Port Said, Port Fuad

On Friday I decided on a whim to travel to Port Said for the weekend to see what it was like. I took the bus for 23LE at 1:00pm from Turgoman Station in Cairo, arriving in Port Said around 4:00pm. Port Said (in Arabic pronounced bur sai-eed) is a city of a half million people, located at the junction of the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean Sea. After the construction of the modern canal in the 19th century, Port Said became one of the world's most significant ports. Although it's no longer as important as it once was, a large amount of intercontinental freighters and cruise liners pass through the harbor every week. For this reason, the whole city is a duty-free zone.

Along the road to Port Said.


I took a taxi from the bus station to the center of town. I had a lengthy and nearly fluid conversation in Arabic with the driver; it's always very gratifying to be able to talk for a long time in Arabic without any sort of awkward communication issues. I walked around for awhile before finding the hotel I had been searching for, the Mereland Hotel. I only stayed there because of the cheap price of 40 LE, or about $7 USD. It was pretty dirty and I wouldn't exactly recommend it as a place to stay.

Various shots from around Port Said.




View of the tiny alley from my hotel.



After walking around the city for awhile longer, I headed to the north of the city to check out the beach. The beach was disappointing. It was free, but therein lay the problem, as it was very dirty and uninviting. On the west side of the city was a popular restaurant called El Borg (The Tower). It was a nice sit-down place packed with Egyptians. I ordered shrimp soup and fried fish. They brought me the above, along with various side dishes and sauces. It was a real feast - I counted no less than twelve plates of various foods on my table at the same time. The food was delicious and I would highly recommend this restaurant.

Public beach.



El Borg Restaurant.


Strangely enough, there were at least a hundred balloon people lining the streets, promoting something.


I spend the rest of the evening wandering around the city. The city was bustling with shops of various types, especially electronics and clothes. The street that runs parallel to the canal, Sharia Palestine, consists almost entirely of cell phone shops, strangely enough. Most of the women here were dressed in conservative Islamic clothing, and a few of the men wore the galabeyya robe. However, it seemed as if most of the city-goers were wealthy or at least had a comfortable standard of living. Port Said serves as a popular tourist spot for Egyptians in the summer, but I went during the off season, so there weren't any to be seen. I did not see any Western tourists in the city either until the next day, when two big cruise liners docked into the harbor. I got the same question "are you from the ship?" numerous times that day from the locals.

Saturday I woke up early to try to find a place to enjoy breakfast, but I realized that none of the restaurants opened until after noon. I had to settle for coffee and cake at a hotel cafe. Afterward I walked to the west of the city to see the military museum, but the interior was closed for construction. I was able to see some of the exhibits on the museum lawn though, including equipment from the 1956 Suez Crisis and the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. There was another museum of some sort in Port Said, but it too was closed.

Outside the military museum.



I had another enjoyable meal for lunch at a place called Abu Essam, not far from the beach. Nobody else was in the restaurant at the time, but it was a great place. They served a feast here too: seafood soup, shrimp kofta, and about a half dozen other plates of salads and sauces. About halfway through the meal I was served a bowl full of some ground leaves and oil to go with my meal. I was served the same thing the previous night at El Borg. This time I asked what it was, and my waiter told me it was "just for entertainment," whatever that was supposed to mean.

Various shots of the canal from Port Said.





Afterward I walked down to the ferry station a short distance along Sharia Palestine. Conveniently enough, the ferry is free, and it passes across the Suez Canal between Port Said and Port Fuad every five or ten minutes. Cars can cross via the ferry too. Port Fuad is a separate city which used to serve as a suburb for Europeans who worked at the port, and it still bears a certain resemblance to European architecture. Aside from some green residential areas and a good view of the canal, there wasn't anything to do in Port Fuad.

Shots of the canal from the ferry.



People getting off the ferry.


Port Fuad.


After I felt as if I had seen the whole downtown of the city several times, I took the bus back to Cairo at 7:00pm on Saturday. Overall, Port Said was a nice city, mostly clean with some good restaurants and shops. It was interesting to see the ships passing across the Mediterranean Sea and through the Canal. It wasn't stunningly impressive, but it does make for a good day trip out of Cairo.

They don't let you form your own opinions here...

al-Rehab

Thursday was a bit interesting as it was the first time I had hung out with Egyptian AUC students. Although the Egyptians students at AUC are polite, they really don't show any interest in befriending the international students. There is a certain amount of segregation between the Egyptian students and the international students at AUC. However the two Egyptian guys I met were interested to learn some of the things I was doing in the gym, and afterward one of them had a kickboxing class in al-Rehab so they invited me along.

We drove to Rehab, which was my first time in the neighborhood. It's a wealthy suburb very close to New Cairo. I had seen many vacancies in Rehab when I was apartment-searching, as it has a reputation as an up-and-coming area. Like New Cairo, the streets are wide and all the buildings are new construction. However everything was clean and relatively quiet, like Maadi. Everyone here was very wealthy by Egyptian standards. We went to the sporting club in Rehab. Sporting clubs in Egypt are the equivalent of country clubs in the US, where wealthy families go to learn and play sports in an exclusive environment. The sporting club was the size of a college campus, with manicured lawns and numerous sporting facilities, and even an on-campus mosque. Marwan took me to his kickboxing class, where the instructors were friendly and helpful.

Afterward, we went to a fateerah shop in Rehab, set up similar to the way a pizza shop is in the US. Fateerah is essentially deep-fried pastry with various toppings; in this case, various meats, vegetables, and cheeses. Marwan and Abbas were heavily influenced by Western culture, and wanted to know everything about life in the US, and wouldn't let me speak Arabic around them. Later we dropped Abbas off in Nasr City, which was also my first time there. Nasr is a suburb sandwiched by Islamic Cairo and Heliopolis. It's not as wealthy as Rehab, Maadi, or Heliopolis, but it was fairly clean and very busy. Nasr is the location of CityStars, which is a giant six-story mall which reputedly rivals some of its American counterparts. Marwan drove me home to Doqqi after.