{"id":47,"date":"2005-01-01T14:27:11","date_gmt":"2005-01-01T06:27:11","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2026-07-31T15:18:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T07:18:12","slug":"hustle_city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/day.lat\/lon\/2005\/01\/01\/hustle_city\/","title":{"rendered":"Hustle City"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"View
View of the Great Pyramids of the Giza Necropolis as seen from the top of Cairo Tower, Cairo, Egypt<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After a long day (or two) of travel from Philadelphia to London to Cairo on New Year’s Eve, I was pleased to finally touch down in this very smoggy city just a couple of minutes into 2005. They say breathing the air in Cairo is as bad as smoking four packs of cigarettes a day.<\/p>\n

\"Central
Central Cairo, Egypt<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"View
View of Old Cairo from the Citadel of Cairo, Cairo, Egypt<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The flight over southern Europe was pretty cool on the big party night, with Athens, Greece, lit up in spectacular fashion. I was greatly relieved to find that the reservations I thought I had made were actually still being held for me at 1 AM in a nice clean hostel right on a busy square in the centre of Cairo. I felt the strong presence of the Middle East from the moment I landed — probably due to the Arabic writings and the fine desert silt that seemingly permeated everything I came in contact with. The drivers are the craziest I’ve ever come across, with no regard for traffic lights or even cops trying to direct traffic.<\/p>\n

\"The
The Egyptian Museum (in red), Cairo, Egypt<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I spent my first afternoon at the Egyptian Museum (just a few blocks away from my hostel), where I got to scrutinise all of King Tut’s relics. I also saw lots of famous mummies and endless other artifacts. The museum isn’t really very well presented. There is hardly any information available on what you’re looking at. Just the odd typewritten note taped inside a glass case.<\/p>\n

One of the coolest rooms featured a series of miniature models from various tombs depicting everyday life thousands of years ago. There were scenes of things like butcher shops that really didn’t look much different from what you’d find in the developing world today. It’s one thing to do an archeological dig and come up with theories about how life was, but it’s another to find actual models available. It was pretty amazing.<\/p>\n

\"Egyptian
Egyptian Relics in Khan el-Khalili, a famous bazaar in the historic centre of Cairo, Egypt<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Hookahs
Hookahs in Khan el-Khalili, a famous bazaar in the historic centre of Cairo, Egypt<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I’ve read lots of warnings about touts (hustlers) surrounding the tourist areas here, lying through their teeth about anything — in hopes of getting you into their trinket shops. They always start out very nice and walk alongside of you on the street, striking up a casual conversation. It all sounds innocent enough, and you want to be nice to those who are nice to you — but the intermittent conversation always seems to start accelerating until you’re being given the hard sell on something. One guy outside the museum actually had me going for about a minute, pointing me to the wrong end of the museum (as the entrance) and telling me it was closed for prayers for an hour. He told me he worked in the museum on the second floor and sounded somewhat genuine. Of course, the second he tried to direct me across the street to a trinket store, I knew he was working for someone. He was not pleased when I finally caught on to him and turned tail back to the main entrance of the museum!<\/p>\n

\"Horse
Horse pulling cart of tourists at the Giza Necropolis near Cairo, Egypt<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After a long day (or two) of travel from Philadelphia to London to Cairo on New Year’s Eve, I was pleased to finally touch down in this very smoggy city just a couple of minutes into 2005. They say breathing the air in Cairo is as bad as smoking four packs of cigarettes a day.… Continue reading Hustle City<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[26,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cairo","category-egypt","without-featured-image"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3sHuW-L","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/day.lat\/lon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/day.lat\/lon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/day.lat\/lon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/day.lat\/lon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/day.lat\/lon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/day.lat\/lon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/day.lat\/lon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/day.lat\/lon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/day.lat\/lon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}