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Egypt Continued
Day 6: We woke up late and in no particular hurry. We packed up the last few bits, wash bag etc then went into Midan Tahrir to search for batteries, we were followed to a pharmacy on Mahmoud Bassiouni Street by Mohammed, the perfume guy who then expressed him amazement that he’d “bumped into us” there and started asking what we were looking to buy. We managed to put him off and carried on with our shopping, but that’s when it struck me how much he reminds me of “Jumba” from Lilo & Stitch :o) We found ourselves in the clothing district so took the next right and found an office stationery shop so we bought batteries and while we were there, picked up another couple of notebooks for my ever-expanding diary :o) We stopped at the ‘Al-Abd’ bakery and bought some chocolate croissants for breakfast, the smell as we had walked past the bakery just sucked us in. We ate as we walked back to our room to pick up our rucksacks. We took everything down to reception and stored our bags behind the desk for the day, then had a cup of tea while we waited for another couple to finish with the computer.
We got our pictures uploaded to the memory sticks, checked email, I wrote to the ‘rents and we checked the silly plaice for updates before setting off into Cairo for the last few hours. G pulled some cash out at the HSBC and we decided to go to the FelFela restaurant for a nice lunch. As we were walking around the block to the restaurant we were stopped by a man asking if we’d been to Giza and the Egyptian museum, we told him we’d done everything we wanted to do and were going for some lunch before we left Cairo. For some reason (and this is the power of the Cairo street-hawker) we believed him when he told us that we were going the wrong way to the restaurant, and went with him in the opposite direction to the point on the map. He told us that the restaurant wouldn’t open until 2pm at which point we came to our senses and spotted the scam…A restaurant in Cairo, closed at lunchtime?? Not likely. At this point he grabbed G by the hand (he wouldn’t shake hands with a woman
G reckons that by the look on his face we’d offended him, the man who hijacked us on the street, lied to us, dragged us into his shop and then tried to flog us stuff we didn’t want…and we offended him?!?! :-O I will laugh about that for days!!
We found FelFela restaurant a few feet further along the road than we had been before we were hijacked, sat down at a table and proceeded to have a lovely lunch. Stella Beer (Egyptian “Lager Beer” not the “Artois” kind) with tahina starter, kebab & kofta with rice, followed by cold rice pudding. It was all really good and cost us a total of LE 306 (£10 each-ish) The service was good, the toilets were clean and well-attended, the turtles were nonchalant and the tourists were many. We found ourselves feeling like locals, shaking our heads and laughing at the “tourists” like we do at home, but we’re tourists here too :o( There is a great opportunity for people-watching in a restaurant like that, popular with locals and tourists alike we saw a group of Americans with noisy kids, a couple of ex-hippies who came into the place looking totally stoned and “Professor Brainstorm” eating alone looking suitably eccentric. It was excellent!!
After a long leisurely lunch, we made our way to Aladdins ahwa for tea and shisha, he was having a family emergency, his uncle was having stabbing pains in his heart and v. high blood pressure but he set us up in our usual spot before making sure his uncle was ok on the phone. We passed a few happy hours just sitting, smoking and drinking tea, talking about our families, Alaa’s son Amir and his Welsh girlfriend Jen and his life in America for 6 months of the year. After a little while we went to a little shop near the coffee house and negotiated a good price for a very nice shisha pipe set up, a few spares and some tobacco. I also ordered a hand-stitched traditional galabiyya which is black with dark pink stitching. I think it’d be nice to buy a black higehb to wear with it to complete the look, but we’ll have to see what we can find.
We bought a couple of shawirma for our supper and ate them with coffee (sharing the chicken with the restaurant kitties) having another sit down to kill more time. Eventually we had to say our goodbyes to Aladdin and walked back to the hotel to collect our bags. We picked everything up and said goodbye at the hotel before going downstairs to hail a taxi to the station. It was an interesting ride. I wasn’t bothered by the near-accidents at all, I think we were/are both quite relaxed and had a brilliant time in Cairo, but ready to start the next adventure, getting into the taxi feels like a good ending to Cairo and a new beginning to Luxor.
We are at the station now; we’ve found our platform (8) and are having tea while we wait for our train. We have to be on the platform at 20:30 for the train and don’t arrive in Luxor until 06:30, which is much better than the 05:00 we thought before. Aladdin bought me a little posy of roses before we left, which was nice but it’s not really practical to take them on the train so I’m on the lookout for someone to give them to, otherwise I’ll have to bin them before we get on the train.
