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Red Sea Coast And Other Stories
We wander around the unfamiliar territory of a resort hotel like two kids on their first day at a new school, not knowing what we’re meant to do or how the whole thing works. When researching where to stay round here, we’d had to Google the term “animation team”, as it meant nothing to us. It’s one of the things on our learning curve now. The barman speaks to us in German and is amazed when we say we’re English. He’s delighted, too, whispering that he’s a bit fed up with bad manners and it’ll be nice to have some “polite English” to serve for a change – make of…
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Egypt So Far: The Not-So-Good Bits
Three weeks into this North Africa adventure and we guess that in a way we’ve hit the pause button. Followers will know that we are now in the previously uncharted ground of a resort hotel, out here on the Red Sea coast, kind of into international tourist territory and outside of authentic Egypt. This is most unlike us, we never thought we’d be taking the resort hotel option, not in a million years. Apart from the practicalities – it was indeed hard to find a viable alternative – it’s fair to say that there have been other influences on this decision which mean that taking a break from Egypt isn’t…
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Aswan Days
Sunrise in Aswan is fuzzy. The sand drifting across the Sahara and around the Nile Valley turns everything into an ochre tinted blur into which anything in the distance shimmers in and out of view. And at the end of the day, the sunset hints at beauty, but then turns a strangely pale yellow as if its paints have been thinned with water. In between the two, that ochre tinge to the day rarely departs. We had some pre-conceived ideas about Aswan which have proved to be completely inaccurate. Far from finding an increase on the rustic scale, Aswan has a river frontage sporting a number of hotels, a thoughtfully…
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Further South: Luxor To Aswan
Luxor is definitely quieter as Saturday morning dawns and heralds the start of the sacred month of Ramadan. We’ve been told several times that the first day of Ramadan is a time for families, as first they fast together, and then later celebrate the passing of the first day with a convivial family meal as soon as the sunset call to prayer sounds. True to form, in the last few moments before sundown, the previously bustling streets of Luxor are akin to those of a ghost town: no tuk-tuks, no taxis, no horses, litter blowing down the market street which yesterday was rammed with people. Then, two hours or so…
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Luxor: Days By The Nile
Being a visitor to Egypt brings with it one absolute certainty – you are going to have to live with the utterly constant pestering by would-be guides, taxi and tuk-tuk drivers, boatmen, tour operators, shopkeepers and individuals selling everything from tissues to tat and from jewellery to junk. And of course there’s those selling nothing and just asking for money. It’s a constant barrage that you have to conquer in order to do anything or go anywhere. Add to that a complete mishmash of haggling over prices, blatant attempts at scams and a complex “baksheesh” (tipping) protocol and you have a cauldron of unfamiliar financial dealings which takes a certain…
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Southwards: From Cairo To Luxor
There is a map of Egypt in a street in Old Cairo which displays all of the ancient historical and religious sites across the country. Amusingly, there is a big section coloured red which is labelled “A large area of desert with nothing in it”. As the plane starts to descend on the short flight from Cairo to Luxor, and we drop below the ever-present haze, the vast nothingness is there laid bare for us to see: the entire landscape is one single colour. Yes there are contours and elevation changes, but there is not a single break in the ochre blanket. That same map back in Cairo also had…
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Concluding Cairo: Time To Move On
Having visited parts of North Africa and the Middle East before, we know how common it is to see people spend a whole evening at an outdoor cafe table and only buy one mint tea all night, but here in Cairo there is another custom which has taken us by surprise: bringing your own food. Friends or families will occupy a cafe table all evening, order minimal coffee, tea or even just water, while tucking in to a bagful of food they’ve brought in from the bakers or from a takeaway, or even had delivered by courier to their table. How do these coffee houses make any money!? And as…
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Cairo, Saqqara And The Pyramids
It’s obvious as soon as we wake up that it’s quieter, Cairo’s volume levels have been ever so slightly reduced. It’s Friday morning, the working week here is Sunday to Thursday and today is of course the weekly day of prayer. Traffic is lighter and the streets are quieter, though as we were to discover later in the day, the respite is to be short lived. Absorbing ourselves into Cairo life has meant abstaining from alcohol – much as we enjoy bars, beers and nights out, we have been determined to do things the local way as much as possible. In truth, it’s pretty easy to do here, with the…
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First Days In Cairo
It’s somehow passed us by that BA are no longer providing meals on short haul flights, and it seems a 5-hour flight is classified as short haul. So there’s nothing, and by the time we make Cairo we are living up to our hungry travellers moniker. Cairo isn’t a traffic jam, it’s a complete gridlock, a gridlock of drivers who possess neither patience nor any lane sense and it takes well over an hour to inch and nudge our way from airport to downtown apartment. Dusk arrives on the way, and the air fills with the echoing and haunting call to prayer from the multitude of mosques around the city,…
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Farewell To Cornwall: Next Stop Cairo
As ever, we have loved this visit to Cornwall. Spring seems to have dawned before our eyes, colours have intensified, and Padstow, the estuary, the coast path…have all been as wonderful as ever. We always feel so at home here. We conclude our time here by climbing to the top of Brea Hill, the highest point in the area and consequently one of the best places from which to view the estuary. As we climb, we are again at low tide, vast reaches of golden sand either side of the river’s narrow channel where in just a few short hours water will stretch right across the divide. Windshields and windows…
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