Day 7 - Taxi drivers here rip off foreigners

I slept for 4 hours last night, woohoo! I am still enjoying the company of jetlag. We will see what tonight brings. I bought a pillow today so maybe that will help me sleep better. It is a pretty fine pillow if I say so myself, I am pumped on it. I have my travel pillow that I got from MEC and it just isn't doing the job. I don't know how I slept on that thing just fine the whole time I was in South Africa. I guess I was younger then and could sleep on anything :)

The apartment was cleaned today. Natalie hires people to do the cleaning. My floors are nice and clean but that will not last too long so I am enjoying them while they are still clean.

At 4:30 I ventured out by myself and went to Carrefour, one of the big malls here. I took a taxi, I got in and he knew where I was talking about and about 3 minutes after we started driving the car broke down so I got out and caught another one. Now my roommate told me I should not pay over 30 pounds, so when the next taxi driver insisted I pay 50 pounds I refused. He tried to get me to agree to 50 the whole way there, but in the end I gave him the 30 pounds and just got out. The drive there was quite interesting. I had never been to that part of the city. I saw a huge mosque, and some of the areas were very close to what I would call a slum.

The mall was alright. I went in to some clothing stores and looked around. It is so strange because I have not seen anyone wearing the clothes that are sold in a lot of stores. There was also a big grocery store. It would probably be equivalent to a superstore or something like that and oh my goodness was it jam packed with people. You could barely walk around...so not enjoyable. I got a pillow and some groceries and got out of there as fast as I could. The amount of people was overwhelming. Getting groceries was also a bit of a task because I had to figure out how much things were and try to figure out what exactly some things were. Speaking Arabic would be so helpful. Now my taxi driver home was different from the first. He wanted 50 pounds I said 25, then he said 40 and I said that was way too much. I would only pay 30 and no higher. Then he said 35 or I won't take you. At this point I just wanted to get home so I agreed. It is so annoying that just because you are foreign they think they can rip you off so bad. Most of the time I am sure they can and do, but it was frustrating. So I have decided that I like the Metro a whole lot better than taxi's and I do not think I will take another taxi alone unless I absolutely need to.

My expired water predicament has been solved. According to Russ the plastic bottle eventually starts breaks down which is not good to drink, but if it is under a year then it should be just fine to drink. Yay! I am going to live :)

Now I just ate some supper and am getting pretty sleepy. I am going to go to bed early today. I hope it works and I can get to sleep and then sleep through the night. Ha, it sounds like I am talking about a baby.

I was reading my Egypt travel book that I got from Cherilyn and it was saying how you have to be careful where you take pictures and what you are taking pictures of. Some museums and tourist sites even charge for the use of cameras. It is also forbiddin to take pictures of army bases, airports, government buildings, bridges or anything that is considered vital to security. I am glad I found that today or else I may have got myself in to some trouble in the future.

I have survived my first week here in Cairo. It will be interesting to get in to a groove, see more things and get to know people better.