Into the City of Cairo

The first thing one notices on the journey into Cairo is the traffic. It puts Sharm El Sheikh taxi drivers in perspective and shows them to be peach faced youths in comparison to these drivers.

One of the first things we are shown by Our Own Private Egyptologist is this beautiful building. It is the first mosque to be built in Africa.

We go straight to the Egpytian Museum and a look around the treasures there. Photographs weren't allowed in the museum so there are no pictures of us next to desicated mummies or us pretending to be Pharohs in the museum. That didn't happen anyway, we behaved ourselves perfectly. We have, as a result of our trip to this museum, changed the way we pronounce things. It must be the way that Egyptians learn to speak our language or something but the way our guide and Egyptologist said Sphinx and text came out as "sphink-es" and " teck-est" We continued to refer to the Sphinx as the Sphink-es for the remainder of the holiday, much to George's irritation.

After the Egyptian Museum, we went to lunch ON THE NILE. My impressions of the Nile as it runs through Cairo are that this is a VERY clean river. People still fish, wash and do their laundry in this water. There are no rivery smells and it comes across as a beautiful passage through the city. This is a building on an island in the middle of the river. I can't remember what this building is, but we told George that it was the monkey island. I'm sure the building has something to do with the former British occupation of Egypt.

This is a couple that were fishing together.

Some laundry drying and a picture to show you how clean it was. One guide (not ours) dipped his hand in and took a drink. I recognised one of the weeds growing in the water. It was cambomba, something I purchased reguarlary for my aquarium at home. Cool!

Our lunch was on at a riverside restaurant and not actually ON the Nile. It was still lovely and cool.

Its me looking more than a little bit rumpled. Hat on for protection from the beating sun and the ever present bottle of water on the table in front of me.