Day 28, 1 August 2012, Nairobi (Kenya) to Cairo (Egypt), 4 hours 50 minutes via Egypt Air - Actual seat room in Economy. Don't tell anybody. Cairo is wonderful. Landing at an airport completely surrounded by sand is unusual and very (very) bright. We arrived into the middle of an Egyptian summer - 29 degrees at 8.30 am and intense humidity. So not unduly disagreeable - it is however baffling to the Egyptians we have met who have never experienced humidity like it and have just finished week 1 of Ramadan. We had heard about the insanity of Cairo drivers, but having just left East Africa it seems all a bit ho-hum really - 8 lanes of cars in 5 lanes of space? No prangs, no fatalities - all excellent drivers actually. Our driver from the airport is a dead-set legend at haggling - he told us what his company would charge then told us what he would charge if we went directly with him... a form of self-haggling we think. In any event we will hire him for a day trip to Alexandria while we are here. We arrived at our Cairo home - Pension Roma (downtown - near the Egyptian Museum) and made our first acquaintance with what shall henceforth be known as the Inshallah Elevator - god willing, you will get there, eventually. Apparently never gotten stuck before - but the people load is 3 and between the two of us, the duty free booze and the backpacks we suspect it was our fault when it stopped at floor 2 and a half and the power went off. Staff all duly alarmed but we were out after 5 minutes. We have taken a room in the original hotel and the 4 metre ceilings and crisp white walls looking out onto grand buildings fallen on hard times are amazing. But not as amazing as the bed. It is SOFT! We saw African people asleep on the floor at the Nairobi airport and we know the reason they find it so easy. Every mattress we encountered in East Africa had the consistency of rock. We put our lovely soft mattress to good use, snoozing for a couple of hours before venturing out in search of water and juice and other condiments for our duty free drinks. We hopped from shade to air-conditioning and back again and ended up at Al Americaine coffee shop for a Turkish coffee, baklava and rosewater gelato. For those of us seasoned to paying the Australian premium for everything, ie. too much, Cairo is a breath of fresh air - about US$5 for our little stop. We are becoming veterans at foreign exchange having used 5 different currencies in 4 weeks, not including US dollars. We are now in the realm of the Egyptian Pound - about L6 to the US$1. Thus dinner for two of grilled chicken, pita bread and hommous was L22 or around US$4. We enjoyed it all the more because we waited until the Ramadan fast was broken at about 6.45 pm and sat in a street market and ate alongside many famished local families. The atmosphere was electric in the leadup to the sunset "breakfast" - which seemed odd when we first heard the term, but is of course 100% accurate. It was also in fact, fast! Eating and drinking was allocated about 20 minutes before the tables for dinner were packed up and the owners of the sheesha and coffee shops set up shop -chop chop. Roaming street vendors sold toys for the children and firecrackers went off periodically in counterpoint to the tooting of horns in the street - we walked home through a rain of irridescent bubbles courtesy of a seller of bubble blowers and picked up fresh cherries for dessert, currently being enjoyed from the comfort of our very soft bed. The fairytale of the Princess & the Pea has nothing on me. Salaam Aleikum to you all as we hear the call to evening prayer from the nearby mosque. So nearby I am popping out to ensure we don't have a mosque on our balcony! Ciao - Vivienne & James, "Not Being Grownups" in Cairo, Egypt.