Today, Sunday, our 4
th day of the trip, we got a day off from the site-seeing and tourist stuff to relax and recoup.
A lot of us had been s
ick at some point in the first few days, so it was a good day to recover and relax and as Dr. Dennis suggested – sleep.
Yesterday we went to Coptic Cairo; also called Old Cairo.
Ahkmed was our tour group leader for the day, and he took us to a bunch of different places like churches, temples, and a mosque.
The first thing we saw was the “
Hanging Church.”
This gets its name because the church is actually held up by palm trees.
Inside the church there was a lot of symbolism in the paintings and structures.
There was also a place where you could look below the church and actually see the palm trees that are holding it up.
The boards in the picture are for the floor we were standing on, but the palm trees are visible underneath it had held up the church.
After the hanging church we made stops at the Martyrdom of St. George, the Syria synagogue/temple, and finally at the mosque. The mosque we went to was the first mosque in all of Africa. It’s a place where people come to pray or to just relax when they are stressed or whenever they want. There is a call to prayer five times a day that is sung from the mosque. The call to prayer is similar to a hymn, and is loud enough for the surrounding city to hear (I have a recording of one of the calls to prayer). Although there are plenty of mosques in Cairo, so sometimes you can hear more than one. Anyways, these mosques are the most relaxing places on Earth. I can only try to describe how relaxing and soothing it is.
There is a center courtyard type area with a gazebo that is open to the sky. During the day it is extremely hot thou
gh, so there aren’t usually people out in the sun. The courtyard is surrounded by pillars that extend for a long ways, with plenty of space to sit or walk around and relax. I loved the mosque, and the atmosphere it had. The mosque is very religious, so some of the women in our group were required to put on a gown that they provided so that they were completely covered. Also, there were dividers within the mosque so that the women could go behind them and pray separately from the men. A similar segregation during praying happened in the synagogue that we went to, because the women would sit in the balcony while the men would sit downstairs.
Later that night, after the day in Coptic Cairo, we went on a felucca (sailboat) ride on the Nile. This was also ridiculously relaxing. It felt nice to just sit back and be cooled down by a breeze while sailing down the Nile. After the felucca ride, we all walked back to the hotel, which was about an hour long walk, and then set out to explore our neighborhood on Zamalek a little more.
As I said, today is our recovery day. We leave at 3 pm to go to Abdu’s house for dinner. And then have the rest of the night off.
ick at some point in the first few days, so it was a good day to recover and relax and as Dr. Dennis suggested – sleep. Yesterday we went to Coptic Cairo; also called Old Cairo. Ahkmed was our tour group leader for the day, and he took us to a bunch of different places like churches, temples, and a mosque. The first thing we saw was the “
After the hanging church we made stops at the Martyrdom of St. George, the 
gh, so there aren’t usually people out in the sun. The courtyard is surrounded by pillars that extend for a long ways, with plenty of space to sit or walk around and relax. I loved the mosque, and the atmosphere it had. The mosque is very religious, so some of the women in our group were required to put on a gown that they provided so that they were completely covered. Also, there were dividers within the mosque so that the women could go behind them and pray separately from the men. A similar segregation during praying happened in the synagogue that we went to, because the women would sit in the balcony while the men would sit downstairs. 
Later that night, after the day in Coptic Cairo, we went on a felucca (sailboat) ride on the 
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