Back to the Big City

We flew from Aswan to Cairo this morning on EgyptAir, then drove for about an hour across the city to the Giza area on the West Bank of the Nile River. Even though we were here only a brief time earlier, our arrival was like returning to familiar surroundings. Cairo, as a result of our earlier visit, had become "recognizable."

Our accommodations for the last three nights of our tour are at the Amarante Pyramid Hotel, once the palatial home of a famous Egyptian movie idol from the 1920s. The hotel is located between the two major roads leading out to the pyramids, both streets lined with lively retail establishments, apartment houses, coffee houses and restaurants, Unfortunately each store is seeming responsible only for the public sidewalk right in front of the shop itself. Neither do there appear to be any general standards enforced regarding how that area should be maintained, Consequently pedestrians -- who often are forced out directly into the busy stream of traffic crowding the street from curb to curb -- need to pick their ways very carefully as they move along the edge of the roadway.

Heidi and Lee went out for a walk this afternoon into the midst of all this chaos but came back earlier than expected because of the difficulties associated with just walking from place to place through all the dust and the noise and the uneven (and sometimes treacherous) terrain.

Back at the hotel we shared a pizza for a late lunch, then decided to go swimming -- only to realize that the drop in temperature by some twenty degrees between Aswan and Cairo made the pool water feel awfully cold with the temperature of the air "only" in the high eighties!

This evening we all went to a home-hosted dinner provided by a divorced woman with two sons who lives in the same apartment house (one designed and built by her architect father) with her parents, a brother and an uncle (together with their respective families). Gharda works with the Swiss Movenpick hotel chain in a managerial position and, besides serving us a delicious buffet dinner, freely and candidly answered all our questions about her life, her family and her views on a host of other subjects. It was an enlightening evening, one of those special touches Overseas Adventure Travel does so very well.

Since, aside from the evening's dinner, this was pretty much a "down day" for us, Lee has raided Heidi's camera for her best images, presented here as a kind of highlight reel of our experiences thus far from her point of view. See how many of the scenes you can identify on the basis of what the blog entries have told you so far ...