Egypt - an education - part 9
Back in the luxury hotel in Cairo - time to relax, take a shower, sit in the sun by the pool and satisfy my enormous thirst for beer with the remaining E.Pounds left in my pocket.
Some of our company, but not too many (we all had enough antiquities by now!), chose to take an afternoon trip to "Memphis" and "Sakkaro" in the neighborhood. Since almost all the material has been carted away by subsequent populations and used as building material for their homes etc., not much remained on these sites - other than the written mention of the important role they played in the history of ancient Egypt, its in situ location has more or less been erased.
In the evening, the tour guide treated us to a dinner at a typical Egyptian restaurant (in lieu of the hotel) that offered native food (again, eaten with trepidation). Later, after stuffing myself and relaxing with the others in the garden (patio?) area, we were treated to entertainment: a belly dancer that, after concluding her several provocative dances, invited others present to make fools of themselves with their pitiful imitations of her gyrations - only the girls, or rather elderly retired women who had perhaps too much beer, were daring enough, and a "Dervish" dancer performing his dizzying and monotonous twirling to haunting and hypnotic music. Waiting for him to lose balance and reel over at the end of his 15 or 20 minutes non stop twirling, was to no avail - there must be a trick to it, like the ballet dancers that also don't loose balance. By the way, I was bitten several times with mosquitoes at that place and wondered if I was going to get yellow fever or perhaps even the fatal Pharaoh's curse that did-in the discoverers of "Tut's" tomb.
We finally returned to the hotel at about 10:30PM to be called for the bus to take us to the airport at 1:00AM for our flight to Istanbul in Turkey where we had a seven hour layover for the connection to Ljubljana. I never knew it was so boring waiting for so long at the airport. I ate, I drank, I read everything I had with me, twice lied down on the seats and slept and still had time to just wander around the confined area.
At the Great Pyramids in Gizza on our first day, if I hadn't mentioned it yet, I bought an Arabian head dress (white sheet with corded rope crown holding it down). Now I thought it would be neat to wear it on the way home (when will I again have that opportunity). No problem in Cairo airport and on the airplane to Istanbul, nor there at their airport, however, after finally boarding the airplane for Ljubljana, we were delayed - the armed security people came on board and wanted MY papers and ID and confirmed that I was NOT a terrorist endangering anyone - hell, all the security procedures were already carried out BEFORE our boarding the plane, but they just had to double check. When arriving in Ljubljana there was not even a second look given to me by anyone prior to my neighbor Ana getting a kick out of it when she met me in the hallway.
One more installment coming up.
Ata.
Some of our company, but not too many (we all had enough antiquities by now!), chose to take an afternoon trip to "Memphis" and "Sakkaro" in the neighborhood. Since almost all the material has been carted away by subsequent populations and used as building material for their homes etc., not much remained on these sites - other than the written mention of the important role they played in the history of ancient Egypt, its in situ location has more or less been erased.
In the evening, the tour guide treated us to a dinner at a typical Egyptian restaurant (in lieu of the hotel) that offered native food (again, eaten with trepidation). Later, after stuffing myself and relaxing with the others in the garden (patio?) area, we were treated to entertainment: a belly dancer that, after concluding her several provocative dances, invited others present to make fools of themselves with their pitiful imitations of her gyrations - only the girls, or rather elderly retired women who had perhaps too much beer, were daring enough, and a "Dervish" dancer performing his dizzying and monotonous twirling to haunting and hypnotic music. Waiting for him to lose balance and reel over at the end of his 15 or 20 minutes non stop twirling, was to no avail - there must be a trick to it, like the ballet dancers that also don't loose balance. By the way, I was bitten several times with mosquitoes at that place and wondered if I was going to get yellow fever or perhaps even the fatal Pharaoh's curse that did-in the discoverers of "Tut's" tomb.
We finally returned to the hotel at about 10:30PM to be called for the bus to take us to the airport at 1:00AM for our flight to Istanbul in Turkey where we had a seven hour layover for the connection to Ljubljana. I never knew it was so boring waiting for so long at the airport. I ate, I drank, I read everything I had with me, twice lied down on the seats and slept and still had time to just wander around the confined area.
At the Great Pyramids in Gizza on our first day, if I hadn't mentioned it yet, I bought an Arabian head dress (white sheet with corded rope crown holding it down). Now I thought it would be neat to wear it on the way home (when will I again have that opportunity). No problem in Cairo airport and on the airplane to Istanbul, nor there at their airport, however, after finally boarding the airplane for Ljubljana, we were delayed - the armed security people came on board and wanted MY papers and ID and confirmed that I was NOT a terrorist endangering anyone - hell, all the security procedures were already carried out BEFORE our boarding the plane, but they just had to double check. When arriving in Ljubljana there was not even a second look given to me by anyone prior to my neighbor Ana getting a kick out of it when she met me in the hallway.
One more installment coming up.
Ata.
posted by Okorn Family at 3:53 AM
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