salah el din citadel

after pyramid day it was salah el din citadel day.  excuse me, but this is only the largest citadel in the islamic world.  the question is, are there in fact citadels in the non-islamic world?  zis eez a mystery.  anyways it has two mosques. TWO.  i took this pic above from the tower  in the wall that surrounds it. it was so cool to go there because no one is allowed because it is crumbling.  but as i am learning in ejjjgypt, it is all about who you know.  and bashir knows his cousin merfat, and merfat has a cousin who knows osama and osama knows a guy who got us into the tower.  this is how it works.  osama is a nice guy. i thought bashir knew him, but he didn't.  he took us around to all the places.  he gave us hats to wear.  bashir's was like a fisherman's with hieroglyphics, which amused me, and mine was a light blue sun hat.  everywhere we went everyone was all "osama!!"

hi.  i'm outside a mosque.

so there are many museums inside the citadel.  one huuuuuge one is a military one.  bashir may have taken a pic of every display.  he may have.  and sometimes i am pictured with a display.  on this particular one i am watching a battle from my balcony.  there were many displays of creative and nasty weaponry.  apparently egyptians are "the best soldiers on earth!"  i kind of laughed about that, but bashir was like "it's true."  there was also a police museum where i was photographed with a display of mudresses, and a carriage museum, which was interesting, and a fireman musem.  bashir loves a good musem.  it's cute.  

you may notice from the pic above that bashir and i are twins.  this is coincidental, but bashir's cousin merfat asked him if we dressed alike on purpose.  this made me laugh.  at one of the mosques i was given every book/pamphlet on islam that they had by a nice girl who thought bashir was a foreigner as well, which also made me laugh.

this is me outside the last mosque putting on my sandals.  i like it because you can see the pretty lights inside, that were in circular patterns.  i also like the way my sunglasses look, truth be told. also the perfect shadow of my sandal on my jeans.  it's nifty.

when i was in the towers with the '3 boys' we were going through narrow stone passages with windows big enough to shoot arrows at intruders, and bashir distracted me so that i walked with my head right into the stone doorway.  ever after that everyone told me to watch my head as we walked through the different passage ways.  

umm.. i forgot to say that i was dressed up as cleopatra and had my picture taken. in front of one of the mosques.  i looked totally ridic.  and i have two 8x10 glossies to prove it.

so basically we had a good time and when it was over we said good bye to our friend osama, and headed down the hill.  on our way out people were trying to sell us stuff.  we didn't pay any attention, but there was this one guy.  he was stuck to bashir like glue, walking with him, keeping up a constant sales pitch, telling his sad story.  he was selling cloth wallets with pharonic scenes on them.  bashir asked me if i wanted one, and i said no.  but the man kept on kept on kept on.  finally bashir says to pick one, so i picked one, and just then osama shows up on his vespa.  then the guy was all "oh you know osama??  i couldn't take your money!"  bashir was standing there with the money held out to him, with a look on his face, like "what?"  and the man is all no, no, no.  and bashir is like "ya but come on, take it." (this is all what i interpret from the scene) finally bashir stuffs the money in one of the guy's wallets and we left.

this is your taste of the salah el din citadel day.  eat it up.