Bus Tour

Leaving bright and early, we took advantage of the traffic reprieve on Friday. Fridays, you see, are holy days for Muslims. Because of this, the usually unbearable traffic is temporarily lifted, leaving us the possibility of doing a bus tour of Cairo without being stuck in hours of crawling traffic. Taking full advantage, we bumbled along in the bus down the bumpy roads of Cairo, swerving in and out of the different neighborhoods, pausing to take photos of major sites and listening to the history of each neighborhood. Built up from ancient times, the city of Cairo, or at least what we think of Cairo as today, is actually two cities- Cairo on the East Bank of the Nile, and Giza on the West Bank. We went to the top of the city of Cairo and overlooked the neighborhoods slowly rising around the perimeters, and systematically learned about the rich history of one of the oldest cities in the world. The map below shows the suburbs of Cairo decently well. I live right next to the Egyptian Museum and the Nile!