The Ladies Visit the Cave Church of St. Simon, the Tanner

Following their tour of Coptic Cairo, the group moved on to a magnificent but less frequently visited church high in the Mokattam hills just east of Old Cairo and overlooking the city.  Visiting this church, which seats up to 20,000 worshipers requires a trip through "Garbage City," an interesting tour itself.

Although constructed in quite recent times, the Cave Church has an interesting association with St. Simon, the Tanner dating from the 10th century AD.  You may be interested in the story of Simon and his faith moving the Mokattam Mountain as related at this webpage.  

The entrance to the Cave Church is rather unassuming.

 

  

 

Approaching the entrance to the underground cavern, signs of the beautiful stone carvings that adorn the church are seen, along with some bible verses, both in Arabic and English.

 

The interior of the cavern reveals the tiered seating and extensive statuary carved into the limestone mountain.

  

 

 

 

 

Following the tour of the Cave Church, the group spent some time visiting the City of the Dead, the vast necropolis that lies below the Mokattam hills with graves dating back many centuries but containing the homes and supporting shops of thousands of current residents.

 

 

Google Lens allows the easy translation of Arabic inscriptions on some of the more recent graves.

Among the buildings in the City of the Dead are several mosques (we visited three smaller one a few years back - follow the link at the bottom of blog post) including this large one that the group toured.

 

  

 

Heading toward downtown to find dinner, decorations and fanous lanterns for sale were an early reminder that Ramadan is coming.  It will begin in about a month on February 18 and change life and commerce schedules for the following four weeks.

 

  

 

The group headed for Elakaber in the Shoubra area just north of downtown where an excellent dinner was prepared.

 

 

More photos related to this post and the previous post can be found at the Flickr Album located here.

A previous post about the Cave Church from 2016 can be found on this blog here.

A visit to three other mosques in the City of the Dead can be found on this blog here.

 

The Ladies Visit Coptic Cairo

After spending the first two days of their visit touring the Giza Pyramids, both the old and new museums and the Sakkara pyramid and archeological site, the intrepid travelers set out on Thursday morning for a tour of "Old Cairo," with particular focus on "Coptic Cairo." 

Now many might think of all of Cairo as "old" but the term "Old Cairo" refers to a district along the eastern side of The Nile a bit south of the current downtown area where the Roman emperors Trajan and Diocletian constructed their seat of government in the late BC- early AD centuries.  Contained within Old Cairo is the walled area of Coptic Cairo and the newly established and impressive National Museum of Egyptian Civilization, home to the mummies since 2021.  

But, enough of the geography and history, let's get to the photos.

The visit began at the entrance to Coptic Cairo where guide, Roshdy, described the remnants of the Babylon Fortress which once guarded this entrance to the old city.

 Visible in the background here is a station of the Cairo Metro line.

 

  

 

 Looking beyond the ancient towers, we will pass through the entrance to Coptic Cairo.

 

It is easily forgotten that in the early days of Christianity, Egypt was a strong outpost for the new religion.  The Coptic church still claims about ten percent of Egypt's population and visitors are sometimes surprised to see the occasional cross atop a church popping up among the many mosques.  There are even a few predominantly Christian neighborhoods in Cairo.

The "Flight into Egypt" by The Holy Family as briefly described in the Gospel of St. Matthew is memorialized in some detail via a good deal of oral tradition and maps throughout Egypt display the details of the route. 

 

Entering into the walled area of Coptic Cairo, the group moved through this passage photographed a few years ago and into one of the churches.

 

The group also climbed the stairway to St. George's for a tour of that church.

 

St. George is found in a traditional pose at the top of the stairs.

 

The Church of Abu Serga (The Church of Saint Sergius and Bacchus) is a particularly noteworthy stop in Coptic Cairo since it was built atop one of the places where the Holy Family is believed to have rested.  In addition to its beautiful interior, a trip downstairs to the lower level reveals the actual ground crossed by the travelers.  A well providing water for the Holy Family can be observed from the main floor.

 

 

 

 

Our visitors descended into the lower cavern to see the original stones from a closer perspective.

 

  

 

Following the visit to the highlights of Coptic Cairo, the group moved eastward into the Muqattam Hills behind the Zabbalin village known as "Garbage City" to visit the spectacular Cave Church in another Christian setting.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Ladies Visit AbouTarek Downtown for Lunch

After an initial day touring the Pyramids and the new Grand Egyptian Museum, Linda and her traveling companions crossed The Nile to stop  at Tahrir Square and visit the classic old Egyptian Museum.  

 

A good many items are still exhibited there, including this very old statue of King Cheops, builder of the Great Pyramid.

 

Guide Roshdy offered explanations as the group visited various highlights in the ornate 1904 building.

 

Surprisingly, there was no great demand to see the oldest existing example of Roman poetry that I had been so enthusiastic over just last year! 

 

At the end of the museum tour, the group was ready for lunch at the nearby famous Koshary shop, Abou Tarek. Koshary is the beloved national dish of Egypt and many visitors make a special trip to Abou Tarek to sample it.

 Like most Egyptian restaurants, seating is on the second floor with the kitchen located near the entrance on the ground level.

 When the fresh Koshary bowls are delivered to the table, all the necessary sauce and flavorings are right in front of the customer; but how do we mix and add them?  

