Location: Ismalia House Hotel, Cairo, Egypt
Miles travelled: 0 miles (still in Cairo)
Weather: 30ÂșC – Hot, dusty and Smoggy
Today we mostly listened to: Dan Brown, The Lost Symbol (still)
So we’re still stuck in Cairo waiting for Monty to be fixed. Yesterday we visited the Egyptian museum – the mummies were incredible, but it was extremely busy and full of tourists. We could only stay for about 2 hours before the heat got to us and we had to retreat to somewhere cooler! We went for dinner on the Nile in one of the floating restaurants – yum. We’ve eaten really well since being in Cairo.
Today was filled with us visiting the British and Sudanese embassies in order to try and get our visa for Sudan. It was all very straight forward. The British embassy, as you would expect, had an orderly queuing system with tickets, the Sudanese one was a complete free for all. With the two of us in the queue, elbows out, we were able to get a sort of pincer movement going on to stop the people behind us pushing forward – it sort of worked. Whilst doing all of this we met a really nice Danish chap called Jonas and ended up going for coffee with him afterwards. He is incredibly well travelled and told us lots about his time in Iran – we’ve vowed to go there one day!
Dinner this evening consisted of a Chinese and Ric managed to get his favourite, crispy duck pancakes – well an Egyptian version of them! We also spent some time wandering round book shops on the hunt for lonely planets for some of the countries we’ll be visiting later. We didn’t find any so the hunt continues.
We’ve done everything we wanted to do in Cairo now and although this is a great city, we’re keen to move on. We’re staying right in the heart of Tahir Square currently and the constant traffic noise is starting to impede on a good nights sleep. Never-the-less it is cheap, has internet and is close to everything so we can avoid the over-priced taxis.
Tomorrow we’ll go back to the Sudanese embassy to pick-up our visas and we might go to the evening ‘light and sound’ show at the Pyramids. Other than that we wait for news of Monty’s repair…..