Khan Al-Khalili & The Citadel – Saturday 25 Nov 2006

Today we were going to go to Ismailia, but yesterday when we were to Yasser’s farm we saw most of it. So today decided to do a bit of more local sight-seeing.

First we went to Khan Al-Khalili – it’s a huge bazaar. Kinda similar to the vic market though – lots of stalls of the same stuff. Although here the stalls are perfume bottles, clothes, shoes and jewellery boxes. We wandered around for a while, just looking at the stalls. Then Chris said that he wanted to get some Christmas decoration. He said, that each time he goes on holiday to a new place he buys Christmas decorations so he’s reminded of his holiday each year.

I thought that was a brilliant idea, so we were talking about it as we walked down the aisle. All the stall holders call out to you, saying ‘free to look’, and ‘lovely tops here’ etc and as we were walking down one aisle, after just having talked about it, one guy yells out ‘perfume bottles, crystal, Christmas decorations’. We stopped, went back and said to the guy did he hear us talking and he said no, he has lots of Christmas decorations.

We looked at some and they were cheap thin glass ones. Then he got a box from the corner and showed us some thicker ones. They were really nice. Chris bought one in the shape of a camel! Plus we both bought globe type ones with gold pyramids on them. They are pretty cool :)

Normally I get fridge magnets from every country I go to, but I’ve already got one from last time I was in Egypt so I wasn’t sure what I’d get this time. Now I’ve decided I’ll get a Christmas decoration for every Christmas I’m away from home (if I’m ever away from home again!).

They look pretty cool. They are made just like the perfume bottles, and use the same colouring etc. I bought two that were purple and gold (gold was the only choice). They are oval globes with the outline of the pyramids on them.

Once we’d wandered around there we headed up towards the Citadel – the Mohammad Ali Mosque.

We didn’t go in (the book says there isn’t really much to see). Instead we drove up the same mountain thing that Yasser took us up yesterday and took some photos of the Citadel and the city from there. It was fairly smoggy and hazy so the photos look like we took them through a Vaseline lens, but some came out fairly well.