Yesterday I went to the Coptic Quarter with Karol, a very English girl named Alexis that we met at our hostel, and Shaima, a local girl who speaks Arabic, Hebrew and English and is friends with Dror (who I stayed with while in Tel Aviv).
We visited the Coptic museum, a church, and a synagogue, and got dinner at a small sandwich place before heading to the Cairo Tower to watch the sunset.
Temporary Travels 
Ben! thanks for sharing these amazing photos. I’m really envious of your trip and I wish I’d done something similar when I was your age. You certainly won’t regret it which already seems apparent from your comments.
I really liked your comments and photos of Petra. Very few placed I’ve visited actually lived up to the billing and Petra seems like a place that does.
How are you finding it these days traveling as an American in the parts of the world that you’ve been? I’ve been following the news of the “Arab Spring” and would be curious to know what you’ve been experiencing.
Take care and enjoy southeast asia. It remains one of my favorite places in the world. Food, sights and people. Before we left Singapore we went on a family trip to Cambodia and it was well worth it.
Be well.
Marco
Hey Marco! Thanks for checking out my blog. You’re right about Petra – except I’d go so far as to say that it’s even bigger than the hyper. At least it was for me. I always assumed it was just the treasury and one or two other buildings, but it;s actually a massive complex.
I’m actually very excited to get to Asia because it will offer more, and more familiar, options for me to eat. Subsisting on falafel, kushary, and potato chips for 3 weeks is actually not as fun as it sounds.
I’m also hoping for a little less hassle in SEA. In terms of traveling in Egypt as an American, a) in a lot of situations I’ve told people I’m Polish because Karol is, and it’s easier just to go along with it when he tells people that; b) almost everyone I talk to here works in tourism, so they’re used to Americans and don’t seem to think any certain way about us (except maybe that we have more money, of course); c) just walking around I get looks for being white, but even speaking American-accented English most people don’t know that’s where I’m from without asking.
So I don’t think being American has much effect here in Egypt, at least on the typical tourist route. In Israel it certainly didn’t matter either, except that some people expressed that they really liked the states (presumably because of our support for Israel). Jordan was the only place I really felt uncomfortable or nervous at times, and that’s not really based on anything except the looks that I got in places which seemed a little less welcoming. It was also the first real middle eastern country I visited, though, so some of that may have been me not being used to people staring (they do it here, too) and my general uneasiness about traveling through a new culture. That being said, I do think Jordanians are a little less tolerant of westerners/western culture.