Well an early rise again and we made it to Cairo....have to say..Royal Jordanian...nice....very liberal with the Champagne prior to departure. Cool flight, didn't know that we couldn't fly direct to Cairo...had to fly around Israel. Saw Mount Nebo (buried Moses there), the river Jordan, Jerusalem, all of the Dead Sea, tons of history down there....and a lot of desert. Flying into Cairo....flew right by the pyramids...nice touch.
So no probs when we got here....our guy met us and off we went. First stop hotel, checked in and no probs. Then we took off to explore around the shops of Giza. Shauna wanted to check out the cotton sheets. They are nice to sleep on no doubt about it....fortunately for us they didn't fit (they is not cheap)....too small for the bed. Ohhh well, bags couldn't handle it anyways.
We checked out a few bazaars and of course another perfume shop. This is quite a process....it's a sit down affair tea, coffee, and a whole demonstration of the virtues of the pure essence that they make here. No alcohol, additives, etc etc etc.....my noise is so mixed up right now my burger I had for supper smelt like a eucalyptus tree.
We hooked up with Mohamed at a café after that....just sitting around smoking a shesha (water pipe). It's the thing to do around here. So we got to sit and drink tea and hear some first hand politics...again very interesting.......I just nodded a lot and was educated as to why the problems exist in this part of the world.
On another subject the tea here is great...if I got it right doing one pan on the Shesah is equivalent of smoking 21 cigarettes, that can't be good for ya....and everybody here does it, even women. They sit at these street cafes smoking and drinking coffee or tea. Been drinking a bunch of Turkish/Egyptian coffee....is very good. I was told though that the best coffee is only obtained from true Bedouins in the desert. They have a unique way of prepping it, it was described as being like cocaine....one sip and you are hooked. Going to see if I can find it back home....
So we started to head back to the hotel as the sun was setting over the pyramids...and Shauna saw the glint of another jewellery store....great. Took a while to get out of there....neat thing was I got a golf shirt with my name spelt in hieroglyphics, kinda gawdy....but hey when in Rome.....Shauna skipped out of the store though quite happy....
As the sun set over the Pyramids we crawled back to the hotel thru the traffic....you can't believe how it works here....its crazy. Donkey carts, horses, camels, cars, semi's, busses all sharing the road, and a lot of the aforementioned by the way. Either way we made er back.....now its time to get ready for the trip home...its gonna be a long day. We need to leave for the airport at 2:30 am.....ick, not even going to bother to try to sleep, Shauna is already sawing logs.....Lufthansa has the lie flat beds so I am hoping to sleep on the Frankfurt leg. Still haven't got a lie flat bed on Air Canada as of yet...crap how long does it take to update the planes...so not holding my breath on the Montreal leg.....just hope junior from last time isn't on the same flight...
So got a little time to reminisce, seems like we have been gone for a month and its time to head home. This place really is amazing, and worth the efforts taken to get here. If you hate history, come here and it will convert ya to a History Channel guru guaranteed. We made some cool friends out here and the people have been so nice....and I have yet to smell Camel dung here (we were warned). We got some amazing memories and stories to tell when we get back. The video will be a challenge....got way too many pics....
Hope this blog got a bit of it out there, was fun to plunk away. Kinda forces you to remember some things you may otherwise have forgotten about.
Well....next update might be from Montreal's time zone if all goes well (we do have some time to kill). Till then.....