Our third day in Cairo was spent at the Pharaonic Village in the morning and the Khan el Khalili shopping bazaar in the afternoon. Both of these sites are clearly visited mainly by the tourists. The first was surprisingly interesting and educational, and the second was surprisingly horrible.
The Pharaonic Village is laid out to show examples of life in ancient Egypt, with actors in costume representing various scenes of daily activities.
You take a guided tour, led by girls in modern costume.
Shop for junk.
And visit a couple of museums, including a copy of King Tut's tomb as it was found when opened.
Over all, this site was educational, priced affordably (as evidenced by the groups of real Egyptian school kids), and had souvenir shopping at fair prices.
From here we headed downtown for the Khan el Khalili bazaar. We did stop at a working man's lunch cafe for a bowl of kushari.
After lunch we walked down the still interesting streets
until we came to the famous bazaar with it's high-pressure salesmen; "How can I take your money today?" The big disappointment here was that the shops only had the expected tourist souvenir crap, and little or no real products. The only shoppers were foreigners, and the prices were ridiculous.
We realized the next day, when we visited the City Stars shopping mall, that we could also have found the same souvenirs there, without the high prices and high pressure.
City Stars - 7 stories, the 2nd largest shopping mall in the Middle East
And here is another short video... just 17 seconds of driving down a typical street.
No comments:
Post a Comment