Day 3: Khan al Khalili (The Old Market)

On our final stop of our 3 day tour of Cairo, Sharif took us to the old market, Khan al Khalili. This place was huge and full of shops everywhere. This is a place where you name your own price. Sharif told us that they usually mark it up crazy prices and then you haggle for the price you want to pay. It was very interesting to see how many shops there was here. We walked around the shops for about an hour. Before we set off on our own Sharif gave us pointers on how much we should be charged for things and if they didn't like the price we wanted to walk away. So after our quick tutorial on "How To Haggle" Miranda and I set out to see what we wanted and to play name your own price.We had a lot of good luck with haggling and was able to get some really nice stuff.

One of the many alley ways of the market

Sharif giving us a quick lesson on how much we should pay for alabaster sets.

Another view down one of the alleys.

 After we walked around for about an hour and half we went back to go meet Sharif at a restaurant where the famous Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz wrote his book that won him the 1988 Nobel Prize in Literature. Mahfouz sat outside and watched the people of the Khan al Khalili and this is where he received his inspiration for his book. It was an amazing restaurant. We had falafels and shisha. Both were amazingly good. We sat with Sharif showing him what we got and made sure we didn't pay too much. Granted at this point it was too late, because all sales are final unless you buy at a mall. He told us we did a very good job, which was nice to here. One of Miranda's fellow teachers was not fairing as well as we did come to find out. She wasn't able to haggle as well, seeing that she is a blonde haired Westerner. She is learning to cope with that now. One of the other teachers literally tried losing her while shopping cause she got tired of the price going up every time the blonde haired teacher walked in haha. There was no history lesson about the market really from Sharif minus the restaurant and how much we should pay for stuff. We ended up spending the most amount of money here than any other place we had been Egypt. Below you can see what we got and it was for all less than $120.

Our set of alabaster tea lights. The middle one has an arabic saying on it which is "God is great"

This is the purse that Miranda got.

The Louis Vuitton wallet Miranda got.

And we are beginning to become avid collectors of papyrus paintings.

One of two shirts Miranda bought

After all the fun we loaded on to the bus and headed for home. The three days of touring Cairo was not only amazing, but it was also very enlightening on the history of the people and everything around us. It's crazy to think that we now live somewhere where they have 7000+ years of history and buildings that stand that are 5000+ years old. This is truly an experience of a lifetime living here and to think this was only week 2 in Cairo. To think we have two years here to see even more. We still have the whole southern half of the country and even many, many other things to learn and see. The final thing about these 3 days I would like to talk about is our amazing tour guide Sharif. He was an awesome guide, none of us were too keen to the idea of a tour guide but after spending 3 days with him I am glad Miranda's school paid for him to come and do it. We feel that our knowledge for Egypt is so much better then we thought. We did a lot of research to move here, the thing is we did no research on the history. It is amazing the wealth of knowledge and history you can learn here. From Ancient Egypt to the biblical history that is inside the walls of the buildings around us. Truly amazing!

Sharif, The Egyptian Encyclopedia, and our guide!! He was giving us a history lesson of the Mohamed Ali Mosque.