at least they had bats

One of my New Year's resolutions this year was to get out and explore Cairo more. Every time I live abroad, I always get close to leaving wherever I am and realize there is still so much I want to do. So to avoid having that happen here, I decided to be more proactive about seeing Cairo. I have been doing something each weekend for the past few weeks, and this week decided to go to the Fish Gardens, located nearby in Zamalek. Despite the confusing title, the Fish Gardens is supposed to be a nice park near the Corniche on the Nile, as well as Cairo's aquarium.

It was the worst aquarium I have been to, ever. First, there were almost no fish. OK, there were two that were alive. The rest were dead and preserved in oversized test tubes. Not kidding. Basically, the park has a series of man-made caves that have aquariums set into the rock. Almost all of the aquariums were empty -- some had water but no fish, others had no water or fish. Some just had garbage at the bottom, leading N to remark that one particular tank must contain the "crumpled-up chip bag species" of fish. In fact, we found one tank with two large, ugly fish, and another with four turtles. That was it. Then at the end, we found that a number of the tanks contained oversized plastic test tubes with the perfectly preserved remains of the rest of the fish in the "aquarium." Some tanks had like 7-8 kinds of dead fish in them. It was really depressing.

The only bright spot here was that N heard the caves also had bats. Sure enough, standing in the middle of one of the larger, fish-less caves, we did hear the squeaking of many bats up above. Some of them swooped occasionally. We didn't stay too long because none of us wanted to get pooped on.

Luckily, the gardens part of the Fish Gardens was lovely. We brought along some books/magazines/newspapers and spent a nice afternoon sitting in the grass reading, napping, chatting, etc. It was an unusually warm winter weekend here (even in the midst of what everyone is calling the mildest winter in Cairo ever, thanks Global Warming!), so it was great to go out in t-shirts and sit in the sun for a bit.

There is a zoo in Giza that I would like to go to eventually (it's on my list of things to do), but after the disappointment of the Fish Gardens I think I should wait a while before attempting more animals.