Hurghada - El Nasr Street (Second Scouting Trip)

El Nasr Street - Mr Kitchen

So, I was back in El Nasr Street again! Our first stop was a shop that I hadn’t seen before that sold electrical items and was where Jac wanted to buy her oven and hob.

It was one of those surprising shops where, from the outside, you think it will be just a small local business and then, when you go in, it turns out to be a huge shop with all the most modern appliances you could possibly want. It had tons of flat-screen TVs, gleaming washing machines, modern hobs and ovens, sleek air conditioning units, fancy refrigerators… all nicely presented, as well. I looked around for a coffee machine, but they didn’t have one, or not one that I wanted at any rate.

I can’t remember why now, maybe they didn’t have it in stock, but for some reason, Jac was unable to buy what she wanted there, so we crossed the road (with Jac holding up her hand as she went to stop the traffic) to a shop called Mr Kitchen. This was another surprise. It was a smaller shop and from the outside looked more like a local shop; the sign looked old and dusty and you crossed a very rough bit of ground to get there. You entered and the space was quite small, but the appliances were all of high quality, which is somehow unexpected for a shop of that size in Egypt. Only if you looked very carefully could you see some steps (that probably wouldn’t satisfy health and safety requirements in the UK) taking you up to the next floor where they had more items, also of good quality.

While Jac negotiated over the items she wanted to buy, I popped back across the road (ie, ran through several lanes of traffic) to look in the furniture shop on the other side that was next to the Mona Centre and that I’d somehow missed on my last trip. This shop is more like a European shop in the sense that it has a fairly neat exterior and a large interior with show furniture. I’m sure last time it had balcony furniture outside, but this time there was none. I spotted the lamp that I saw last time, although it looked a bit different from how I remembered it. I got them to measure its span and looked at the price tag so that I had the information for future reference.

I took my life in both hands and crossed back over the road to join Jac again, now feeling like a local with all my successful manoeuvring across the road.

Our next stop was a shop selling pots – they can be used as pots or lamps or decorative items. I tried asking for the price of one of them, but was told in return that I needed to see the doctor. I couldn’t get a better sentence out of the guy, who was a bit exasperated that I couldn’t understand Arabic (fair enough!), and I decided in the end that he meant I needed to come back and ask the owner. Jac and I clocked that this was the shop that Kathryn had told us about and where she had bought her lamp; she’d told us that there were loads more round the back and on asking the guy, he showed us a space up the dust road round the corner and there were hundreds upon hundreds of items there. It’s incredible that you don’t find out about this unless you ask the right question!

After this, we crossed the road again to look at a shop selling swinging seats for balconies that I wanted to look at. Again, outside it was pretty dusty, but if you went inside, the small shop front was actually the entrance to a long, thin showroom with some lovely furniture. Also, once more, when negotiating over price, the guy there had to phone the manager to get permission to give a discount (or lack of discount, in this case).

Over on the other side of the road again, we went into a second-hand furniture shop, where Jac looked for a chest of drawers. It transpired that it was owned by a woman and the woman’s husband made furniture and could create what Jac wanted. The woman volunteered to drive us over to his shop to meet him.

So, off we went in her car to Salam Street. This is the street where all the workmen are, so if you need any work done – carpentry, car repair, metalwork, boat building – this is where you come. Salam Street is just off El Nasr Street, but she took us up and down a dust road for no reason other than that she wanted to talk to us and practice her English, we think! We then drove round about a bit and finally arrived in Salam Street which was a hive of activity with all the workshops open to the road and you can see people working at their trades. It turned out that Jac had already commissioned her balcony furniture from this woman’s husband, so Hurghada really is quite a small place at the end of the day!

We returned to her shop – she took a faster route on the way back – and she gave us a can of lemonade each to take on our way, declaring that we were now all friends. So, that’s what shopping is like in Egypt!