Movenpick Giza

... the Nile River. It was fun. Our Egyptian "friend" awkwardly sat with us at our table the whole time. There was performances with Egyptian dance and music. The food was actually pretty good too, although I have an insane headache now and hope it's not anything I ate. Now that I think about it, might be because I was too scared to eat anything during the day at the market. Come on...All the street ...

... of solace is available. That one room happens to be my room, so everyone has been sleeping in my room for the past week because it's physically impossible to fall asleep when it's 97 degrees in the apartment. It's a good thing I have a bunk bed and lots of floor space.

And how about that bunk bed? Well in the tradition of this past week of ineptitude, the bed broke. I was climbing down from the top bunk on the little ladder, and I hear this "crack!" and ...

... discovered that the AC is no longer working in the apartment, so we were sweating after only a few minutes in the heat. It was so hot that my bread I bought two days before was full of mold – disgusting! I’ll definitely be freezing the bread from now on.

Despite the heat, I did a crazy workout with my two Air Force Academy roommates that I am still feeling sore from now. Then we headed over to one of the apartments that the guys live in for a ...

... to her ipod and generally agitated. It was not comfortable and there were too many random noises. My personal sleeping spot had two problems. First, there was not enough space for me to lie out comfortablely and not have to rest my feet on a metal bar controlling the rudder.

But somehow I did fall asleep for about an hour and a half only to be woken up by the most awful squeking sound imaginable. My head was riht by the rubber tire bumpers ...

... one was some kind of pate-esque thing, and did not look appetizing at all), some kind of pastry stuffed with spinach and garlic, and an amazing honey cake. I was so excited for Middle Eastern food. Mmmm. We landed in Cairo right after sunset and were met in the airport and escorted through the process of getting our visas and to the van that was to take us to our hotel. We rode along the longest street in Cairo for awhile, amazed by all the mosques and minarets with their ...

... saqqara. (spelled sakkara in Egypt) at the base of the giant step pyramid. but before we explore, hunger hits and we need to hit up the sakkara cafe. its about 1pm and we get some menus and right before we order, the waiter tells us, "I'm sorry, there is no power" (apparently it doesn't come on til about 1:20pm everyday) so we order cold sandwiches and wait ...

... store to see a demonstration of how it was made.  As we were some of the first customers of the day, we got a VERY brief demonstration but there were lots of laughter afterwards as we were encouraged to buy things. I did buy a couple of pieces and Matt bought a piece of plain papyrus.  Back in the car, we made the final trek to the pyramids.  Bob parked the car and we went to get our tickets.  The tickets were ...

... status" . This time, the best they did for me was a Nile view river but Ray and Chris got the Macdonald view room.


Of course, I quickly snapped pictures of the sunset over Nile. It's my first sunset of the Nile. Excited because it is everything I imagined it to be. Huge, orange but yet not perfect unlike Hawaii. The dustiness and emerging fog blurred it provided the mystic allure that I have always imagined Egypt to have.

... kings and queens – several thousand years old – up close, and in all their decayed glory is quite sublime in the true sense of the word.

From there we went to the Khan el Kalili bazaar for a kabob and kofta lunch. We ate our fill of good meat for less than $10 for the 4 including drinks at the Al Gaty restaurant. Better than McDonalds by a long shot. We had a ...