Copyright © Tanya Piejus, 1998

Monday 16th November

Today was not our best. The morning started badly and it went downhill from there. We got up early and had a very pleasant, if cold, swim in the hotel pool. Because the water flow in the shower was so weedy, we decided to run a bath. After happily splashing about for a while, we pulled the plug then heard and odd noise which I at first thought was the cleaners coming in to do the room. Then we realised that the strange sound was in fact the bathroom's waste-bin tapping against the tiled wall. Wondering how this could be so, we peered over the edge of the bath to find the bin doing a merry pirouette in about an inch of water that was rapidly slooshing out into the bedroom. We rushed into the bedroom to rescue our belongings from the tide. Our next instinct was, of course, to photograph the water oozing Blob-like towards us. Back in the bathroom, I realised that the draining bath water was coming straight back up out of the overflow in the corner of the room. I stuffed the plug back into the plughole and stemmed the tsunami of grubby bath water from totally engulfing room 522.

We could do nothing but fall about laughing before putting on serious faces and reporting our leakage to reception. They were remarkably blase about it and just said 'Do you want another room?' They gave us the key to 416 and we hauled our gear, with the help of one of the lads, down to the floor below. Unfortunately, 416 was the Black Hole of Calcutta. Outside the window were unreachable shutters blocking out the sun. The room was pokey and dingy and the sink didn't drain after I'd brushed my teeth because the built-in plug didn't work. I don't know what it was, but I suddenly felt extremely miserable and was on the verge of tears. The weight of the last ten days sank down on me and I just wanted to shout 'I'm a human being!' or something similarly melodramatic. We went back to reception for a moan and they promised that someone would come and look at the drain in 522 and we could go back in in the afternoon. It wasn't ideal as the carpet would still be wet, but at least they knew how we felt. It's strangely unfortunate that we actually had one of the twenty or so best rooms in the hotel when we were in 522.

I wanted to get out of the gloom and into the sunshine so we took a walk along the Corniche and sat by the Nile away from the touts. We also checked out the duty free shop and found that we could buy a bottle of Stolly for US$5. On the way back to the hotel we stopped at a little cafe for tea. The locals were still having breakfast and we watched the man making up sandwiches of fried strips of aubergine, taamiya, tahina, fuul, mini cucumbers, pickled onions and feta cheese. When we went to pay, we decided to get a sandwich each for lunch and he made two up for us after giving us tasters of all the ingredients. We sat on the sun terrace above the pool for the rest of the morning and ate our sandwiches which were very tasty if a little greasy from the aubergine.

When we back to reception to check the progress on our room, we saw Ahmed from Amigo. He'd obviously heard about our watery drama from the receptionist and basically told them to give us a decent room and we got the key to 104 on the proviso that we could go and look at it then come back and say whether it was OK or not. We checked the air-con, sinks, drains, shower pressure, lights and view in bloodhound-like manner and agreed that it would do, so moved our stuff yet again down to the first floor.

At 3 pm we went down to meet up with the group going to Karnak and Luxor temples. Debra and Isaac had changed their minds about going but Lorraine and Nick were there so we had someone else to chat with. Before we got in the bus, we harangued Ahmed about our train tickets again and they said they'd get first class tickets if they could but we'd have to speak to his friend who wasn't there at the time.

Karnak temple looked just as good in daylight as it did in the dark and we were able to look at the engravings and colours more closely. It really is quite a work of art. The guide was very good and we had 40 minutes to ourselves before heading off to Luxor temple. The sun was sinking and casting a beautiful soft orange light on the statuary and forming long black shadows behind them. The last pink rays were glowing on Luxor temple when we arrived and really brought out the natural hues of the granite and sandstone. Strangely, the pharaonic temple has a mosque in the middle of it. Even more strangely, its front door is about 30 ft off the ground because the temple was originally buried under a thick layer of silt from the Nile. Part of the temple was added by Alexander the Great whose cartouche adorns the wall alongside the phallic fertility god, Min. The sanctuary was then commandeered by the Christians who plastered over the hieroglyphs and painted The Last Supper on it instead. This mish-mash of religions makes for a unique and beguiling effect. We were still there after full darkness had fallen and I took some pictures of the temple and avenue of ram-headed sphinxes that used to connect it to Karnak. It was an odd feeling sitting there in such a beautiful, peaceful place knowing that only a year ago 68 people just like us were gunned down there in cold blood.

