo is shoes, and we launched ourselves yet agin into the bewildering variety of shoe colors and styles.  As I am wont to do when I’m overwhelmed, I saw shoes I liked but I hesitated while Lou just rushed in and bought exactly what he wanted.  But even with my hesitation, by the end of the evening, Lou and I both had scored a couple of pairs.  At amazingly low prices.  And Lou even managed to find two sets of gallouses while he was at it.

The sun goes down here at 5 PM, and it was dark by the time we ran out of room to carry all the stuff we were buying.  In a lazy mode, we adjourned again to La Chesa and made a meal out of appetizers and and Stella beer.  And a very good profiterole.  Then we headed out, made a stop by what we call the most secure ATM in the city (beside a large synagogue that is heavily guarded) and went on to the hotel.