January 4: Cairo

What do you do with a free day in Cairo? If you're me, you go to the Agricultural Museum and the premier Egyptian archaeological bookstore, Leila. But the gods -- perhaps Hera of the Argolid, slighted twice now in visits? -- deemed it not to be. I walked down to the Agricultural Museum, only to find (after being told it opened at 9) that it was in fact closed for the day. The walk down, though, was a pleasure -- not because of the honking cars and spewing exhaust, or the thrill of crossing six lanes of uninterrupted traffic like a Cairene, dodging in and out of the cars:  just keep moving! -- but because I was completely unencumbered by those officious Tourist Police, because no one on the sidewalk hustled me for baksheesh, because I was in Cairo. I passed shops where men ironed and folded laundry in the warm open air; a spice store with barrels of spices sitting in the sun; coffee shops full of men puffing away on hookahs (I once saw an elegantly dressed woman in the hotel doing the same); a broken-down rust encrusted wreck of a car covered lovingly with a dust-protector, emblem of hope that it would one day drive again (but who am I to say? maybe this car works just fine); street scenes might find in any big city, except this is Cairo.

In the evening we decided to try for some authentic Egyptian food. I asked the hotel people for recommendations, specifically for place "Egyptians themselves go," and they pointed us toward a place called Felfela, which had also been mentioned by one of our guides. We took this as a pretty good recommendation, and so hopped in a cab with the address in our hands.

Just as we arrived a huge tour bus roared up spewing exhaust and disgorged about 10,000 Italian tourists. They beat us into the restaurant, and as they filled the foyer as a gas does its container I squeezed in and signalled to the maitre-d' that we were but five (not the whole group came) and not part of the group; he waved us up. We pushed our way through the crowd and wound up at a dinky table by the kitchen -- really quite pleasant and fun, though also it was now clear that while Felfela may have been a destination of some hungry Egyptians it did the bulk of its business with people just like us.

While we sat waiting to order waiters came up to us at least five times with trays full of other patrons' food which they tried to put on our table. Once the kids even started eating a dish before we realized it belong to someone else (we had thought it might have been a standard feature, like the tortilla chips and salsa you get at a Mexican place, till we realize it was an appetizer on the menu we were scanning).

The food was okay -- not spectacular, not bad. I think the place really is more for tourists than locals. Some yummy street food could be got just a block from the hotel at Sammy's, run by a Lebanese, who produced falafel and other goodies from behind a dinky counter open to the street.

January 5: Back to Athens, goodbye to the cradle of civilization

Another almost completely free day. We had noticed on our map of the city that not far from our hotel was a big botanical garden and -- even more appealing -- the Cairo Zoo. With a free day and kids whose patience had been shredded by long trips in cars, we decided to head for the Zoo.

The Cairo Zoo is one of the largest and oldest in the world. It benefits from a climate that allows housing of African animals with a minimum of fuss (and expense). The entrance fee, clearly heavily subsidized by the state, was well under a dollar. We strolled happily through winding paths under trees you won't see at home, like Kigelia pinata with its pendulous pods like irradiated bananas, peering into habitats that, while not up to European or North American standards, certainly were not shabby, and sometimes even made a pretty good stab at replicating the inhabitants' original homes. (On the other hand, we saw more than a reasonable share of sad creatures in cramped cages.) We were enjoying a wonderful time of anonymity, no officious Tourist Police, no handlers, not even the always nice representatives of LONT -- just us, wandering through the zoo, like any other visitors, in the warm winter sunshine.

It wasn't long, however, before someone smelled baksheesh. In this case the "someone" was a guard, who called us over asking whether we'd like to hold a baby lion. My naivety knows no bounds -- even after a week in Egypt, I just thought he was being nice. The kids, of course, said instant "Please! Please!"'s, so off we trooped after him to the lion house. We followed him in, where the guard in the house tugged a lion cub out of its nest and offered it to our waiting arms.

This would have been quite enough (at least for me) but before we could say "Thank you very much" we were herded to another building to hold a crocodile, and another to hold a baby fox, and another to hold a rabbit -- you get the idea. Finally Edie pulled me aside and said she was feeling really uncomfortable, doing all these things unavailable to the ordinary zoo-goer. So I took the guard aside and told him we were done. He tried to coax me into more -- and the kids would've had no objections -- but I held firm. Then came the negotiations over his baksheesh (after, of course, paying all the animal handlers for "special treatment"). His firmness here was unshakeable, and I paid his first price -- exorbitant, I thought, no doubt better money than he makes in a normal day. A lesson in negotiation -- never accept any "help" in Egypt until you have settled on terms, and have the steel to walk away.

After the Zoo, lunch, then off to the airport for our wholly uneventful return to Athens and the end of our Egyptian adventure.

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