Cairo: September 2017

Listening to the sunset call to prayer over Cairo. Is beautiful.

Now I must share what I overheard at dinner last night in the Moghul Restaurant of Mena House Hotel. Three Americans – two women somewhere in their late 30s, one man around the same age, clearly on a group tour because I heard them introduce themselves to the two older American couples at another table when they came in.

One of the women at the three table said to the other, "At first, we thought it was really bad opera."

"Yeah," the guy said, "but it was their time to pray."

Cringe, cringe, cringe! Omg, really? Really? You couldn't make it up. So, apologies to my American roots, but I've been telling people here, when they ask, that I'm British. I've never done that before, but I do have dual nationality, so feel I can get away with it. I don't want to be tarred with that brush!

If yesterday was all about visiting sites – Giza's Pyramids, Saqqara's tombs and pyramids, Memphis's statuary – today was about downtown Cairo. The citadel, the Muhammad Ali mosque, the Cairo Museum, Tahrir Square, the Nile Ritz-Carlton (for lunch, natch) – and driving around looking at street life and the extraordinary range of buildings, from those that don't look as if there's more than the weight of the bricks above keeping the ones below in place, to Parisian-style mansions overlooking the Nile, to crazy stuff, like little kids driving donkey carts down the side of highways and a truckload of who knows what in sacks and four men sitting on top. Oooh, they'd never allow that back in Blighty.

My driver, Khalid, and guide, Sam (princeofthebes@hotmail.com)

Once again I had the services of the most enthusiastic guide ever, Sam, to decipher everything for me, from why there was a cluster of people outside the police station (you need to have a criminal record check before you can take a job) to how a clever sculptor made a dwarf embalmer look normal sized in a little sculpture in the museum (put him on a pedestal and had his children stand in for his legs).

Then it was back to the Mena House Hotel for a quick change into swimmies and a lounge by the pool. Ah... It's not a bad life, is it?

And tomorrow? Off to Luxor and a week-long Nile cruise with Orbital Travel. I've been told internet connection is at best patchy along there, so the next post may be after a little wait...