Coptic Cairo

This is Day 9 if you are keeping track.

So before I begin this post, I want to point out a conundrum Jack and I have during Ramadan. All the people and stores do not open till later (usually much later) but all the sightseeing has to be done early unless you want to boil and die. Since Jack and I so far have valued sight seeing over hanging out a café for hours at night, we have gone to bed fairly early and woken up early so we can return alive (I am sure most of our readers, if not all, would appreciate that). With that said, it might sound kind of lame to say we did not do much all afternoon but remember that nothing is going on at that point. It is extremely hot and none of the Egyptian stores our open. Basically, people wake up and go to work, then return home around 4 and do not go out again until 8 or 9. Jack and I wake up around 8:30 and return at 2 to eat lunch. We then have almost nothing we can do until 8 or 9, at which point it is probably best for us to just go to bed (especially if you have to wake up at 5:15 the next morning to leave on a bus to Mt. Sinai). I guess you could say that we are seeing all the major sights at our own pace but missing out slightly on the nightlife. Hopefully, that will change in the next couple of days since we do not have a whole lot more to do. Yes, we could have spent most of our nights at an ahwa (café) smoking sheesha, drinking tea, and people watching but that just was not something we felt we had to do every night. We went to a bar once, and we walked around Khan al khalili another time and those were both fine but not as nice as being well rested for the sights we want to see. I just wanted you all to get a sense of what we are thinking about as we execute our trip. Also it saves money not to go out and I think the bars in Vienna are going to be a little more fun than old men playing backgammon.

With all that said, we woke up at 8:30, ate breakfast downstairs and were out the door to the metro station around 10. The Windsor Hotel has the nice benefit of being close to the two lines of Metro so we walked down to the Nasser station and took it all the way to Mar Girgis where Coptic Cairo is located. It was 5 stops away and did not take long at all.

I should say right now that Coptic Cairo is not very big. Everything we wanted to see was in fairly small area, in fact the area for Karnak Temple was probably bigger than the area we walked around in for Coptic Cairo. We started with the Church of Saint George, one of the areas most popular saints. The church we went in is not actually that old, I think 1909 and it felt like many other churches I have been in. Also, it was interesting going from Islamic Cairo one day to Coptic Cairo the next.

Outside St George

Inside St George

After the Church of Saint George we went to the Coptic Museum, a place highly recommended by Dr. Berkey. The museum houses items from Graeco-Roman times and the Islamic era as well. Many monasteries used to exist in Egypt. In fact, these monasteries were the ones that influenced both Saint Augustine and the Benedictine order of monks if you are familiar with either of those. The museum had pieces of these old monasteries, as well as tapestries and a myriad of other items. It was weird looking at something from the 3^rd century and thinking, “Well that’s not very old compared to stuff in Luxor”. One other lesson we learned: If you want to preserve something, bury it in a desert. One of my favorite sections was one that had many volumes of the four Gospels in Arabic. That just struck me as really interesting for some reason. Right outside the museum you can also find the remains of a fortress built by the Romans in the 2^nd Century.

The Babylon Fort

The museum

After the museum, we went to the Hanging Church. It was built in about the 9^th century and is still in use today. I think you can get a pretty good sense of it from the pictures (or at least I hope you can).

Outside the hanging church

Inside the hanging church

Once we finished at the Hanging Church, we walked a short way to the Church of St. Sergius. It was built in the 4^th century and claims to be built on a place where Jesus, Joseph and Mary hid while in Egypt. Jack and I were able to look down into the “Holy Crypt” but could not take any pictures.

Passed the church is the Ben Ezra Synagogue, one of only a few synagogues in the Cairo area. Its claim to fame is that behind the synagogue is the spring marking the spot where the pharaoh’s daughter found Moses in the reeds. Jack and I proceeded to get in a small debate about whether the spring or the crypt had more historical significance. Thoughts?

Moses was found here

We proceeded to check out the Church of St Barbara but it was in the midst of being refurbished and so there was not a whole lot to see. That about wrapped up Coptic Cairo but there was still one other site to see just outside the gates: the Mosque of Amr Ibn al-as. The mosque was constructed in 642 AD and was the first mosque built in Egypt, only 32 years after Muhammed received the prophecy from God. Also we visited in the middle of friday afternoon prayer so there were lots of people around.

Mosque of Amr Ibn al-as friday at prayer time

We returned home on the Metro and relaxed for the rest of the night. Eventually we went down to dinner and after eating ran into someone from Chicago who was traveling by himself through the Middle East. We traded travel stories for about 2 hours and then went to bed.

Candid shots

Nutrition:

Breakfast was same old same old, although I should point out that we are now finishing our entire breadbasket. For lunch, we decided we were a little tired of chicken and bread so went to a Chinese restaurant near our hotel that was alright. At night, we decided to carb load for our trip to Mt. Sinai and also have a beer or two.

Blurry but you get the idea

The only beer people drink in Egypt, not bad too