November 10 - Back Online...For now

Catching up on last day in Cairo -  Everywhere one goes in Cairo, there are the tuktuks, zooming around in traffic like swarms of demented bees.  I have often wondered what it would be like to ride in one.  The tour company who has been taking me around actually has a little tuktuk trip.

it goes around the back streets of the village of Giza, built literally in the shadow of the Pyramids.  So off we went, hurling ourselves into the fray.  Quite hair raising actually, but lots of fun.  I feel sorry for people who have to manoeuvre the freeways in them!

Here's our tuktuk embroided in a dash to the death with the tuktuk in front of us.  I'm not sure who won - had my eyes closed at the time.  I have a couple of little vide clips that don't seem to want to park themselves on this page, so I will leave them for now

Last night I came down to Luxor on the Sleeper Train.  I had timed the tuktuk ride for that particular afternoon because the Giza village is very close to the railway station I needed for the Luxor train.  The whole thing went withour hitch.

No photos of the station - modest Muslim ladiles don't like their pictures taken at close quarters, nor do the burly Kalislhnakov-toting mililtary gentlemen who are always on the prowl at the station.  A charming young couple with a pretty little girl gave me a cup of tea, laced with sugar and perfectly horrible, but of course I drank it down with a cheerful smile.

The private cabins on the train are very comfortable, and after the steward brought a fairly decent dinner and made up the bunk, I fell into bed and slept very well all the way to Luxor, where I was tossed out onto the platform at 6:00 this morning.

The hotel sent a taxi for me and off we went to the Marsam Hotel, a famous West Bank fixture.  This hotel was founded many years ago by a wily old Bandit called Sheikh Ali.  He was up for every sort of robbery, bust especially digging up artifacts to sell on the black market.  Eventually, he realized there was greater profit to be made from going into partnership with the archeologists, rather than trying to beat them at their own game,  He built this hotel, which has been the home for dig teams for years now.

Most of the other residents here today are archeologists, including the team doing such an amazing restoration job on the mortuary temple of Amenhotep III.

A very airy and comfortable room, very high ceiling with a fan.

The gardens here are beautiful.  I am sitting there right now, and about to go inside to see if I can post this (Internet seems to work well, but only inside, close to the server.)