Cairo Real Estate Roundup - Part I

I'm sure that at least one of my regular blog readers is asking, "Did you ever return to Ishmael's home to meet his Belgian wife and have lunch on the 22nd of February?"

Of course!

I called a couple of days earlier than that to insure that Grace had arrived safely from Belgium.  Ishmael said that she had and confirmed that they were looking forward to seeing us for lunch.

We took a somewhat long and circuitous route to Ismael's apartment.  Ishmael and Grace live on the fifth floor of Ishmael's "other building" which is next to the high-rise that I featured in the earlier post.  There is no elevator in that building and they didn't want us to have to walk up.  A small doorway on the fifth floor of the high-rise connects the two buildings.  Unfortunately, the elevator in the high-rise was out of order and being repaired.

After waiting on the ground floor and having tea, we took the repaired elevator up and transferred to the second building.  Here, Grace helps Linda negotiate the passage via a steel plate above the five story gap.


Ishmael had kofta and chicken roasting on the grill.



The large fifth-floor terrace is nicely outfitted for entertaining and they have painted copies of the Belgian and Egyptian flags on the wall to celebrate their marriage.




The dinner was delightful and we had very enjoyable conversation.


The apartment in the high-rise is still available and is an excellent buy at 220,000 EGP for 1184 square feet.  If you figure a conservative ratio of 9 EGP to the dollar, the price is about $25,000 dollars.  You will have to finish the kitchen and bath but that can be done for another $5,000 or so.

This bargain prompted us to look at another couple of apartments - to be covered in the next post.