Ever felt sorry for someone because they live in a city where you had a constant headache and irritated because of its loudness and crowd-ness?
I always feel that way when I went to Cairo. I visit Cairo a lot, especially lately, I do visit on a monthly basis for 2-3 days where I spend them hanging out with my friends there. Well, doing nothing special, just sleeping till late then going out for a coffee or hitting a bar…
This time though I visited Cairo with one of the friends I made in Spain, and I had to show him around the city. And so it was, I ditched my friend’s house that is in the city outskirts for a pension in down town Cairo, and boy was this loud!
We had planned to stay in Cairo for three nights. We took it slowly (we both hate waking up early) so we visited the national museum on one day, and the pyramids on the next, and that was it! Neither he nor I could take Cairo anymore, specially the hassle at touristic areas.
A week later, we had to pass by Cairo on our way to St. Katherine and Dahab, and instead of having an over 12 hours bus, we decided to break the trip into 2 and stay for 1 night in Cairo.
Arriving at 2 pm and checking in at the same hotel in downtown Cairo, we both stayed inside the room for a while, just checking our emails, waiting for the other one to say let’s go 
. But soon enough we were both hungry and decided there’s no getting away of having to go out to eat something.
This time though, right after eating, we did what we didn’t do last time… walk aimlessly around downtown. From one narrow street to the next one, leading into an amazingly nice building then a place full of cafes in corridors between the buildings, which, unlike the rest of Cairo, was full of young guys and girls that are well dressed and they look like they were educated hanging out together, some girls were even smoking in public! (Yes that’s too much for a café that is on the street in Cairo).
Continue walking further more and get into street markets, some of them selling car spare parts and some selling clothes. It seemed that each street had a specialty; one narrow corridor connecting 2 narrow streets had the weird specialty of selling the spare parts of anything, just pieces of iron and long screws.
If you don't read Arabic, the menu says nothing but "Koshary" in different sizes...and at the bottom are numbers for home delivery
Sit in another restaurant for another meal, this time the traditional Egyptian Koshary, a carbohydrate booster to give us energy again. Then walk some more, and finally we decided it’s time to rest in one of the local cafés in a corridor between two buildings. Two cups of tea, two ice cold sprites, pay EGP 10 and we’re good to go again, to end the day on a roof top bar in Cairo enjoying the finally cold breeze of Cairo’s night.
I have to say, although this day was loud too, the markets were crowded, and Cairo continued to be Cairo, I had a relaxed day! I enjoyed this day more than any other in Cairo, and I even got to know many places I never thought existed in Cairo.
So my conclusion is, despite all the hassle and crowds, Cairo still CAN be relaxing if you just take a walk and watch those crowds do what they are in the streets to do… It is fun after all to do some people watching right? 
Did you ever visit Cairo? Tell me your stories about how relaxing or irritating you found it?
Photo Credits: Christian Reistad
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Loving the Cairo info
It’s high on my list of cities for the post-South American leg of the journey. It’s great to see an insider’s vision of how things are on the ground.
It’s unfortunate that the only thing portrayed about Cairo in recent times are the political troubles. I’ve heard from other expats on the ground there that they haven’t really been affected by it, but what’s your take on it?
The reason I say it is because I was living in Sofia, Bulgaria when there was the mafia-sponsored public shooting on the main downtown avenue, and on a local level it was just “another day in Sofia”, and nobody really did anything other than shrug their shoulders. They were retaliating at an account and journalist for publishing money laundering info in the paper. But the Western media ran a ton of stories about how “dangerous” it was for Americans and how you shouldn’t travel there…I never saw any of that from the inside. It was a single incident, blown way out of proportion, and it was a targeted, specific attack that didn’t have anything to do with the general population.
What’s your take on actually living in Cairo, as opposed to only visiting once a month? I mean, would you live there if you could, or do you prefer to keep it at an arm’s length as a “hey there, once a month for a few days” kind of thing?
Regarding your last question, I wouldn’t like to live in Cairo unless I have to, and if I am to live there, then definitely in the outskirts, not inside the main city neighborhoods. Just for one reason reason: CROWDED. That’s all. other than that, I do love Cairo, it has a lot to offer, and unlike smaller cities in Egypt, for example Alexandria where I come from, there is a lot more to do in Cairo. While in Alex I’d be visiting the same hang outs everyday, same local cafe that’s a couple of blocks from where I live, same bar that is visited by the same people most of the time, in Cairo each neighborhood is as big as Alex, so I could visit a new place everyday (not speaking about touristic hot spots here)
Regarding what’s shown in the media, just a few proportion of Cairo is affected. As I mentioned cairo is HUGE, so if there’s a protest somewhere, or even gun shooting and it can go as bad as people dying in one place, the rest of Cairo wouldn’t know about it until they see it on the news, and all that will happen to them is that the next day they’ll avoid that place on their way to work, and take a different route…
I was staying in a hotel in downtown Cairo, walkable distance from Tahrir square and there were protests there, all I had to do was to walk in the other direction to the next metro station, and I didn’t even get to see the protests! The shootings in Abbasiya were also while I was in Cairo last time, I didn’t know about them until a friend called to make sure I’m fine…and the next day I actually visited Abasiya (from above a bridge that passes through it, was a bit afraid to go on ground level), but there was nothing happening there…
As you said, to the locals it’s just another day…
Cairo is the love of my life. I feel so good when I am there. It can be overwhelming in many ways but still… no other place on Earth makes me feel more alive!
I have to be honest here, yes I had a nice relaxing day in Cairo, and yes I always have a great time in Cairo, but I still wouldn’t choose to live in Cairo
I’ve yet to visit Cairo, and I’ve heard incredibly mixed things about it – but it just makes me all the more curious!
If you set out without a plan, you can end up discovering new places that you didn’t know existed before, even in a city you’ve visited a fair few times before. It’s happened to me a lot here in Korea, and I even found new places in my small hometown of 100,000 people when I went back there in December for a couple of months.
A great post, and a reminder that sometimes the best plan can be to not have a plan at all.
Tom, you’ll like Cairo, not easy but enjoyable
And yes I agree that going without a plan usually has better results! Specially when it comes to discovering places!