11th
Tahrir, Total Stations and Too much food!
Monday 8th August 2011
Another busy day, the last in Cairo before heading up to Minufiyeh to meet colleagues and get settled in! I was well fortified for the day thanks to the other guest at the Lotus who was eating a cheesy, egg, tomato and onion dish called Shakshuka – and insisted that I share it with him. This I thankfully did and it kept me running well into the afternoon. Equipment was collected from the British Council today – thanks to Faten Saleh and the ever efficient staff at the BC. For one I delivered an item as well – replacing the drill head that we had inadvertently broken during the penultimate burrima at Kom Usim in April this year! All ready for the next user!
The journey back to the Lotus took a long time – again, stuck in Tahrir – so I observed goings on and eventually we headed past the tank and down Talaat Harb to unload at the Lotus – where we happily found Ahmed the driver who gave me a hand. The next mission of the afternoon was to locate and buy some more of the equipment which will go into the inspectors and students field school bags – and this was nearly completed at Samir and Aly – a wonderful stationery shop on Sharif Street – just 10 minutes walk from Talaat Harb! They kindly kept the shop open a little late for me as it had gone past closing hours! I was very happy to take my goods back to the hotel via Groppi, a famous old shop for sweets, cakes and ice cream (both cafe and take away) – where I acquired some traditional Ramadan sweets for Faten Saleh, our EES Cairo representative, who had kindly invited me for Iftar – the breaking of the fast during Ramadan. Due to the traffic, I decided to take the Metro from Tahrir – stop Sadat to Dokki, where I was due to meet Faten. The journey only took about 10 minutes and then a nice 10 minute walk to our meeting place near the Sheraton hotel. Faten had selected a wonderful location for dinner – at a restaurant outdoors just by the river and we had a very pleasant evening together, discussing current events in Egypt and our future season too. The food was excellent, and having eaten a bit too much, a nice walk was had from Dokki back to the Lotus across the river, past the Opera and up to Tahrir. Everyone, as usual, is so friendly and it is great to see people in the streets enjoying the evening after Iftar.
Top of Talaat Harb Street - coming out of Tahrir Square.
