Day One in Cairo

It's been a fairly full last few days. Of course I shoulda' coulda' woulda' several things but I didn't. Fortunately I have some friends who are so generous and so gracious. Despite several checks with the post office I couldn't send my suitcase full of winter clothes back to Australia, but Kurt and Barbara are taking care of it for me. Dennis helped me to pack by sitting there Sunday morning repeating over and over "that's interesting... now pack your bag... Focus" Robin and Dennis and I enjoyed a last lunch at the Ironwood before Dennis drove me to the airport. "Always the airport driver - never the driven." Hopefully Dennis will be taking one of those drives for a flight to exotic climes soon.

It's sunset on my first day in Cairo. It's already been a full day. I arrived in my hotel at about 2:30 this morning slept and after breakfast of bean stew, bread, cheese and fig jam washed down with very sweet tea I visited the American University in Cairo to see two delightful friends of Robin, Mushira and Magda, the Executive Director and Director of Human Resources respectively. They share with Robin the same generosity and sense of humour. They had meetings and presentations to attend so I didn't stay long. We're all meeting up again for dinner tomorrow evening. It promises to be another delightful circle of friends.

My hotel is in the middle of "downtown" Cairo, close to the Cairo Museum. I think it must have once been a prestigious apartment building at the turn of the century, with a grand marble foyer off the street and stone stair cases, four-metre ceilings and little anterooms off great halls. I think very little has been done to the building or fittings since it was first built... Still, you get what you pay for... Most importantly, the room is clean, has a comfortable bed and the staff are all very polite and helpful. The rooftop dining room, where I'm sitting with another chai as I write, is a ramada (open space roofed with palm branches for shade) letting in the cool breeze and I can hear the chants from the local mosque along with all the noise of the street seven floors below. I have my own guide... Ibrahim says he's passed up a small group of German tourists so that he personally can accompany me to the Pyramids and Saqqarrah tomorrow morning. It turns out he's a part of the package that I've signed up for. I'm taking in all of the "must see" sites that an Egypt first-timer must see over the very short two weeks I'm here. I was pleasantly surprised at the cost - the manager, Abdulah (Jeremy), is very good. I've always thought of package tours as kind of tacky but here I'm going to need a lot of things explained to me, and I'm not at all sure that I could organise myself my current itinerary at even three times the price.