Salma Hotel Cairo

I arrived at the hotel at 4am was woken on the Holy Day at 5am with chanting across the city calling the people to prayer. this went on again for another 2 hours at lunchtime. I joined the hustle and bustle of Cairo to see the sites. First stop the bazaar of Khan al Khalili where I practiced my haggling skills - I am afraid I am not very good at it! I then explored the Islamic part of Cairo visiting the mosques and Citadel of Salah Al Din and then the Old Cairo (formerly known as Babylon) exp...

The train pulls into Giza Station just past 9:30 AM, over 1 1/2 hour late. We gather our luggage, pile into the bus, and it crawls through Cairo traffic arriving at the King Hotel about an hour later.

We unload our luggage and await our room number. Then we are informed that we are now split into two new groups and our group has to move to another hotel further away from downtown. It is another hour before we can check into our room at the Salma Hotel, but we are told "it's Egypt, you ...

I hate Egyptians already I went to bed last night at 8pm, but took ages to fall asleep because of the traffic noise outside. Still I got 11 hours of sleep, making up for the 4 hours I had the day before. If I was unsure how incompetent Egyptians were before, I certainly know now. I took clothes to the hotel reception at 9am, to be told it'd all be finished within 2 hours (washed, dried, and some stitchings done so I'd no longer have 2 pairs of jeans with big holes). They kept delaying it, wi...

* first real camp site
* outside Cairo is better than insite that 20-million "mother-of-world"
* egypt museum
* Coptic Cairo: churches
* Pyramids and tombs
* Downtown

Met the family and got settled into their place. Had a sleep in the morning but after that we were synched to Cairo time. First night we did a fellucca ride on the Nile at the city centre. 2nd afternoon we drove with kids for a camel and horse ride up to a hill behind the Pyramids. Awesome sight. Third day visited Mike's aunt Georgette in her shop close to the city centre. Later drove with Helene to Ain Sukhna, a Red Sea resort about 140kms east of Cairo. Dinner at an Italian restaurant with ...

Colourful sound explodes in front of me, the many small orange violins play a quick and high tune, weaving in and out of the heavier and more solid sounds of the green viola. Suddenly from the right, a deep double bass resonates – a large blue and grey fish, cruises past. Below us now, we discover the gentle song of the harp, a huge orange, soft coral that looks like an over-dimensional fan, gently sways right and left. I turn on my back, floating effortlessly due to the great invention...

Cairo Day 1: Well as some of you know cairo is mental! traffic and people yelling at you for a taxi, baksheesh, buy this that and the other thing as well as offerring camels for yours truely. We went to see the Mohammed Ali mosque and the citadel on our first day, its on what appears to be the edge of the city and is an amazing spot to hear the call to Prayer. You can hear many Mosques call to prayer overlapping each other from this high vantage point and the sound of yelling and beeping from...

WE finally made it back to Cairo after a very long drive through the desert, the Suez canal and along the coastline, I had forgotten the traffic in Cairo madness and horns! our driver said he loved to drive in cairo, I guess its a bit of a challenge and even a bit of rally driving at times. Good for them! so we spent a rather sore muscled and unfortunately sore bellied day back in cairo, having sucumbed to the travellers curse. One more hell ride to the airport and we were off, saying goodbye...

The flight from Singapore to Cairo was SOOOOO long! 10 hours when you are extremely tired is not very pleasant. We arrived in Cairo at about 10.45pm local time but to our time clocks it was 6.45am. We had tried to sleep a bit on the plane but it was broken so instead of making us feel better it had the opposite effect. We had no problems at the airport, which was totally different to the experience Alex and I had in 2006. It is amazing what a difference that it makes when you can say a few Ar...

Todays highlights included the Dodgy Lift, Cairo Museum and nearly being run over by a bus! After finally getting to sleep at around 2.30am (a bit longer for me as Mum was snoring loudly), we were awoken at 4.47am by the call to prayer. My Egyptian friend had arranged for our room to be away from the traffic so it would be quiet but instead it is beside a mosque! The call to prayer sings out 5 times a day and is now a tape recorded message (refer attached) in the cities as it is more melodic ...