'Copting' Out of Cairo!

Today was not so eventful. We took the subway to an old part of town called Coptic Cairo, which is the centre of Coptic Christianity here in Cairo. Coptic Christians, which I claim to know very little about, make up an estimated 20% of the population here. Coptics are catholics, and have some very old cathedrals in the city. We visted some of them today, they were very beautiful. One of the churches is the location, where they say the holy family took refuge when they were hiding from Pharoah, after Jesus' birth. I don't know if that's true or not.




We then wandered away from the tourist sites, on to some of the back streets of this area of the city. What we saw was a very different Cairo then we'd seen before. This area was much quieter, there wasn't the hustle and trafic as there is everywhere else. We sort of stumbled into an old catholic cemetary, which was not for tourists, but the guy cleaning up let us in. It was very beautiful. It was a peacful garden with some amazing statues. I found it to be a bittersweet sight, seeing all the crosses, but also being able to see the countless mosques just outside the cemetary.

After that we went to the train station and bought our ticket out of here. We leave in the morning at 7:30 for Luxor. There are some more acient ruins there, and it is situated on a beautiful stretch of the nile. I think the train ride is about 9 hrs.

The only other info to report is that we bowed to 'the man' today. That's right all that was noble and right about Erin and I was thrown out the window and devoured by wild dogs. We plead for the forgiveness of all of you. Please don't hold this against us. Today we ate lunch at Mc. Donalds. I don't really know why. Perhaps it's because I wanted a milkshake, and Erin wanted mc nuggets. I think it was just that we wanted to watch the Arabic music videos that they were playing in there. Or we just wanted to be sure of what we were getting. Either way, please forgive us.

That's all for today. Sorry we didn't have anymore stories about blown tires and dog breeding, but all of our posts can't be that exciting. Even though we're in a place that is so crazy, we still have normal days.