A Trip Down the Nile...A Day to Ourselves...

We woke up Tuesday, February 18th to a beautiful day in Cairo. We awoke just before breakfast at the cafe was to conclude so we hurried down and enjoyed breakfast.  

Then we sat in the lobby for a bit taking in the beauty of this hotel. 

There was a gift shop and we headed there to see what they had for sale. We found post cards for the grandmonsters and determined to go ahead and buy them and get them started in their journey to the states. We also got a souvenir for Michael, our son-in-law. When we went to pay, they only accepted Egyptian pounds. Hmmm...we did not have any of these.  We left our purchases with the young man in the store and headed to the desk to see if we could exchange some American dollars for Egyptian pounds.  They told us there was a bank around the corner.  We headed to the bank inside the hotel.  It turned out $1 US was equal to 7 Egyptian pounds.  We new what we needed for our purchase, we added a bit to that so we would have some Egyptian currency on hand, then we went back to the store and purchased our items. 

Claude and I settled back in the lobby. I left Claude filling out postcards and I went in search of some photo ops of our hotel.

It was a sumptuous place to stay.

When I got back to where Claude was, he had completed the post cards. I took them to the desk to get stamps and get them in the mail. Alas, this lovely hotel had no postage stamps. I had to go back to the gift shop to purchase stamps.  I told the young man I needed 6 stamps to mail the 6 post cards. He fished around in his drawer and pulled out some stamps.  Then he started pasting them on the cards. They still lick their stamps in Egypt.  I couldn't believe how many stamps he put in each card.  He still didn't have enough for two of the post cards.  I would get them mailed on our cruise ship. Mind you, these post cards have still not made it to the states.

We made our way back up to our room and checked out the WiFi for a bit as we were not sure what we would find the rest of our trip. The room had a little balcony and we stepped out on it for a few pictures.  The contrast between real life in Cairo and the fantasy life we had in the hotel just slapped one in the face.

 

Our plan was to take a  nap in the afternoon. Then head for dinner. Then await the arrival of our tour group to find out the plan for the next day.  We thought this would put us clearly on Egypt time and help with jet lag. That was the plan.

Alan called us really late in the evening. He said we had to be up very, very early to take a bus to our plane. We were all packed and tried to get some sleep.  Alas, I really watched the clock until wake up time. So much for adjusting to Egypt time.  It was a valiant effort but we would just have to adjust during the trip.