hitting the streets

Well today Connor was ready to do some driving! We headed out a little before 9am to cruise the route from our hotel in Heliopolis, northwest of downtown, to Maadi, the town to the south where we are planning to live. In total it was about ten miles. We strategically chose Friday morning, as it has the least amount of traffic by far. We set out in our rental car (a Toyota Corolla!) with an old-fashioned map as well as cell phone GPS in hand. The ride down was a breeze; we were even the only foreseeable car on the road at times. We found ourselves in the center of Maadi quickly. Maadi, however, is a labyrinthine collection of tree-lined streets that jut out at odd angles from each other. An Egyptian colleague of Connor's said that Maadi, a major haven for expats, was set out deliberately to confound any local burgler so that he would not be able to escape before the police nabbed him! While this is probably an urban legend, the amount of taxi drivers who have to ask for directions repeatedly in this part of Cairo is pretty high. We got a little tangled up among some roundabouts and one way streets, but with the help of good old sat nav we made our way back north onto the highway. To be fair, the streets are mostly numbered, which is helpful, and there is a much higher percentage of labelled streets than anywhere else I have encountered so far. We're looking forward to the day when we can wind our way around the roads with stealth and precision! Connor did a truly masterful job at interpreting the maps and I tracked our little moving blue dot as well as possible.