Finally, the adventure

Alright, finally, something worth the title of the blog. lol

Hard to know where to start, though the beginning usually seems like a decent place.
I know I won't get everything down here about our little adventure, but I hope I can get a lot of it, and that it becomes your little adventure too.
=)

Yesterday we had planned to go shopping for bathroom and kitchen faucet fixtures. We had planned to go in the morning but ended up waiting and going in the evening instead. Hubby had a slight headache and didn't want to go out in the hot sunlight.

7:15 p.m. rolls around and we are ready and leave the house. We walk just a couple of minutes to get to the main street where we plan to take a taxi to the area we want to go to.

Normally, this isn't much of a problem and we are able to hail an empty taxi within a couple of minutes.
It soon became apparent that this wasn't going to be a normal trip, at least not for me!

It took us half an hour, and we finally ended up taking a mini bus (not a vw micro bus, the mini bus is a bit bigger, like a city bus but shorter) because we never did manage to find a taxi. Several taxis pulled over but they all took off when they heard where we wanted to go. One guy wanted 25 pounds to take us, which was ridiculous since it shouldn't have cost more than 5 or 7 pounds. And there was nothing wrong with the area. Not sure why no one wanted to drive there. And the guy that wanted to overcharge us was only doing it because I was white and foreign. The taxi drivers are big on trying to rip you off if you're a foreigner. Not all of them, I won't say that, but many.

So, we had walked some few blocks down the street and found a mini bus that was going where we wanted to go. Luckily for us, it had just emptied and so we had our choice of seats. Hubby had me get in the bus first and I picked the first two seats on the right side of the bus.

The bus waited til it was just about full before taking off. We were headed to Ramses Square.
Now remember, the micro and mini buses here stop while going down the road to pick up additional passengers, and all of the buses have a boy/man who hangs on at the door and shouts out the destination while the bus is heading down the street.

Our bus kept stopping and letting people on, and I kept thinking that there would be no more room and we wouldn't be able to stop any more.
Well, silly me!
This bus got so packed I couldn't believe it.
The seats were fully taken, and the standing room down the middle of the aisle was packed. Not loosely packed, I'm talking fully packed, no room to budge one more person inside the bus.
I was so shocked and all I could do was laugh every time we had stopped to let one more person on, having thought that the bus was already at capacity.

However, that laughter soon turned toward thoughts of what I was sure at the time were certain death, as the bus went around a clover leaf, leaning in the direction that we were seated on. I was soooo sure this bus was gonna tip over and I'm sure I said an alhamdulillah as we made it safely around!
The buses aren't built for that many people, and I know that it is actually common for them to have accidents as the drivers are a little bit crazy here.

Anyways, after 15 or 20 minutes, we finally made it to our destination, Ramses Square.

We were going to look at the sink fixtures, and there was supposed to be a street nearby that was full of just bathroom stores, selling all sorts of items for the bathroom and also tiles, etc.

The first street we went down, the street hubby thought it was, wasn't.
lol

This street..... it was the total cliche for every little back alley street you can think of in a Middle Eastern country. It was just amazing!

It was faintly lit, most of the light coming from the stores, most of the stores small enough so that you could barely walk in 10 feet and turn around to come back out.
They were packed with all manner of things, there didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason.
There were fabrics, food, tailors, knick knacks, food flavoring manufacturers, junk stores, some stores I had no idea what they did, there was just some guy standing or sitting inside looking quite tired and honestly a bit depressed.
There were kids playing around, riding bikes or walking, sometimes women walking down the street, Arabic pop music coming from some stores and the Quran coming from other stores. There were cafes and older men playing backgammon while sitting on chairs in the street. The street, or rather more like alley, was thin and unevenly paved with many holes, and there were puddles of water from where people had possibly washed off their stoops. There were street vendors selling corn on the cob that they were roasting on a cart, and some vendors selling prickly pears (prickly pears are real big right now on the street carts).

It turns out, after going down this street, that it wasn't the street we were looking for. lol
We needed to be one street over.
So we wended our way over to the next street and found the bathroom/kitchen faucet fixtures. At last!

We looked around quite a few stores and I saw one particular faucet in many of the stores, which had a dolphin for the faucet head. Kinda cute but not for me.

Finally found something that I liked, and we got a matching set for the bathroom sink, bathtub and kitchen sink. Phew, done!
Well, we didn't actually buy it then, but hubby got the business card of the man that was helping us, and he went back to buy the set today.

