Cairo. Day Two: the Egyptian Museum and a horse ride

We woke up late again trying to get rid of the last of our jet lag. A quick pastry for breakfast and a 1 hour taxi ride later and we were in downtown Cairo. The first thing you notice when going to the Egyptian Museum is the 7 story building right next door that is blackened from a pretty serious fire. This is the only remaining relic of the old Egyptian government. They literally burnt down his building. A striking reminder that less than two years ago one of the greatest modern revolutions started in this very square.
We enter the Egyptian museum around noon, dismiss the overly persistent tour guides, and start to walk around in reverse chronological order. With thousands and thousands of pieces in the museum, most of the older relics seem to follow the same basic motif: "here I am in my cool pharaoh hat, here's my wife, she's touching me". Seriously. The coolest part of the museum for me was the embalmed animals which included a fish, alligator, and a dog which still had fur on it!
We finished up at the museum, and walked across the bridge towards the tallest building in Egypt, the Cairo tower. Taking care to get a little lost on the way, we show up sweaty tired and hot. The view was stupendous (you could even see the pyramids!) but we were ready to move on to our next stop: lunch.
Our guidebook recommended a hipster Egyptian restaurant close to the tower, and a 10 minute walk later, we sit down in a dark room with ritch fabrics and low seating. We order an Egyptian sampler (which turns out to be the highlight of the meal) and three traditional Egyptian dishes. It's so much food we can hardly finish it all, so well fed and well rested, we walk around the local area to admire its notable architecture.
We hop in a cab, pantomime sphinx (which is harder to do than you might think: call over a friend and try it) and take another long, hot cab ride past our hotel and to the stable district.
I know what you might be envisioning: large sweeping pastures with rows and rows of well cleaned paddock and noble steeds. Nope. Any normal dirty paved Egyptian street + untethered geldings eating a mixture of dirt, leaves and shit = stable district. Our guidebook gave some good advise: find a purveyor with healthy looking horses and haggle him down to 100 pounds per hour per person (13 bucks). And that is what we did.
We wind our way through the streets for 20 minutes until we get out in the open desert when our guide yells a firm "up up! " and the horses respond with an open gallop. My mind switches from "oh look at the pretty desert" to "oh god, when did I forget how to ride a horse". I quickly get him back under control and coax him for a little more speed.
We ride for 10 minutes through the desert, until our guide takes us into a small stop where the tenants take our horses, force a Pepsi in our hands and shove us down on a beat up couch that's missing one cover. They are overly kind hosts which means one thing in Egypt: they're going to want a large tip at the end. We drink the soda and they take some photos of us (including a couple on a camel which are hilarious) with the pyramids in the background. They heckle me for a larger tip but our guide dismisses them, and gets us back on our horses and our way. On our way back, he offers me a cigarette through our large language barrier. While I decline, I'm glad he's with us, even if he too is working for a tip.
Back at the stable, we pay our fee, take a scooter taxi back to our hotel, and after a quick dip, turn in for the night.
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