Day 7: The train journey was good, dinner was basic but tasty, the wagon lit for our carriage was very smiley and by the time we’d finished dinner it was 22:30! The train was late leaving Cairo and we were quite happy because that meant it would be late into Luxor, which was better for us. The wagon lit came and set our beds up, after which we laid down and read our books. It was odd after all this time being so completely separate from each other to sleep, with the cabin set up we were actually physically closer to a complete stranger (separated by a partition wall) than to each other. The night passed slowly, the driver was a bit heavy on the brakes, which kept jogging us awake, compounded by the caffeine consumed during the day meant that sleep was about 5 hours and broken.
Still, we arrived in Luxor at about 08:00 and managed to miss the “first turning left” on our instructions, made a false turn and had to retrace our steps. We found a man who knew the hotel and he got us here. Tbh it’s a bit of a hell-hole of a street, the hotel is down two rough alleyways with some nice looking eateries and a spice shop that smells divine, but the reception is rubble and everything is much more basic than the Arabesque in Cairo. Still, the room is fine, nice big bed, ceiling fan and en suite bathroom. We’re on the third floor with no lift so 54 stairs lie between the exit and us. It’s nicely decorated, although unfinished and there is a distinct lack of surfaces but the roof terrace where we had tea is nice, airy and shady, we have 24 hot water and it’s not as though we have plans to live here, so it’s all good!
After getting checked in, dumping our bags and having our roof-top tea, we left and went into Luxor for a wander round, we were accosted several hundred times for kalesh, taxi and felucca rides, but we waved them all off and went to look at the Nile. The street our hotel is off of is the Sharia El Mahatta, train station st and is a direct line between the station and Luxor Temple. We walked the Corniche El Nil (Nile Road) and looked in shops, picked up brochures for the things we’re interested in doing. We hit a bit of a snag (or rather I did) I went to draw cash out of my account at the HSBC while G was getting money out and my Nationwide card was refused. No idea why since it’s showing plenty of money so I’m all worried now. We will try to do some internet banking at the next opportunity to get some idea what is going on.
We walked into one of the little shopping mall place and identified the place that G got his silver puzzle ring the last time, then walked past “Sindbads” café which looked really nice. We were standing at the rail, lookinig out over the Nile when a man (Alaa0 came over to tell us about his tours on the West Bank to see some of the places we’re interested in. Quite reasonable prices and comparable to what we paid for Ruby to do pyramids in Cairo. We thanked him, took his business card and carried on walking. About 5 minutes later a smartly-dressed young man approached and said “can I please hassle you for 5 minutes?” This made us both smile, our chief complaint about the hawkers in Cairo was the deceitful, under-handed way they tried to trick us into buying things, so it was quite refreshing to have Khaled come up completely honestly to ask for some time to pitch to us.
Again we listened to him and took his card with a mind to arrange a couple of things with him, then walked down the ramp at the end of the terrace to a very nice little restaurant where we sat in the shade drinking tea and looking out at the boats, it was lovely and relaxing. We went across the street afterwards and saw the hotel G stayed in last time, which is a building site now, we got information on Fellahs tent and checked the price of the hot air balloon trips before walking to Viking Air to check the prices at the source. We decided that (as tmrw is Xmas Day) we wanted to do something a bit special so we’ve booked our hot air balloon flight over the West Bank and we get picked up from the train station at 06:00
We took a bit of a detour back to the Nile down some back alleys where we got a lot of “Hello” and “Welcome to Egypt” and the odd “Walk like an Egyptian” which made us laugh…at first!! G got a few compliments and was told he was a lucky man a number of times which was nice. We eventually got back to a street we knew and had originally planned to go to Luxor temple but it was hot and we were dusty & thirsty so we went to Sindbads for a Stella under the trees. Sindbad gave us each a necklace and a papyrus bookmark as a “gift” on the understanding that we then bought a present for Gma, Mum, JJ and KW at the same time :o)
We rested a bit, then went to the loo before heading to Luxor temple. They’ve changed the entry point to the temple, it’s on the opposite side to the Nile now with a huge tiled square outside full of local kids playing football, we found the “Enterance” and paid our way into the complex then started at the avenue of the Sphinxes. Many of them are badly damaged but the effect of them all in a row leading towards Karnak is quite astounding. The current governorate is having the entire 3km length of the avenue excavated and restored which should be amazing when it’s finished. We made our way into the temple yard, amazed by the sheer architectural engineering required to erect the enormous columns and lintels. I had to give up in the end, my brain just couldn’t cope with the magnitude of comprehension required to appreciate how it was achieved. We checked out the mamissi (birth room) of Amenhotep III with scenes of his divine birth. The hieroglyph beside the scene of his conception says:”The fingers of the God touched those of the Queen and his dew filled her body”…Yep, Ancient Egyptian porn!
