Just passing by

We went out yesterday to Dandy Mall, which turns out to be about a 45 minute drive when there's traffic on Faisal Street.  Which there was, both coming and going.

In any case, when you reach the end of Faisal street and make a right to head towards whatever other roads take you to the mall, you can see the pyramids of Giza off to the left and then behind you as you go.

Kind of strange.  We live so close to them, less than half an hour, perhaps 20 minutes or so by taxi with traffic, but we can't see them from our apartment and you'd never guess they were there and they're these piles of rock that people fly thousands of miles to see.

I snapped a couple of photos from the back seat of the taxi, and the pictures aren't so great, there are horizontal lines going across both photos from what I guess is defrost feature of the back window, and the window isn't extremely clean and there's trees and cars and buildings in the way, but still.

It's also strange when you see the pyramids in movies, they always make them seem like they are out in the middle of nowhere.  And they aren't.  Perhaps they are on the edge of the middle of nowhere, but they are quite surrounded at least halfway by a sprawling population.

Anyways, here's the couple of shots I managed to get.  Click pictures for a larger image.

As you will notice from the yellow bus on the left side, we are closer in this picture, and below you can see the bus is a bit further away as we're driving away from the pyramids.

There are quite a few hotels that line the road we're driving on above.  They stretch out along the road, catering to, I'm assuming, almost strictly folks who want to see the pyramids, as there's nothing else much out in that area.  Though actually they are building a new "city" of sorts, New Giza.  We live in Giza but I guess it will be "old" Giza after this is done.  lol
But even with the build of the new "city", I guess the area will still not hold much attraction for tourists.  The area we live in is just devoid of most of what they seem to want to see or of the creature comforts that most of them want.

But the area, much to my surprise, was quite lush.  At least driving down the roads we were on.  Not Faisal street, but once you get past the pyramids and start driving out where there's not much on one side except desert, and the other side is being built up with what they call villas here, which is just large houses.  Not so much villa how I would think of, like something on the Riviera (though I've never been there).  But some of the houses are indeed quite large.  I guess something in between a regular house and more of a mansion of sorts.

Why there are so many trees and plants and bushes on the edge of the desert I don't know.  Particularly because much of it looked like it consumed quite a bit of water instead of being desert friendly plants which would consume much less water.

I tried to take some pictures but driving in the car does not always make for great shots and you tend to miss a lot of what you want and my camera takes forever to be ready to take another picture after you take one.  I don't have the other pictures ready yet, so I'll post them next time I post.  They aren't that exciting, just shows along the road we were driving.

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I made basbousa, which is a cake like thing that is liberally doused with a sugar syrup after baking.  The cake is made with semolina instead of regular flour.  I didn't know what semolina was before baking this, but I looked it up and it seems that it's basically just a rougher version of flour.  The outside part of the grain if I remember correctly.  So it kind of looks like cornmeal.  And I guess it is interchangeable with cream of wheat?  Not sure if that's what cream of wheat is made from or not.

In any case, it was good and hubby is loving it.  I guess it's not something people make at home as much as buy in the bakery, so he was quite surprised that I made it, though it wasn't hard to make at all.  I'd have taken a picture but it's really plain to look it.

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We had a small dust storm the other day that lasted for about 24 hours.  I can tell when it starts getting too dusty because my eyes start to sting a bit.  Not pleasant.  Thankfully it didn't last too long.

We are due for some more hot temps in another day or so, so I'm debating on whether to clean the floors today or wait til after Tuesday, as the hotter the weather is the more the dust seems to kick up.

Decisions decisions!

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Ramadan, our month of fasting, is coming up in just over two months insha'Allah!  Hard to believe the year passes so quickly.  It should be starting somewhere around August 11th.

I'm excited that this will be hubby and my first Ramadan together in our own place, and I'm already looking at meal planning and what I can make in advance and freeze so that I don't need to spend as much time in the kitchen cooking during the hot days when I can't eat or drink.

Also thinking of ways to decorate the apartment.  Still have some time to figure all this out.