Sometimes I wake up in the morning and think, “I have nothing interesting to share on my blog. I’m all out of ideas.” But then we go and do something and I have enough to fill a week’s worth of posts. Today was one of those days.
What should I tell you about today? The ride on the metro? Coptic Cairo? My close encounters with nature?
Well, we did go to Coptic Cairo by way of the metro. Coptic Cairo is the Christian section with bunches of old Christian churches, all dedicated to different saints. Lots of ancient paintings, mosaics, and architecture. I was really glad we didn’t have a guide like every other group there because I’m not a big fan of the touristy stuff and if we had to stop and hear all the details about every piece of brick in each building, I would have wanted to stab my eyes out.
Sorry this isn’t going to be that kind of blog, with beautiful photographs and elegant descriptions of the sights. You’ll have to settle for my shoddy photography (I have my camera set to have the flash off permanently cause that way I can surreptitiously take photographs and feel less like a tourist) and my ill-informed summaries of the things I think I saw.
I’ll share the Coptic Cairo photos another day. They aren’t all that exciting, especially because I don’t like taking photographs without people in them. So all my pictures have goofy faced kids pointing at things or with questioning looks on their face as I’m telling them to “act natural” and “stop looking directly at the camera!”
Instead, I’ll tell you about lunch. After wandering around for a while, the kids were getting hungry so we looked for a place to eat. I was a little skeptical about eating at a random hole in the wall, but I told Josh that he could eat and if it wasn’t clean enough to suit me I would just eat at home.
So we cross the street to where all the shops and “restaurants” are and I see what looks like a dead dog curled up with more flies swarming around it than I’ve ever seen in my life. Hundreds of flies. And I think, “That’s it. I’m totally eating at home.”
We get closer and it turns out this poor dog is giving birth to puppies, right there next to the sidewalk. It was gross (because of the flies) and cool (because of the puppies) all at the same time.
If you don’t want to see fly filled pictures, close your eyes now:
I warned you. Every single black speck in that photo is a fly. All over the walls, all over the dirt, all over the dog.
She had given birth to two puppies so far. Cute little things. Except for the flies.
Two doors down a man stops Josh and says, “Eat at my restaurant.” Josh asks the price of Taamia (falafel sandwich) and orders one for each of us. (Seriously? This close to the fly infested maternity ward?) The man asks, “You want to eat here?” and then proceeds to pull some glass topped tables and these huge, clunky dining room chairs together and throws up a place for us to sit and eat right on the sidewalk.
As we’re waiting for our sandwiches, I’m still feeling empathy for poor laboring doggie 1/2 a block away and feeling a little like a zoo exhibit myself, with all of us parked right there on the sidewalk. Then I feel one of the kids kicking at my foot. Repeatedly.
I look down to see who the offender is and I see this furry thing right at my ankle. The resulting scream and jump out of my chair caused Josh to laugh himself silly. Especially when I saw it was a tiny kitten who had been attacking my shoelace. I swear I thought it was a huge fuzzy rat that was trying to eat my ankle.
The kitten spent the rest of lunch meowing at my feet, jumping onto the chairs and she even leaped from the ground onto Josh’s back. That caused him to practically jump out of his chair. He says because cause it hurt, not because he was scared.
When our Taamia arrived, I ended up eating along with everybody else. The place did look clean and you could tell everything was fresh. It was actually really good and I would eat there again without too much fuss. And for only $1/sandwich it was a cheap lunch.
After lunch we headed home. During the walk from the metro to our house I saw two cats mating and I thought I must have accidentally stumbled into a nature special or must be on “Punked: Animal Style.”
You won’t get all the details about the architecture of The Hanging Church on this blog, but I can tell you all about the intimate lives of the stray animals in Egypt.