We eventually meandered back to the hotel via strong, expensive beer on the Winter Palace hotel garden terrace looking at the Nile. We saw Ahmed and his friend who called us over to talk about the train tickets. He said first class was definitely full and we could only have second class tickets and a E£17 refund each, this time. We said that we knew the fare was E£31 so the differential was E£20 each. He insisted that it was E£34 and we'd get the tickets in the morning. Ahmed was still hassling about the cartouches, so I put in and order for four, and Scott one for his Mum, but refused to pay for them until we'd seen the tickets. We went to bed still stewing because we knew full well that they were still trying to stiff us, but felt powerless to do anything much about it as they already have our money. To give them their due, Amigo have done pretty well for us up till now but this kind of petty conniving does them no favours. This and the hassle over our hotel room made for a pretty depressing day. At least the temples lived up to expectation.

Thursday 17th November

We were woken before dawn by the wailing of our local amplified muezzin but lolled in bed until a more respectable hour. We were joined at breakfast by Debra and Isaac and shared our woes of the previous day. They'd had quite a fraught day too and were more than happy to have a griping session. We all ended up laughing, though, and started the day in much improved spirits. We arranged to meet them at 3 pm in reception and prepared for a return visit to the West Bank, or simply 'the other side' as it's known locally. We also met Guy, our table companion Frenchman, on the way out and he'd done the same thing the day before so gave us a few pointers. We knew there were two tourist ferries, one at the end of our main road out of the hotel, so we trundled across the Corniche to find it. Some men said 'Oh yes, the tourist ferry is down here' and lead us along the quay but all we could see were motorboats. They kept insisting that this was the tourist ferry but we quickly realised that they were spinning us a line when they told us it was E£5 to cross then dropped it to E£2 when we said we knew how much the ferry cost. Basically, they were just trying to get us to go on their own boat which would have been fine in principle but that wasn't what we were after. Scott got angry and was unusually rude to them and we stomped off towards Luxor temple where we knew the other ferry was. Why do these people have to lie to us? Haggling for fair prices is one thing and all part of being in Egypt, but blatant fibbing is something else entirely. I find that I really don't care how bad business is when they just deceive us and lie.

We eventually found a ferry but were told, apparently honestly, that the tourist ferry was kaput and we should take the local ferry. As Guy had said he'd paid E£1 to cross, which was the fare on the local ferry, we realised that that must be the only one available. All the way along the quay we'd been harangued by taxi touts wanting to take us round on the other side but we only wanted a one-way ride to the ticket office and on to Medinet Habu and no further as we'd walk from then on. Finally, we found someone who agreed not to take us all over the Necropolis for 'very good price' and he came over on the ferry with us. He passed us on to his friend with a service taxi after the short river crossing. It was actually a small van that could take about ten people but we had it to ourselves for E£10 after haggling down from E£35 on the ferry. It was a lot like the drive out to Jambiani Beach in Zanzibar - similar van, laid-back African music, dust swirling in the open doors, but only two of us inside instead of eight with local boys hanging on the back. We bought our E£36-worth of tickets for three sites and were dropped off outside Medinet Habu, Ramses III's mortuary complex.

It's a pretty impressive place in the familiar New Kingdom style. For a bit of baksheesh and a few biros we got to see an ancient Nilometer where barren women went to wash in the hope of getting pregnant. We also got to go up the first pylon where Ramses is pictured tickling his wife's chin in an unusually tender portrait and you get an excellent view of Deir El-Medina and the rest of the temple. We then tramped in the heat over to Deir El-Medina itself, giving away a couple of pens to the local kids on the way. When we got there, a man who'd passed us on a motorbike as we'd given the pens to the kids said 'They'll be selling those to me later!' Deir El-Medina was the home of the workers who put the finishing touches to the Valley of the Kings. They were the sculptors, painters and artisans who collaborated on making their own tombs when they'd finished their shifts in the Valley. There's no engraving in their little underground tombs beneath mini-pyramids, just fresh, bright paintings depicting an ideal existence in the paradisial afterlife. When we were inside the tombs it was very hot and sticky and the guides fanned us furiously with pieces of cardboard.

