Cairo - Day 2 - Dec 27th

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Hi everyone,

STill going on about Cairo and our time there - because it's the only time we would ever go there... first we went to the Pyramids which took up most of the morning and a museum too. John thinks the pyramids are a stack of old rubble but found it interesting - the history etc and fascinating because we were there and had heard about them throughout our lives. It was quite hot there during the day and not freezing like it was the night before at the Sound and Light show.

We had lunch at the Meridien where the Marachi band with bagpiples greeted us on our arrival - very noisy buggers too but nice to be welcomed like that. From there we went another lot of pyramids and then to the Papyrus place to see the beginning of writing paper and how it's made - from there I did a bit of retail therapy - am hoping the picture of my khartoush - a gold piece of jewelry with my name on it in egypt hyrigliphic writing - a Lion (L) 2 reeds (Y) and a water symbol (N) - love it. Checked out other jewelry but ended up buying two paintings on Papyrus. You have to visit us to see them - they will go in OUR house eventually.

Interesting bits for this particular 2 days - was the badgering of the locals selling things, including photos being taken with them, was amazing but no different really to most countries and have seen worse, the rubbish everywhere and people unconcerned about it, dirty old buildings - but guess with being on the Sahara Desert there isn't much they could do about this and any painting of the buildings would be futile. The big busted belly dancer I have already mentioned, the beggars we saw - there is no welfare system there but if you work all your life you are entiteld to the pension. Government workers work from 8am - 1pm - private companies from 8am - 5pm....while we enjoyed our time there and saw so much we feel it was the best $US400 we will have spent as we won't be spending many thousands going there later on to see what it's like!

Today we were going to Rhodes but while writing this - it has been announced that we won't be able to stop there because of the high winds and the Port has been closed.

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