Oct 28 – Muhammad Ali Mosque, the Khan El Khalili Bazar, Churches, and the Egyptian Museum

First stop today was the Muhammad Ali Mosque.  Muhammad Ali Pasha was the ruler of Egypt during the early half of the 19^th century and is considered the father of modern Egypt.  He had this mosque built.  He is actually buried in a tomb in a corner of the courtyard (people are not usually interred in mosques so that makes this one very unusual).

The courtyard featured a tower with a clock in it.  The clock was a give from the French and the Egyptians reciprocated by giving the French an obelisk from Luxor that stands at the Place de la Concorde in Paris.  The clock apparently has never worked.

The interior had beautifully decorated domes and interior.

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More Muhammad Ali Mosque
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The mosque sits on the top of a hill with great views of the city.

From there we wandered around in the Khan El Khalili Bazaar.  Lots of fun, blingy items to ogle and enjoy. Joan bought an alabaster piece but other than that we didn’t do any shopping.  We did all stop for a bit of refreshment at a tea shop.

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More Khan El Khalili Bazaar
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We visited the remains of a Roman Tower...

on the way to St. Mary’s Hanging Church.  From the outside it didn’t look like it was hanging from the flanking building.  

However, there was one small window in the floor that allowed us to look down where we could see that the building was suspended above the ground. 

We also visited the Cavern Church where tradition says the Mary and Joseph and baby Jesus stayed for about 3 months after they had fled to Egypt.

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More Cavern and St. Mary's Hanging Churches
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Todays tour had us driving around much of Cairo so we had a few interesting photos from the drive. 

And walking to the churches took us through some narrow, windy lanes lined with shops. 

The Egypt Museum was saved for last.  It is pretty massive and we only saw a small part of it.  Khalid pointed out a few of the things on exhibition and gave us history and information about them 

The best part of the visit was the King Tutankhamen exhibit where they had his face mask and two of the coffins.  Unfortunately, no photos were allowed in this section of the museum.

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More Cairo
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We were all pretty tired by the end of the day and it was good to get back to the hotel.

We ate dinner at the Turkish restaurant in the hotel.  Had a nice visit with everyone.  Then it was off to bed as tomorrow we leave for Alexandria.