Oh, Cairo!

Well, I finally have the computer to myself. Admittedly, I haven't tried too hard to wrestle it away from Froody. But now I can bring you up to speed on our Cairo stay.

Whatever you opinion on Egypt Air, I will say that their flight attendants worked to get everyone seated and the plane off on time. I think it's the first time I've been on a plane that left when my ticket said it would. Could be that we were the first flight of the day, too, but those stewards do run a tight ship! We got here at 9am on Sept 17, which meant leaving Kenya at 5am. Cairo is an interesting city. It is a sprawling metropolis overflowing on both banks of the Nile. "Downtown" Cairo is on the east bank and that is where all the charm is: ancient mosques, giant bazaars, Coptic and Islamic Cairo are all here. The west bank is a bit more upscale (according to our guidebook) and home to many embassies. We spent our first night in Zamalek, a more Western neighborhood on an island in the Nile.

The next morning we called a family of friends of my sister Dre. She said they would offer to put us up for a bit and, sure enough, they did and have let us stay here ever since. They've even asked us to join them on their holiday to Hurghada on the Red Sea coast and we said yes and are paying for half our stay, thank goodness! When we told them our plan to stay for two months and rent an apartment they were quite vocal and couldn't understand why we would even think of renting a place "for a short time" instead of staying with them. I don't think we every convinced them that it is just our way was Americans. They really are nice and Amani is a good cook, but we had to tell them that when we returned from Hurghada we'd be ready for a place of our own.

Say It With Pictures!

*Our room while we stay with Morad and his family.

*Their daughter Merna, teaching me Arabic and showing off her English. Somehow, we manage to communicate just fine. Once, when I couldn't understand the housekeeper she stepped in to translate, which just sounded exactly the same to me.

*Posing at the juice stand. Morad is back there buying sugar cane juice for us to try. If you're good (or six years old) sugar cane juice will give you a nice moustache!

*Wife and mother Amani with their dog, Nini (well, that's what we say). She loves animals, even allowing herself to be adopted by a street cat.

*Egyptian salesmen are very smooth, much cleverer than the ones we found in Kenya and Tanzania. He did have the best flower essence shop we've been to (took us a while to learn the M.O.).

*Yes, almost all of the women we've seen follow the muslim code of covering themselves up, but that doesn't mean they don't have any fashion sense!

*Al-Azhar Mosque and a bit of the huge Khan al-Khalili bazaar. During Ramadan, Cairo comes alive at night and stays that way until after 2 am. We've even started going to bed "early" at about 1 am and sleeping in until 11 am!

*Only sad thing about Ramadan is that none of the small, local restaurants and food stalls are open during the day. Us non-fasting tourists must find other breakfast alternatives.

*I really love islamic architecture. That was a mosque and this is the ceiling of a house built by a rich man 100 years ago.

*Of course. we had to try sheesha. Neither of us liked it. Yes, mom, it was only flavored tobacco.

*This isn't how you expect to see the pyramids, but it is your fist view of them. It seemed a bit more real than when you are really there. I did finally get to ride a camel! The pyramids are cooler up close and personal.

*At last! Froody gets to buy some street food.

*View from our family's living room window and another from the balcony of the room we're in.

*Oh, I forgot that we went to this giant western-type mall in Nasar city (a suburb of Cairo). Froody took advantage of the air conditioning and free wifi, along with a giant smoothie- taller than his compy!

*Drugs! are cheap abroad. What cost us $50 in America was about 40 LE here, about $8.

*A peek into our new diggs.