Spiritual Cairo

Our last full day in Egypt the "Greenies" (as our guide referred to our subgroup - the color of our Overseas Adventure Travel bus placard - the other group had an orange sign in their bus window) we spent exploring a set of representative religious worship sites mostly located in Old Cairo - two Coptic Christian Churches, a Jewish Synagoge and a Muslim Mosque.

One Coptic "hanging church," also known as the Church of the Virgin Mary, was built atop the ruins of a Roman guard tower; the second (the Church of St. Sergius) honored one of the places where Joseph and Mary tarried after fleeing to Egypt with the Baby Jesus. Both churches were beautiful,, filled with colorful icons and carved wooden screens and chapel altars.

The Jewish Ben Ezra Synagogue was itself once a Coptic church (dating back to the ninth century) but had been sold centuries ago to the Jewish community; today, however, although there are eleven synagogues in Cairo, there are only about two hundred Jewish families, so services are seldom conducted. Instead the sites are maintained by the Bureau of Antiquities (due to their age and cultural significance to Egyptian history as representative of the first Christian communities outside the Holy Land and the long-standing interaction with Jewish life and history).

After lunch in the heart of the French-inspired "downtown" area at Falfela, we drove up to the Citadel, the highest point in the city, to visit Sultan Hassan Mosque, to listen to a lecture on Islam's basic principles and beliefs and to get a view out over the (very smoggy) cityscape below.

Then, late in the afternoon, it was off to the Khan al Khalili market, the largest in the city -- and a mighty disappointment. The once local spice market that grew into Cairo's most important commercial center, al Khalili now appears to function primarily as a tourist trap filled with "Made in China" Egyptian souvenirs endlessly and persistently hawked by very aggressive touts. We were exhausted after just fifteen minutes of battling them off in the souk's narrow alleys before we retreated to the relative calm of a street-side cafe for a bit of cool and sweet hibiscus tea.

Over the course of the day we saw lots more of the city in general as well.

Our Farewell Dinner followed at the Blue Nile where we ate Chinese while gazing out at the huge luxury hotels lining the Nile riverbank and nicely lit by the evening's brightly shining full moon - a nice ending, indeed, to a most interesting and informative day.

Now it's time to sit back and evaluate the whole experience! Look for those comments once Heidi and Lee recover from our homeward flights, first non-stop from Cairo to New York City on Tuesday and then on to Cleveland Wednesday afternoon.