The Finale, Cairo Style

I hope that you've enjoyed being a part of my journey through Egypt thus far. I sure enjoyed sharing it! The last few days of the trip flew by, of course, but there are a few moments of the blur that stick out in my memory. I guess we got tired of taking pictures after Sharm, so all you get are words here. Lame, I know!

After a sleepy flight, we arrived back in Cairo, to spend our last few days with Lynn and amongst the people of Zamalek. Since our flight was early, the three of us went to see a movie with Shoroke and her husband at the theater. If you haven't seen "Atonement," I should warn you that you'll probably be depressed for weeks after you watch it. It was so sad! But a really good movie and well done. Afterward, with heavy hearts, we hopped in a cab and headed back to the apartment. I dunno how it happened exactly, but we ended up having the best cab ride ever! Lynn said something that led to the creation of a small cab-like bubble of chaos, but none of us remember what. It wasn't incredibly funny, but you'd never have guessed that if you were driving past the cab while we were in it. Keith started laughing, then Lynn started laughing, then the cab driver, (who had absolutely no idea what they were laughing at) started laughing at them laughing, then I started laughing...do you follow? All 4 of us were laughing hysterically for the entire ride back! The cab driver was laughing so hard that he could hardly drive, swerving across the road and stuff! When we arrived back at the apartment, we all had tears rolling down our faces and were still giggling! I think that we probably all really needed a good laugh after watching that darn movie! Definitely something I'll remember for a long time!

The next day, was the day of the infamous spitting incident. If you somehow missed that story, check out the blog post from a couple of weeks back entitled something like "Wrong Place, Wrong Time." Spit shower aside, the Egyptian museum was (and likely still is) amazing! Though not well-organized or labeled, things in there are absolutely beautiful and I still can't get over the fact that they're SO old! There are sarcophagi and tons of jewelry and statues and furniture... Oh yeah, and mummies! While it cost us way too much to get in because neither one of us packed our student IDs, (fun fact: carry your student ID with you when you travel anywhere, it gets you huge discounts!) it was well worth it! There were 2 mummy rooms, each containing 10 or 12 mummies. Some of them didn't make the trip quite as intact as others, but one lady even brought her pet baboon along. A pet baboon would be sweet! You should definitely check out the museum if you're even in Cairo.

After running around the museum with hundreds of students on holiday, we went over to check out the Marriot, which is gorgeous and used to be a palace. We had some drinks and I ate my usual snack of peanuts, which I'm now addicted to. Later that evening, we went to dinner at Lynn's friend's apartment. We met them at the huge dinner the week before, and I guess they liked us, because they invited us to their place for yet another dining experience. Anyway, they're really nice people who have traveled and lived all over the world, have kids our age, a deaf cat, and an apartment overlooking the Nile. The food was excellent, and since I'm stubborn, and perhaps plain dumb at times, I decided to stuff myself with all of the available goodies set before me, including bread and stuffing. Since I've been sticking to a strict non-gluten (and non-dairy) diet, it was a test. I'm still not 100% sure that gluten is really a factor that contributes to my pain, and since I love pasta, I feel the need to test things until I'm sure. It's relatively easy to give up something if it obviously causes you pain, but if you don't know that for sure, it pretty much sucks. Well, I stuffed myself with something ridiculous like 5 pieces of bread and 2 helpings of stuffing, knowing that I could take a vicodin if I was really suffering later on. I went to bed planning on waking up in the middle of the night in intense pain, but, much to my surprise, I slept through the night and woke up the next morning feeling fine! Sweet! Dunno what the deal with that was, but I liked it! Perhaps I can have gluten every once and a while. Good thing I'm a scientist, because a lot more experimentation is definitely called for.

The following day, we did a ton of laundry, and walked around on the island. We walked to one of the boats on the Nile, which is docked because they built the bridges too low to allow existing boats at the time to pass under them. Smart thinking! We ate lunch at a restaurant called Sequoia, which is on the boat and has an absolutely gorgeous view of the Nile in all directions! After packing up some of our things and watching Planet Earth, during which I snuck in a quick nap, we ended up heading back down to the boat to meet up with Keith's friend, Guy, and his girlfriend, Marcia, for drinks. We had a great time chatting and ended up going back to their apartment a few blocks away to hang out for a few minutes, which turned into a long while! Stories were exchanged for hours, beer, sheesha, (and cigarettes for the other 2) quickly disappeared, and finally, when we were all about to fall asleep, (Guy may have actually been talking in his sleep near the end!) we groggily headed back to the apartment.

The following morning, we set up a contraption to get our laundry dry before we had to pack it, and headed over to the Marriot with the goal of finding a gift for my dad and some sort of a ring for me that cost less that $350! Luck would have it, that in the very last shop, we hit the jackpot! I found not only one, but two rings that are really sweet and were only $20! Keith even found a scarf there that is manly, yet feminine enough for him to proudly sport in the states! After, I ordered my last bun and cheese-free burger in Cairo and it was off to the airport.

A full 2 hours after arriving at the airport, we were finally able to leave the ticket counter and hop on the plane. It took them 2 whole hours to find/make our existing reservations and to print our boarding passes! Wow...not fun... Instead of bumping us both to business class like we requested, they gave us a 5% off coupon for the shops in the basement of the terminal. Thanks...with all the free time we had before we had to get on the plane, that came in really handy. (I hope you sensed the sarcasm there.) Due to time changes and all that, we had to overnight in London, which would have been cool had we been there more than 10 hours and had the exchange rate been a little more U.S.-friendly! $350 for a room at the Holiday Inn with 2 twin-sized beds, not including breakfast. Not even any conditioner or a shower cap in the bathroom, I mean come on... :) Nuts! Minimum wage there must be like $60 (U.S. dollars) and hour! It was nice to have a chance to lay down and sleep between flights though, and the weather was gorgeous when we woke up the next morning. After that, it was 9 hours of 4 seat-kicking, screaming little boys, 5 hours in Chicago, then back to Denver.

I guess that pretty much wraps it up. I hope that my stories and pictures do the beauty of Egypt and the "wonderfulness" of the trip, justice, but I'm afraid they don't even come close. All I can say for now is that it was an incredible experience, a beautiful place, and wonderful time, and that I can't wait to go back! Oh, and of course...thanks, Dr. Lynn!!!