We also overheard some idiotis English guy in the temple explaining to his companions that “of course it’s not as though the Egyptians carved the hieroglyphics into the stone…they covered the stones in plaster and then carved the pictures in that”
After Luxor temple it was 14:30 so we went back to Sindbads for falafel, tahina and Stella in the sunshine. Apart from the flies it was incredibly relaxing, just as lunch should be :o)
Once lunch was over we walked back along the Corniche to the Mummification Museum only to find it closed until 4pm. We decided to walk up to a bank marked on the map (to get money to pay the hotel) but we got as far as the Luxor Museum without seeing any sign of it. We did however pass the Mecure Hotel which had a ‘Xmas scene’ set up in it’s garden, a “snow” covered hillside with a couple of roe deer (not reindeer) and a Santa on his sleigh. We’ve seen this kind of Santa all over Egypt, for some unknown reason all of the Santa’s we’ve seen look exactly as though they are puckering up their (bright red) lips for a kiss. It’s really very funny.
We couldn’t work out anything else to do with the half an hour before the museum opened so we say watching the sun sink over the Nile, feluccas all over the place it was really very nice. The museum opened on the dot of 4pm and we were second pair into the place. It’s very small, only one room but there are reliefs on the wall detailing how mummies are made, there’s a mummy of a 21st dynasty high priest of Amun who’s name was “Maserhati” (yep, just like the expensive car) they have all the tools and implements of the day on display and an impressive collection of mummified animals including a baby crocodile, a fish (???) and a baboon!!
It was very interesting and instructive as well as being a little bit gross :o) From there we decided to walk back to the hotel, do a bit of washing and then go out for dinner. We got back to the room, I started running water from the hot tap into the sink, only for it to stay cold :o( Just as we were wondering if we had any hot water…all the lights went out :-O This was starting to get annoying and a bit freaky now, we looked out and could see that the entire block was out, which made us feel better, but we hung out on the bed in the pitch dark for a bit in case the lights came back on, but they didn’t. This combined with the location, the lack of hot water and the state of the downstairs was leading us to wonder if we could do better, so we headed out in the dark to get some dinner and scope out another couple of hotels.
We walked across the main road to a bigger hotel (which still had lights) and asked about the price. LE60 = £6.00 per room per night so we asked to see a room and walked up two flights of stairs (the lift was broken) to be shown a room. The entire place was a lot like the hotel we had; same price, same facilities so we asked about the hot water: “at 10pm for 1 hour” was the reply. We thanked him and started to leave the room…and then the lights went out!!
We quit and went to Ali Baba restaurant for some food. I was over-tired by now and things were really getting to me, we didn’t really feel much like eating but we had drinks and more falafel, sat watching the kalesh drivers and talking about our options. Eventually we decided to stick with what we had, figure out the times for hot water, do the laundry in cold water and just deal with it. If the power goes out again we’ll just find somewhere to buy some candles.
On the way back to the hotel we discovered that most of the street hawkers outside the Luxor temple really only come alive after 5pm, we first met a guy doing something strange with a wooden toy made of a circle of chickens, a long piece of string and a wooden ball, but it was his cries of “Look, I have chickens…you wait…BIG Surprise” that got me giggling and will always stay with me. I sorely needed a laugh by then. Our next encounter was our first encounter with “Pop-Up T-shirt guy,” the first of many and he was our constant source of amusement in Luxor. He would be sitting down at the entrance to his shop with a load of t-shirts over his shoulder and two, on hangars in his hands, then when we walked by he would “pop-up” and then follow us down the street saying “lovely t-shirts, genuine Egyptian cotton, not made in China, not made in Taiwan, I give you very good price” (very fast) He was very funny, had a good sense of humour and didn’t mind us laughing at his sales technique at all.
Feeling very tired, but a bit better we came back to the (well lit) hotel, paid the man in reception for our stay and asked when we could get hot water “you should have it all the time” he said so we came upstairs, turned on the hot tap on the sink...cold water!! Just for fun I turned on the cold tap and within seconds we had scorching hot water!! ROFLMAO I was on the edge of hysterical at this twist so I got on with a few bits of laundry which are now draped all over the bedroom, while G made the bed (we had been left clean sheets to make our own bed) and sorted out the room. I had a shower (the taps are the right way around in the shower) and I think we both feel very much better. There are noisy kids outside our window and they’d better be quiet by 10pm as we have to be up at 05:50, for our 06:00 pick-up (the Viking guy texted us a revised pick-up while we were at dinner)
Now I’m going to relax, cut my nails and read my book before I fall asleep.