Shopping on King Faisal Street

We were off to visit friends for dinner last night. The friends live in the vicinity of the pyramids but near King Faisal street. I've used the map below before to show where Pyramids street is located. King Faisal is the street running parallel to Pyramids but just a bit north.


If Pyramids is the busiest road on this side of the Nile, Faisal must surely be the second busiest. Faisal is block after block of shops and restaurants. The "fashion center" of Cairo is definitely downtown but choices and good prices are found here.

We left early because of the heavy traffic on Thursday evening, the start of the weekend. After catching a taxi over to the area, we started walking down Faisal. What's this across the street? A lamp store!


Let's take a closer look:


Just about everything here is sold in a specialty shop. Outside of the new mass-merchandisers like Carrefour, store owners specialize in one product line. You buy paint at a paint store, curtains at a curtain store and lamps at a lamp store. This shop looked interesting to me. There are lots of shapes for the lamps and the shades. You might recall that we bought a couple of brass lamps previously. That is a different line. These are more traditional lamps although there are some modern items inside too.

Here is a closer look at the window:


Linda didn't see anything that really fit her decorating style here so we moved on.

We were headed down this street. You can see that it's under construction. That is a Tuk-Tuk headed our way while a couple of fellows push another car in the opposite direction. The Tuk-Tuk is an Indian import. These auto rickshaws have become very popular here in the past few years. They are supposed to stay in local neighborhoods and not cross major streets. Good luck on that restriction! Since many of the drivers are young and inexperienced, they are generally regarded by Egyptian drivers with considerable disdain.


Moving down that side street, we soon came to these two shops side by side. The one on the left sells plumbing supplies, the one on the right sells electrical wares. The photo on the right shows one of the guides to supplies at the plumbing store.


Down the block, there was another electrical store. These are usually easy to recognize because they display a large coil of orange plastic conduit and usually have a large display of switch and outlet faceplates. Faceplates come in a great many more styles here than back home.