My Day as a Tourist.....

For those of you that check often, you'll remember that often I'm treated as a tourist. Partially due to the color of my skin and partially due to my inability to speak Arabic. Well on Saturday Alex, Kain and myself rented a taxi for a couple of hours and were taken on a little tour of parts of Cairo. It was my first real "Tourist Day" here.

We started off by heading to a 600 years old and it even had the original key to the door! We got to go in and walk around for a little while before the noon prayer. It was pretty impressive inside. The archways were huge and impressive. We even went into a tomb, which was pretty sweet.

We also walked up to the top of the building and got to look around on the roof. The view from the tower was pretty neat. I'll be honest though, I'm not a fan of heights, so I didn't stay up there too long. There was a great view of Islamic Cairo though.

After that we taxied over to Coptic Cairo (all the different religious parts of the city in one day!!) to see a couple of churches. The driver dropped us off in an Islamic neighborhood and told us how to get there while he fixed the car (??). After a five minute walk, we got to see the Hanging Church and the Church of St. George. Both were pretty cool, but I loved the Hanging Church. It had some amazing Mosaics, and a beautiful courtyard. I'll have to go back there sometime.

The next stop on our whirlwind tour was an oil shop near the Pyramids. Just seeing the Pyramids was an amazing sight. They're huge!!! It's hard to imagine that people, PEOPLE, had to drag/pull/tug and any thing else you can think of to get them into place. I'll definitely get there again and next time I'll be able to get some closer pictures.

After visiting the oil shop, we headed back to Heliopolis. The end of the trip turned into our driver trying to convince us that Islam was the way to go. While this was very frustrating, I expected it, especially since it is the end of Ramadan and all. No need to worry though, I still love Jesus.