european art for a change

The great Cairo Museum Tour continued yesterday with a visit to the Mr. and Mrs. Mahmoud Khalil Museum in Dokki. The museum is housed in the villa that used to belong to the Khalils, though it was also later used by Sadat as spare office space (his villa was next door). The museum is, I think, one of Cairo's hidden treasures -- it's full of European art and items (urns, perfume bottles, snuff boxes) from Japan and China. There are originals by Van Gogh, Monet, Pissarro and Renoir. Overall, not the kind of thing I would expect to find in Cairo. But I think what made it truly great was that guided tours came free, so when we entered the museum we got a full tour by Mahmoud, an extremely knowledgable art student who was more than happy to show us around and give us lots of great background information on the paintings.

I took a class on European art when I was studying in Madrid, and have been fortunate to go see many great museums in Europe in the past few years. It was nice that I felt like I was able to identify a lot of the artists and styles of painting and all that in this museum in Cairo. Extra points for my profesora in Madrid -- looks like I learned something after all on study abroad.

Also this weekend, I had a nice Shabbat dinner with friends. We did potluck style, so I contributed this good pasta salad that I do with veggies and cheese. (It's not really possible to get Kosher meat here, so all Shabbat dinners are pretty much vegetarian by default. Though I did have some friends bring Kosher chicken from Israel in the fall, so that was nice. But anyway.) There's going to be a bigger Shabbat dinner next week that was organized by people at the Israeli Embassy, but unfortunately I will be missing it since I will be traveling. I am going to be meeting Michelle in Amsterdam, which I am really excited about. Look forward to many exciting posts about windmills, tulips, clogs and cheese.