Very good, very cheap and very Cairo

May 12th, 2008

After our visit of Al-Azhar Mosque, we took the underground shortcut over to Midan Hussein, the place in front of the Mosque of Sayyidna al-Hussein and where the craziness of the Khan al-Khalili starts. Right behind the restaurants with outdoor seating, are a couple of alleys to enter the Khan. We took that one on the southern-west corner of the Mosque to get a coffee and a beer at
Mahfouz Coffee Shop. Wow, the 200 to the coffeeshop meters were really crazy.. All the vendors in the tiny alley are standing in the line, every half-meter or so, and try to talk to you and sell you their stuff. They always try to start a conversation with you and call you by all kinds of nicknames. Me for instance, they called most of the time „Rambo“, but I heard „Michael Jackson“ and „Hulk Hogan“ as well. Very charming It’s getting funny, when they’re honest with you and ask you „Hey, do you want to spend all your money in here?“. And believe me, if you don’t speak english, talk to them in your prefered language - they’re the most talented language artists I’ve ever seen. Oh, and again they take every currency you can think of.

Fatima was already pissed after 50 meters or so, but I liked it somehow. It looks stressful a first, but if you know how to deal with it, and keep smiling, it’s kind of entertaining. Seriously.

Anyway, behind the wooden door in Mahfouz Coffeehouse we had a few Kofte Sandwiches with fries and a non-alcoholic beer (!). The Lonely Planet says that they’re selling Stella (the main local beer) as well in there, but when we’ve been there they just had non-alcohol beer. And of course, it was german beer - Clausthaler. The can said „Germany’s #1“ - That’s ridiculous.

After our light lunch, we walked a bit around and made our way to nearby Fishawi’s Coffehouse, an institution in that area. In this very busy place, I had my first sheesha (water-pipe) and a nice mint-tea, while sitting outside and watching the people trying to sell all kind of stuff. Especialy in this place it was very entertaining because, they’re very easy to get rid of, but try it all the time in a gentle way. I had great fun and liked my sheesha very much. That was one highlight today.

We stayed in that place for an hour or so, and walked a little bit more around in the Khan, before taking a taxi back to the hotel to take our obligatory nap.

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