A lovely restful day!  The best part of this tour was we always had a day of rest at the end of each place we visited for fun stuff.  We swim in the gorgeous pool in the morning, then after lunch, we go into Cairo with Naga and the girls to "shop".

The day is spent exploring the city, we go downtown and find our first internet cafe!  Emily and I are addicted.  We see some high priced bookstores where Naga tells us not to buy anything!  "Wait till Luxor!"  He has a friend/cousin, etc. (his hometown). I long for the David Roberts book (soon come).

He boasts about how many department stores they have, but the supply looks 5-10 years out of fashion.  First he took us to a high priced jwelry shop but we didn't like anything - and couldn't afford it, we had to tell him no dice.  We visit the jewlerly shop where they are making our cartouches.  OSHA was never here!!  where are the HAZMAT sheets? Yow!  Sandals and cigarettes, chemicals and flames, in a dark basement with no proper plumbing.  No face masks, all kinds of drills and sanders.  Things boiling on the ground.  Finally a boy holds the final cartouche under a cascading shower of sand to polish it. No gloves are used by the men and no other protection.  In fact most are in flip flops and shorts and are smoking. The young boy is very handsome.  We all get our picture taken with him.  He takes us for a short walk around the neighborhood - but it starts getting a little seedy and the girls freak out and want to turn around.  Just when it was getting interesting!!! I felt very safe - the people were so friendly and the boy biought me a soft pretzel.  The girls bought chocolates in a candy shop. It's funny there are always so many men hanging out together "working" but not doing anything.  There must have been 12 men in the shop, waiting on us.

I got a scarab ring and a Cleopatra cartouche ring.  All in gold.  It doesn't tarnish.  The silver coffins in the museum were tarnished.  Silver was even more highly prized or valued by the ancient Egyptians because it was harder to mine though.

We found L'Orientale bookstore and bought prints - I wanted all the books including a copy of Aegyptica I saw!! I got a nice Nile view of the pyramids for me and a Karnak temple for my Dad. We had cokes at a high price in the Nile Hilton Mall.  But they were worth it. The bridge back to the Hotel (it is on an island, Roda) had a pair of magnificent lions we had to photograph.  The big revolutionary day in Egypt is the same day as my birthday - July 26th.  There is a street and bridge named July 26th.

It's off to Aswan at the crack of dawn.  Jet lags wakes us up about 2am.  Breakfast is at 4:30am.  When we left the hotel to get on the plane to Aswan we got little hyacinth flower necklaces.  (I never found hyacinth perfume though I looked.)  Mother loses her ticket - I scurry to buy another one while she panics and finally get on the plane.  Flying over Aswan way to the South was like flying over Mars.  It is the land of the Red Desert.  The airport is very tiny.  It is much hotter and drier. We arrive in Aswan and our hotel has a big poo and lovely gardens and an internet that doesn't work. But the bed was hard and I loved it. And the a/c works great! We stop at a bank that looks like a bomb shelter.

The Aswan lake created by the high dam is the largest man made lake  - it's 400 sq. miles. Stunning.  But the dam is rather boring - just a giant statue commemorating the Russian funding of the project.  It flooded all of Nubia and many temples and ruins were lost forever under the lake.  Many were saved by UNESCO thank heavens!

The meals are buffet style for the most part, the girls worry and now is their time to get sick.  I meet a young woman from the U.S. working IT and Environmental policy for the hotel - she says she loves living there and there is a group of Americans that she lives with. She seems happy. Our hotel is right next to the best museum, the Nubian Museum, absolutely fabulous.  Built by the French and gorgeous.

We go to visit the Nubian village by boat.  Wonderful.  I love the Captain and he sings for us!  We float by Elephantine island - tomorrow we will go see Philae and Kalabsha. The Nubian Village is very rustic and poor but beautiful by sunset and in twilight.  The people live so simply compared to the 5 star hotels.  An old man named Mohammed is our guide and he shows us his village and house.  He is in a white robe and turban like everyone in Egypt (male).  He has 7 daughters and had 2 wives (one is dead).  His house is two houses side by side.  His youngest gave us Henna tattos and we bought lovely jewelry she made.  He gave me a scarab as a thank you. He has a pet white pigeon named Mish-Mish which means Apricot who dances for him. He would call "Ba-ba-room, ba-ba-room" and Mish-Mish would come and dance in circles.  He loved that bird.  They had some really (really) scrawny cats.

Henna (washable) tattooes I got in Nubia (Aswan).

His house was open to the sky in the living room.He told us when he was young he and his wife would sleep under the stars and smoke hashish in the water pipe and fly to the moon and back. also to England and back in just one hour!  Then he had children and became responsible.  He worked for the phone company and had two phones.  They live with their farm animals.  But they had a tv. A tree graced their living rooms and ducks wandered about.  He took us to his daughters house all painted in blue to watch the sunset.  The houses are all painted blue and white and yellow.  We were swarmed by children selling trinkets and clamouring for 'baksheesh".  I felt like I was in the 1800's.  The children would try to grab my water fan.  I wish I had brought hundreds. We had tea and Ken smoked from his water pipe.  The tobacco was laced with honey.  They put charcoal in the pipe first and then the tobacco on top.  Riding home on the felucca under that stars was everything you could imagine. Strange dreams that night.

Day 7

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