Day 19: Cafe Noir & Downtown Cairo

Prof. Denis' Map

Having a review class at Cafe Noir was something new and tasty.  I ordered a Muddy Mocha and it was amazing.  I had some yummy chocolate mocha deliciousness.  We went over nationalities and numbers from 11-100.  1-20 are probably the hardest numbers to learn in Arabic the rest are just based on those numbers so it becomes really easy.

Sadat Station

The first time I went downtown was with a friend of mine, Lisa, who had been studying in Cairo for the fall semester.  She told me to tell the taxi driver to drop me at “Medan Tahrir.”  I remember when I stepped inside the Taxi, I told the man, Medan Tahrir, and he looked confused.  He then corrected me and put and emphasis on the h. This was a great way of reinforcing what I had learned in Arabic class.  It’s really important to pronounce the strong h correctly in Arabic since you can end up saying something completely different.  I went to visit downtown, two other times.  For our downtown tour today, we were split into groups to take Taxis. This time I made an extra effort to emphasize the strong H when we went inside the taxi.  

We saw Madbouli’s bookshop, which had books with a variety of topics, and Groppi’s, at once an elite coffeeshop, Lehnert and Landrock, where I bought posters with beautiful Qu’ranic verses and the Yacoubian building, which easily blend in with the rest of the environment, and from the outside, looked nothing more than store.  When we went inside, there was a sign saying “Yacoubian building” We didn’t get to go in, but did take a handful of pictures.

The sign inside the Yacoubian Building

Outside view of the Yacoubian Building

The famous Madbouly Bookstore

A black cat sitting on a black motorcycle