 

 

No problem, your waiter will demonstrate:

 

 

 

 

A First Post from Cairo, 2026

Due to my slow work and low priority given to this travel blog, I haven't finished my updates on my fall trip to Montana and Wyoming, yet, here we are in Cairo once again.

To update my small number of followers, we left Minneapolis on January 4th via United Airlines to Newark where we boarded a Lufthansa 747-8 for Frankfurt.  If you thought (as I did) there were no longer any passenger 747s in operation, you were almost right.  Lufthansa, however, still has 19 in operation!  It was a pleasant and relatively quick flight, only 7 hours, to Frankfurt.  Linda had booked us into "economy premium" seats - a small 4 row section around Row 24 with wider seats and real silverware.

The final four and a half hours from Frankfurt to Cairo put on the ground late in the afternoon instead of at our usual 2:00AM arrival. 

I had a window seat on the final leg but clouds blocked any scenery until we passed the African coast at Alexandria.  There was not much to be seen on the approach to Cairo so I can only offer this picture of the rather monotonous modern architecture of the Cairo suburbs near the airport.

 

Once we arrived at the apartment, our new ceilings and freshly painted walls proved quite attractive but we soon had a "punch list" for the contractor in charge.  Here I am standing with an electrician restoring light to our kitchen archway.  In the foreground is Ahmed, our project manager.

 

We headed out to dinner the first evening aiming for Abu Khalid on the street behind our building; I turned us left by mistake and we ended up at a new restaurant (only open for a week) called TEMPO.  It proved to be quite good.  Linda had a nice eggplant tagen with a baba ganoush appetizer and I ordered a mixed grill with my tahini.  We even had ice cream desert.  I usually labor over these photos with Photoshop and post them on Flickr but for this post, I will simply embed them here on Blogger.

 

 

  

 

Without getting into all the details, I have no cellphone service but Linda does.  Getting our landline restored so that we could have Internet access was quite a hassel.  My new HP laptop fails periodically with a BSOD (Blue Screen of Death).  Linda's three new traveling partners have arrived and she/they are out their third day of touring today.

I have hopes of finishing my Montana/Wyoming blog posts and interspersing them with Egypt post soon.

Welcome to our winter home!

 

 

Fur Trappers Rendezvous, 1825-40 -- Getting There, Part 3, Pompey's Pillar

Pompey's Pillar National Monument lies about 35 miles east of Billings, Montana.  Although Linda and I have passed this location several times in the past, we always seem to have passed the monument outside of visiting hours.  I decided to make sure to stop and visit it on this trip.  This meant doubling back on Friday, the second day of my trip to the Fur Trappers Rendezvous sites.

As I pulled up to the entry gate, I could see the "pillar" brightly lit by the sun in the east.

 

This large sandstone rock formation contains the only physical reminders of the Lewis & Clark expedition of 1804-1806 commissioned by the third United States president, Thomas Jefferson, to explore and document the relatively unexplored land west of the Mississippi river.  

 

When Lewis & Clark returned from their trip to the mouth of the Columbia River after wintering at Fort Clatsop near present-day Astoria, Oregon, the two leaders split up at Travelers Rest near Missoula with Lewis proceeding along a northern route and the Missouri River and William Clark taking a more southern route and following the Yellowstone River.  The two rejoined at the junction of the two rivers.

At Pompeys Pillar, the visitor has the opportunity to get a nice glimpse of the route traveled by Clark and see his signature carved into the sandstone.  The stone formation is named for Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, (nick-named Pompey) the eighteen month old son of Sacagawea who had led Clark through the Bozeman Pass to the Yellowstone.

 Clark recorded his impressions of the site in his diary as follows:

“this rock I ascended and from it’s top had a most extensive view in every direction. This rock which I shall Call Pompy’s Tower [named for Jean Baptiste ‘Pomp’ Charbonneau] is 200 feet high and 400 paces in secumphrance and only axcessable on one Side which is from the N. E the other parts of it being a perpendicular Clift of lightish Co­loured gritty rock on the top there is a tolerable Soil of about 5 or 6 feet thick Covered with Short grass. The Indians have made 2 piles of Stone on the top of this Tower. The nativs have ingraved on the face of this rock the figures of animals &c. near which I marked my name and the day of the month & year.”

Barely visible in this closer view of the stone formation is the viewing stand that I would climb for the same view of the Yellowstone Valley that William Clark noted in his diary.

 

The Visitor Center is relatively new, completed in 2006 to celebrate the bicentennial of the Lewis & Clark expedition.  The center is operated on a seasonal basis and is closed from October through April.

 

The climb to the top of the pillar is accomplished via a wooden stairway.  About two-thirds of the way up, William Clark's autograph is enclosed in a wood and glass case.

  

 

 

The view from the top is well worth the climb with views both to the east and west.

 

For tourists unable or unwilling to climb the stairs, a nice view of the Yellowstone river is available at ground level.

 

Also, at ground level, is a replica of several of the autographs on the pillar, including Clark's.

 

A series of informative signs at ground level, titled as the "Yellowstone River Walkway" provides an informative description of this portion of Captain Clark's return journey.

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

One other sign depicts the deterioration and restoration of parts of the Pillar.  One strong earthquake and this monument will be gone.  See it while you can.

 

An exhibit outside the visitors center documents a bit of the life Montana's indigenous nations and their lifestyles.

 

 

Close by, an artist's conception of the river scene as it ay have appeared to a variety of travelers in 1873.

 

More photos at this Flickr Album.