After all of that, we wanted to go to Attaba, which is another area, to look at the Toshiba store and their washing machines. All 2 of them as it turns out. lol

Well, instead of taking a taxi, we ended up taking another mini bus, though this one wasn't as crowded and it didn't have as far to go. I guess it was about a 5 minute ride there.

After departing the bus, we walked for about 5 minutes to reach the general area that we wanted.

And then, the maze.

I swear there must have been an easier way to get to where we wanted, but I think hubby somehow led us this way on purpose. lol

We must have passed every shoe for sale in the whole city of Cairo!
This area is full of what amounts to one of the biggest flea markets you've ever been to or even imagined! Table after table after table.
One pair of tacky cheap shoe upon another!
Brightly colored, plastic, studded, shiny, metallic junk! Most of it I assume coming from China, and that is not a dig.

It took some time but we wended our way through the myriad of tables and got to one street that we started walking down, when we stopped to look at the window of a store that had doorknobs and handles. I dragged hubby inside and was happier than you can imagine that they had air conditioning, and good a/c at that!
It was still really hot out, probably at least 90 still, even with it being dark at that point.

We ended up actually making our first purchase for the apartment there, huzzah!!
The front door needed a new locking mechanism, and so we got the lock and also a new handle. We will get additional handles for the inside doors, and also light switch plates. All matching of course. Kind of a brushed pewter/silver.

After leaving the store, much cooler than when we entered, we were still heading to the Toshiba store to look at washing machines. On our way, still in the maze of shoes and assorted junk, we came upon one store where it seemed there was some celebration going on. It almost sounded like when there is a wedding with the drums and the singing. When we got closer, I saw that it was just one guy with a drum (the kind you hold in one hand and hit with the other hand - kind of like a covered disc) and then some guys singing and dancing. It sounded nice actually, I liked it.
When I asked hubby what it was about, he told me they were advertising a sale for their store, telling the prices and such.
Oh my God I started laughing.
This cracked me up really good. I just loved it. Advertising!
Where else do you find something like this?

So, on we went and finally left the maze and hit the street where we wanted to be. This street, at the beginning, is packed full of stores selling cell phones and other electronics. It is very well lit compared to that first street we went down, and flashy and bright and loud and full of people!

We got past the cell phone section and finally found our store. It was on the second story, so after a short climb we entered into another air conditioned haven. I purposefully stood right under the a/c, just inside the door, for several minutes to cool down.

Well, we found the "full automatic" washing machine, and it was indeed a top loader, but I wasn't satisfied with it. It seemed very similar to the "half automatic" machine to me. The showroom wasn't all that big, and had a few fridges and a few a/c's I think, and that was it. Well, the bottom floor had tv's, but even that area was small.

After leaving the store, feeling slightly irritated that we went all that way and it wasn't exactly what I was looking for, I was finally feeling pretty tired and worn out from all the walking, the heat, the noise, the people, etc.

We headed back towards the area where we started from to be able to take a taxi to get back home.

On the way we ended up passing a bunch of lighting stores, and found a bunch of lights that looked really nice, but as it was late at that point, after 10, we made a point to remember where all the stores were, and that we would go back later to pick out our lamps.

We found one of the newer taxis, which was quite nice, and had a comfortable ride back home.

Cairo tower is lovely at night, it is lit up on the outside with what seem to be LED lights, as when we were on our way past earlier, in the other direction, the lights were chasing up the tower and changing color, very prettily at that.
However when we passed on the way home, it was just one solid color that appeared to be kind of pink/violet. So nice, and I imagined what it might be like to have a view of that out of my living room window every night.

I was so exhausted when we got home. So tired. So sweaty!

For sure, it was an adventure. I know I've missed some things here, though not on purpose. I hope I was able to convey at least a little bit of how the few hours were though.
At one point on our drive to Ramses square, I was on the edge of alternating laughs and tears, but I can't explain why. So many times, my life here seems so unreal, like something I have only ever seen in a movie, that never seemed to exist until I actually got here.
There is a brutal honesty to life here.
On the drive home, I wondered if this city would still be around if God wasn't such a big part of everyone's every day life. I somehow doubt it.
It just doesn't seem possible.
Not with so many people.
And not under the conditions here.

Alhamdulillah.