It's a bird, it's a plane...

 it's... pigeon? (Alright, I guess pigeon is a bird, but for the sake of my intro, let's just let that slide).

Yes, that's right. For tonight's dinner, I had pigeon. But this isn't your NYC "flying-rat" version...this is the high-quality, grain-fed Egyptian delicacy variety (or at least I hope it was for the 55 pound price tag it carried). The meat itself was delicious...very flavorful, not too tough, but not so soft that you felt like you weren't eating anything. The problem was there wasn't a whole lot of meat on the little guy.

My first encounter with edible pigeon came about after a brutal first two days of classes (I lie). I went out with a group of fellow students to a place called Felfela just off of Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo. The place was classy and the service was great. I split a pigeon off the menu with my friend Ben, and got the portion shown above. Add in a glass of red wine (26 pounds), half a banana split for dessert (another 9 pounds), and throw in the 10% sales tax, 12% service fee, AND the tip, and I ended up paying about 90 pounds (roughly 18 bucks). That may sound dirt cheap by American standards, but in Egypt, that's a lot to blow on one meal. In fact, I could've gotten 18 meals of koshari for the same amount of money spent on the single meal. Making my wallet even more depressed was the fact that some of our friends had gone to a different restaurant, ate pigeon, salad, and soup, and paid 30 pounds a piece. Of course, this was the place I had originally suggested, but let's just let bygones be bygones.

Either way, yah I blew a bit of money, but it was a good experience. Afterwords, we went to Cafe Harea, which in all reality nothing at all like a cafe. I believe, in the States, we have a great name for a place like Harea: dive bar. A seedy, hole-in-the-wall, dive bar. It's a filthy, noisy, smoky place, but the Stella's are cheap and it's always hopping with young Americans. I only stayed for a bit and then caught a cab back to the dorms.

Speaking of cabs, and Cairo driving in general, let me just say this: it is a thing of beauty...truly an art form. The best way I can describe it is this: people should be dying every other minute or so...but they don't. I mean this seriously. There are no speed limits, no stop lights (that are acknowledged, anyway), and apparently no significance in the white lines that I thought were supposed to indicate different lanes. People drive down streets the wrong way, they cut-off other cars like it's their job, and come within inches of getting into accidents on the minute, every minute. But what looks like chaos and disarray to you and me is actually a near flawless system. That never ending barrage of horns? It's actually a beautiful medley that can communicate everything from "Hey I'm going to be driving through this intersection without stopping...please let me by!" to "Hey stupid pedestrian! Get out of the way our I'll run you down." And you know what? It works.

The first couple times you ride a cab, maybe you'll be a little freaked out by the fact that you're hurtling down a busy city street at 40 mph's, without a functioning seatbelt, and in a car that's probably as old you. But after a while, you don't even notice the insanity... it just becomes normal. I've considered shooting a video during a cab ride, just to give you all a feel for what it's like, but I figure the one time I do will be the one time the cab hits a parked car and I go flying through the windshield and die. Don't worry, I probably still will, and the camera will probably still be intact after the accident.