Malek's Moorish tales - Its Official, Raise Your Glasses, We’re Gonna Party to Damascus(2)

	Friday, January 30, 2004

Its Official, Raise Your Glasses, We’re Gonna Party to Damascus(2)

I promised I will be telling stories about Cairo, so here it goes ...

Sleeping by the Pharo's tomb: Patrick, Cigdem, Shiraz and I were down inside the Mycerinus pyramid, and there was a nice guide showing us around the sarcophagus and treasures room. Before going back up, they all tipped the guide (I must confess, I was a bit miserly on that one). The guy was so happy with the tipps, and was telling us if there was anything else he could do for us … Well, Patrick asked if we could sleep by the toumb, and I seconded his joke … off course, everybody laughed and we left. Later on that day, Patrick found out he had made a mistake while tipping the guide, and gave him more than he thought he did. So we figured we had a good start on bribing him into letting us sleep by the tomb … Maybe next time, who knows ?

Can I have some Hummus please ? on Sunday, Steven was going crazy about Hummus, and not accepting to have been in Cairo for more than 24 hours without having it. The problem is that we were at an Indian Restaurant at the Oberoi hotel in Giza (close to the pyramids). So he kept asking for Hummus, and they kept telling him again and again that this was an Indian Restaurant. Since he wouldn't stop asking for Hummus (which is simply the arabic word for Chick Peas), they brought that bowl with Chick Peas in a sauce ...

Cigdem’s pyramids : The first day, when we went to the pyramids in Giza, we didn’t really buy any souvenirs (except for the perfumes I will talk about later on). When we (I believe it was Cigdem, Patrick and I) went to Memphis and Sakkara on Tuesday, she needed to get some presents for family and friends, and was looking at pyramids. She finally closed a nice deals on some small pyramids, and since she thought she got a nice deal, she took two sets of three pyramids each. Later on the same day, at Khan El Khalili (After the closing session at MDC), she was thinking she would need more presents, and spontaneously started thinking of getting more pyramids … after strolling about a certain number of shops, she finally found one that had the same pyramids she had bought in the morning, but they wouldn’t sell them to her for the same price. There came Stephen, who started to bargain for her. To make the story short, he started, at one point, to propose a Yukon DVD for the pyramids, and the shop owner refused. Well, it was a great laugh, and Cigdem got her 3 new sets of 3 pyramids each (I joked about her using them as Lego pieces) …

The American selling souvenirs at Khan El Khalili : this story actually started when Stephen started to bargain for the rest of the gang. At one shop, he started (again) to offer Yukon and Whidbey DVDs for souvenirs, and while squeezing the shop owner so much on the prices, the guy simply told him that he would like to see him selling the stuff and whether he would still be talking about the same prices (I spare you some details that I have to sensor, both to avoid wrath from Steven, and because this blog is not adult only content …). Anyway, here is Steven selling the souvenirs, trying to get the walkers by to buy his stuff, and making the bargaining a blast … one great moment was when another shop owner (or so he said) stopped by, and Steven offered him a Yukon DVD for his entire shop (we never saw the shop or even knew if it existed), and the guy accepted …

Party to Damascus: Throughout the trip, Steven has been evangelizing … a song. He finally got both me and Goksin singing it with him. So let’s all hum together : Its Official, Raise Your Glasses, We’re Gonna Party to Damascus …

That is just part of the story, and I will probably be blogging about Cairo for quite some time ...

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1/30/2004 11:35:58 PM UTC

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