Back to Cairo

Ok, foreign keyboards are hard enough, but signing into Blogger on an Arabic computer is damn confusing. The user name is on the right, the password is on the left. It's backwards, and I can't read anything at all.

Anyway, minor quibble, but here I am. I am just popping online briefly on our free day back in Cairo. We took an overnight train yesterday from Luxor and got in this morning, and then I took it pretty easy, going back to Khan al Khalili market to do some shopping (because I hear it's pretty rubbish in Jordan, so it is now or...Dublin) and also to Coptic Cairo, to get a feel for a completely different kind of Egypt. This is the Greek Orthodox area, and it has tiny winding streets and no cars, so it felt like a whole other world, even though it was only a few stops on the metro from our hotel in downtown Cairo. Surreal.

In Luxor yesterday, I discovered that donkey riding is way, way easier and more pleasant than camel riding - either because you feel like there is less distance to fall, or because they surprisingly smelled less, or because I had a mellow, lazy donkey who was keen to stop just...whenever, so I never felt out of control. Except when I wanted him - I named him Paco, for lack of knowing his real name - to andale up the hill. he preferred to whine and complain about how LONG and STEEP the hill was. Sounds like me on a bike ride.

Anyway, I've been all over - hot air ballooning over the Valley of the Kings, to see several tombs there, to the Colossus of Memnon and Karnak Temples, and on a felucca sailing up the Nile for an entire day and night in the most relaxing, no-agenda day I've had in ages. Plus, it was sailing up the NILE, stopping now and again when we got hot, to go swimming. In the Nile.

Life is getting surreal, but I love it. To add to that, tomorrow we drive south again, and then climb Mount Sinai.

The next couple of days we get to lounge by the Red Sea, and maybe do a spot of snorkeling.

It's so strange to get to do all of this, but I love it.