hunting season

I spent a lot of time this weekend apartment hunting, and let me just say that I did not miss this particular activity at all. After more people needed to move around than originally thought (it's a long story), we ended up re-doing the housing situation a little, so M and H will move in with our friend K, and I will move in with A1. We know how much we want to spend and where we want to live (Zamalek is a must), so now all we have to do is...find something.

We are not overly picky, and I think our apartment wish-list is pretty reasonable.
1. mattresses (some beds come with these cot-like things...gross)
2. washing machine (there are plenty of dry cleaners in Cairo, but laundromats -- not so much)
3. air conditioning (last week in september and it is still 90+ every day. my friends claim it gets cold in the winter, but I'll believe it when I see it. and besides, I'm here through June and don't plan to move again, so it will just get hot all over again)

This does not seem unreasonable. We have called several simsars (rental agents), and some seem significantly less shady than others. One of them yesterday informed us that he had no 2-bedrooms in our price range, and then took us to see one that was about 2000 pounds over our price limit (that's like $400, also known as a ridiculous amount of money in Cairo). When we refused to pay anything near that and went to leave, he suddenly "remembered" that he actually did have something in our price range. Ohhhhh. Seeing more apartments tonight (after a company-sponsored iftar, aka FREE dinner!), so keep your fingers crossed for me.