Katie’s Last Day in Egypt

It was Katie’s last day in Egypt.

Le sad face.

I am going to miss her times a thousand. She has been my main partner in crime here.

Now I’ll just have to rely on rat #2 ;)

Juuuust kidding, love you Emsies!

Lunch at Grand Café on the Nile River

We have already done all of the big things that there are to do in and around Cairo: we’ve seen the pyramids, gone on a felucca ride, been to the markets and a couple different areas in old Cairo, so we decided to just kind of take it easy for Katie’s last day here.

We went to Corniche, the road that runs along the Nile River, and ended up going for lunch and Grand Café which overlooks the Nile.

We had a delicious lunch – we are a bit obsessed with the Greek salads here – and enjoyed some shisha as the felucca’s drifted by. The perfect way to spend the afternoon :)

Referendum on the New Constitution

Today also happened to be the first day of voting on the new constitution in Egypt. There is a bit of controversy around the vote since it is essentially voting on whether or not people agree with the military removing Morsi from power and naming the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization.

The entire country has been bombarded with media supporting the ‘YES!’ to the referendum on the New Constitution. I have heard a lot of people talk about the referendum, and it seem like no two people think the same way: some are avid supporters of the YES vote, mostly people who just  want their lives to go back to ‘normal’ or how it was pre-revolution, others said they obstained from voting since they didn’t think that their vote would make a difference or because they didn’t think that it was a fair referendum, and barely anyone would vote NO – I heard that military had been given ‘shoot when needed’ orders, since a NO vote was associated with the Muslim Brotherhood.

Anyway, like ridiculous tourists, we decided to go out for a nice dinner with a bunch of people in order to send Katie off in style. Our taxi driver had no idea where he was going, and ended up dropping us off at one of the polling stations in Ma’adi. We got out of the taxi and thought that there was a lot of commotion going on and then I spotted the polling station. We started moving pretty quickly in the opposite direction, just in case anything started to happen.

We found someone who spoke English and asked what was going on, and whether it was okay for us to be walking around. The lady said “You know, its election night in Egypt, so there is just a lot of commotion today. It is not safe to be on the street.” We kind of freaked out a bit and asked her if we should just give up our search for the restaurant and grab a taxi home, and whether she thought it was safe for us. “Pfft this is Ma’adi. No worries”

That made us feel much better ;)

Dinner at Bau Khao

After a couple of wrong turns, we ended up finding our destination: Bau Khao, arguably one of the best Korean restaurants in Ma’adi.

I had the spicy ginger chicken with rice. So delicious.

Definitely check it out if you are in the area!