Its morning and I’m sitting on the bottom sleeper bed on the night train between Cairo to Aswan.  Hopefully by this time we are closer to Aswan than we are to Cairo even though we seem to have spent quite a bit of the time stationary.  I have a little catching up to do since I’ve been a little slack.  Its amazing how much harder it is to keep up with this when you are travelling with a bunch of people.  One seems to have a lot less ‘down’ time.

Dubai
Dubai was interesting although unfortunately we were there on a Friday.  Now normally that wouldn’t be so bad since there really isn’t anything wrong with Friday except in Dubai Friday is like Sunday.  That meant as we discovered that most things were shut.  We caught the ferry across Dubai Creek and walked down the creek towards all the Souks.  It was fascinating on the docks with some of the old Dhow’s turned into floating restaurants there seemed to be hundreds of boats all moored at the docks.  Stockpiled on the docks was a veritable mountain of stock everything from food to fridges and it just stayed there.  I couldn’t help but think that at home that stock would have walked.  Here it doesn’t seem to.

We managed to find the Souks although there were shut and not realising the whole Friday is Sunday thing we decided that maybe we were just too early so negotiated a ride on the creek for an hour on a boat.

It was a pleasant way to spend an hour although we also had seen it since we’d walked both sides of the bank.  One side the night before when we arrived and the other just before we got on the boat.  Still it was a nice way to spend the hour.  When we got back we walked through the souks again and while one or two of them were open they were mostly all still shut.

Still not deterred we though maybe they were late afternoon / evening markets so we caught a taxi to the Mall of the Emirates.  Let me say about the taxi’s in Dubai, they are clean, metered and the driver’s seem friendly with none of the games played they seem so common in many places around the world.  Its kind of refreshing.  We had one purpose in going to the Mall of the Emirates and that was that we wanted to see the indoor ski slope.  You’ve got to hand it to the Emirates but who the heck else would sit there in 45 degree heat and go, ‘you know what I’m going to build a really big modern shopping mall and right in the middle of it I’m going to build a ski slope’.

We finished looking at the artificial slope and walked around the shops a little before getting a taxi back towards the souks.  You guessed it they were still closed.  By then it was late afternoon and we decided to head back to our accommodation. 

The Orient Guest House was a good pick I think, at least if your after something other than the normal ultra expensive hotel room and the service is friendly, certainly recommended if you’re headed to Dubai.

That night for dinner we went on one of the floating restaurants and spent 2 hours dining and talking to our table mates and being entertained by a magician.  Ok he wasn’t a very good magician but it was fun anyway.

Cairo
Early the next day we waved good bye to Dubai and headed to Cairo.

We had a few hick ups on arrival in Cairo.  First up finding the person who was transporting us from the airport to the hotel.  There just wasn’t a little man holding a piece of paper with my name on it.  Other’s at the airport tried to get us into there ‘taxi’ or ‘limousine’ service, other’s with the ‘its ok we just want to help’  yeah right.  Eventually the guy found us.  He’d been the one looking for Christine.  So we sorted that out and that it really was there fault since I had my name correct on the paperwork he had just written it wrong on there end. 

The hotel was another problem.  What ever you do when you pick a hotel in Cairo (if your picking a 5 star on that is) do not stay at the Sheraton.  Its run down, tatty, despite the so called refurbishment that is still ongoing.  It took three room changes and about 2 hours to get a room that some what resembles what I’d booked.  After that we settled in and waited the few hours until everyone else arrived.  We sat in the pub for a very late lunch and beer while we were waiting.  We decided on the beer after looking at the prices of the wines.  We decided beer was the much better choice!

Finally everyone rocked up and that was fun.  I still am having problems believing that we pulled this off!  We all chatted about the up coming trip and other assorted things as one does.  A few beers later and more food we all called it a night.  Most of the guys being really tired from the various flights.

The next day after a late breakfast (serious bad service but I will not dwell on that one) we walked over the bridge to the Cairo Museum.  Now I’m not usually a fan of Museum’s but this is one that I really wanted to see and it was certainly worth while.  Paying the extra to go into the Mummy Exhibit was also worth the extra expense.  Its amazing the see the hair and nails intact as well in some cases the teeth.  We spent half the day at the museum before calling it quits and heading back to check out of the hotel.

Check out was kind of done in two stages since mum, dad and myself had a 2p check out.  With that accomplished and our bags dumped in Lou’s room , since her check out was 4p we then had a leisurely lunch at a Lebanese restaurant overlooking the Nile. 

Its amazing how the time can pass.

We then ended up after a particularly amusing taxi ride where one side or the other of the taxi was nearly caved in, at the train station to catch our ‘luxury sleeper’ train.

Aswan here we come!