By our last morning in Cairo, our tune about the place had changed a little. It was becoming clear that people were polite and helpful, but they were definitely out to make a buck. (And they weren’t shy about asking for one.) At no time did we feel unsafe or unwelcome. It was more that we were tired of negotiating.
On our trip back from the pyramids, we’d struck a deal with our driver to take us to the airport…or so we thought. His English was definitely passable, and overhead us talking about going to the Citadel in the morning before going to the airport around noon. He piped up and quoted us a price of about $40 US, which we thought was pretty high, considering we’d just paid $90 for a whole day of his services AND a guide, going much farther. We mulled the offer over for 5 minutes, then countered at $30. He seemed to say yes…we repeated it…he seemed to confirm.
As just another example of hassle, we got a call at 10:00 p.m. on the night before we left from Mohammed (the guy who had arranged our hotel) asking if he could come over so that we could settle payment. Seriously? The lights were already out, but we obliged, just wanting to get that out of our way. He ended up coming up to our room, and we made a big scene about counting out every last dollar we had, so that he wouldn’t ask for a tip on top of payment. (This worked like a charm.)
The next morning we packed up, had breakfast on the top floor of the hotel, and our driver picked us up exactly on time. We headed for the Citadel, which is a fortress built in the 1100′s and is most famous for housing the Mohamed Ali Mosque from the 1800s. Read about it HERE.
We had about two hours to spend there, and that was double the amount of time needed. Though the grounds were pretty well cared for, the buildings (like everything in Cairo) were grimy from the extremely lack of rainfall and cloud of smog. The mosques in the complex weren’t in great shape, but they were mildly interesting to see in terms of understanding what the inside of a mosque is like in the first place.
The views of the city were interesting but obscured by fog/smog.
There were a couple military and police museums on the grounds, too, which we didn’t go in. We were ready to get to the airport.
The driver came a few minutes early, just as we were exiting the gate. It took us probably 15 minutes to get to the expressway to the airport, which was in the process of being secured for the arrival of the Egyptian president at the airport. The expressway goes through a really upscale suburb of Cairo, and there were security guys on the roofs of the buildings the whole way down the road, in addition to military personnel on the median. Good thing the president arrived after we got to the airport, or we might have had to take an alternate route.
All had gone well with the driver, and we gave him the $30. As we walked away with our bags, he called us over and said we’d struck and agreement for $40. We explained that we’d repeated our counter offer of $30 twice in the car on the previous day. Ultimately we gave him another $5 and that seemed to begrudgingly satisfy him. Lesson: get the quote in writing. And seriously, $30 was a fortune for 2.5 hours of work.
gallopingnelly
