Death On The Nile - Cairo III
During "Cairo II" we also managed to fit in a trip to the Cairo Museum and I fulfilled a life-long ambition to see the famous Tutankhamun mask.
It's jaw-dropping and you can get real close to it. You have to have a bun-fight with the crowd, but it's worth it - especially if you shout "fire!" first. (This wasn't a good idea as I completely forgotten about the man outside with the AK47).
This day however, we thought it best to do something a little less intense and chose to visit the Pharonic Village (a living village on an island depicting Ancient Egyptian life). This consisted of a Disney-like tableaux of volunteers doing "stuff" as the boat went passed. However we caught this guy off guard.
He saw the boat a bit late, jumped up as though nothing had happened and continued to "build" his wall. I'm not sure, but I think you can see the smoke from a cigarette in his right hand. Oh, no, it's weed...
I think it was about this point that the auto-focus lens on the Nikon failed. I spent the rest of the holiday manually focusing and cursing.
Our "easy day" turned out to be a four hour visit which included five small museums and an indoctrination into Islam - during which the guide stated "We are not terrorists!". That's nice to know, why are there men with AK47's on every street corner then?
We found out that Ramadan actually ends when the new moon is "seen". So it might be "today" or "tomorrow". So, on the grounds of goodwill towards the people, K volunteered to stand on his balcony naked thereby ending the fasting...
Due to our extended visit at said village, we were only just in time to get the transfer to the airport for the flight to Luxor - from where we were going to start the Nile Cruise. We were slightly stressed. Now, H & K had bought a nice set of glasses which they had carefully placed in their hand luggage. These show up rather well on X-Ray at "customs" and yet-another-man-with-an-AK47 started to open the case. He grinned and simply said "Baksheesh! Baksheesh!".
My wife looked him squarely in the eye and very firmly said, "Sorry, I have no idea what you mean.", there was a pause, he sighed and waved us through. We ran down to the terminal, knickers flapping in the breeze from the open case.
Sometimes it's good to play dumb.
It's jaw-dropping and you can get real close to it. You have to have a bun-fight with the crowd, but it's worth it - especially if you shout "fire!" first. (This wasn't a good idea as I completely forgotten about the man outside with the AK47).
This day however, we thought it best to do something a little less intense and chose to visit the Pharonic Village (a living village on an island depicting Ancient Egyptian life). This consisted of a Disney-like tableaux of volunteers doing "stuff" as the boat went passed. However we caught this guy off guard.
He saw the boat a bit late, jumped up as though nothing had happened and continued to "build" his wall. I'm not sure, but I think you can see the smoke from a cigarette in his right hand. Oh, no, it's weed...
I think it was about this point that the auto-focus lens on the Nikon failed. I spent the rest of the holiday manually focusing and cursing.
Our "easy day" turned out to be a four hour visit which included five small museums and an indoctrination into Islam - during which the guide stated "We are not terrorists!". That's nice to know, why are there men with AK47's on every street corner then?
We found out that Ramadan actually ends when the new moon is "seen". So it might be "today" or "tomorrow". So, on the grounds of goodwill towards the people, K volunteered to stand on his balcony naked thereby ending the fasting...
Due to our extended visit at said village, we were only just in time to get the transfer to the airport for the flight to Luxor - from where we were going to start the Nile Cruise. We were slightly stressed. Now, H & K had bought a nice set of glasses which they had carefully placed in their hand luggage. These show up rather well on X-Ray at "customs" and yet-another-man-with-an-AK47 started to open the case. He grinned and simply said "Baksheesh! Baksheesh!".
My wife looked him squarely in the eye and very firmly said, "Sorry, I have no idea what you mean.", there was a pause, he sighed and waved us through. We ran down to the terminal, knickers flapping in the breeze from the open case.
Sometimes it's good to play dumb.
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