They also had a little temple to Hathor, the lion-headed goddess, to which we plodded through the excavated foundations of the workers' houses. We were let into the temple by a guide who got out an electric light and showed us inside the three little chambers. He encouraged me to take flash photos, even though it was not allowed under any circumstances, for a little extra baksheesh. The carvings were nicely preserved, protected from the sun as they were, and are in the process of restoration. The guide also took us up on top of the sanctuary for a view of the Ramesseum and rummaged about under some rubbish for a mummified leg bone, still in its tomb wrappings, and a piece of backbone. He spoke in a hushed voice and said that tourists didn't get to see this sort of thing normally and I dutifully took a photo of his gruesome treasures before he secreted them away again.

We often get an offer from the guides of a photo of ourselves, together and/or individually depending on how much baksheesh they think they can get, in front of the monuments. We usually refuse but this time we felt we might as well get our full money's worth and posed between the pillars while he took an unusually competent-seeming picture.

On the way out, the guide's cronies tried to sell us their wares, hidden round the corner from the tourist police. Scott eventually bought a limestone carving after the man had virtually cried into his djellabah and the guide himself was happy with the England World Cup 98 enamel badge that Scott had given him in lieu of a pound's baksheesh on top of the E£4 we'd already given him. We finally managed to shrug them all off and hoofed back down the road to our final stop, the Ramesseum. The walking gave us an unusual sense of freedom and independence, away from the tour groups and traders. These three sites are not on the tour group itineraries and they're gone by lunchtime anyway, so we only saw a handful of tourists all morning and had plenty of space to enjoy the antiquities.

The Ramesseum was Ramses II's swansong and the remains of a truly colossal colossus of this famous pharaoh lie in bits where they crashed to the ground, taking part of the second pylon with them, during a first-century earthquake. The pylons show the now-familiar scene of him squishing the Hittites with his chariot at Kadesh in suitably larger-than-life fashion. We told the solitary guide that we were totally out of baksheesh, which was absolutely true, and pottered round happily on our own. There are the remains of some, odd, arch-shaped 'magazines' where craftsman had their workshops beyond the mortuary temple. It must have been a bustling community in its time but now there is a desolate emptiness about the whole, broken thing standing as it does, all alone, on a baking, barren plain in the shadow of the escarpment. Ramses II was the inspiration for Ozymandius, Shelley's poetical king who brought about his own downfall through self-glorification and an outsized ego, ending up with nothing to honour his name in history but a pile of collapsed statuary engulfed by desert.

A small boy got us another service taxi, readily agreeing to a rock bottom price of E£10, back to the ferry so we saved ourselves a haggling session and joined the bundle of local bodies pouring onto the local ferry. We joined the other mad tourists in the sun on the top deck while the locals, probably wisely, stuck to the shade of the deck below. We've discovered that whatever price the locals pay, tourists pay ten times as much so we're going to employ this knowledge as a guide when haggling in future. We reckon that paying half the starting price is probably good enough going.

We got back to the hotel in time for a wash and brush-up before meeting Debra and Isaac. We'd said we'd take them to Mish Mish where we ate last night and piled into a caleche, striking the same deal as we made before - E£20 for the round trip with the driver waiting in between, although they obviously wanted more as there were four of us this time. The fact that we got away with it was a small triumph. We had a very pleasant meal and were the only ones in there. On the way back, we asked the Americans whether they'd managed to see the sunset yet and they said no, although they'd been trying to virtually every day and kept missing it. It was still early enough so, when we got back to the Windsor, we all raced up to the sun terrace and the sun was still a few inches above the horizon, though dropping fast. Debra got her photos as it slid gracefully behind the hills and painted the clouds with a soft pink glow. We all stayed up on the terrace chattering about anything and everything until we couldn't see each other anymore in the gathering night and listened to the air-raid siren wailing of the muezzin calling evening prayers.

One of the Amigo guys eventually came and found us and gave us our train tickets, second class, and the cartouches we'd ordered. Scott pointed out that the ticket price said E£31 and the man said, 'Oh yes, E£20 each refund so that's E£60 for the cartouches'. 'Hmmm, that's not what you said last time, you toerag' we thought. Anyway, it was done. We got our full refund and second classed air-conditioned seems to be quite comfortable and has the dubious added bonus of no horrendous video film for half the night. The Windsor purports to have a spa, sauna and gymnasium as well as the pool, but all the equipment got trashed by some drunken, dope-smoking Aussies and has never been repaired. The rooftop luxury facilities are now unused and thick with the ever-present.

Debra and Isaac were off to Sharm El-Shayk by plane so we went down to the bar with them and had a drink while they made their final preparations for the flight. Scott and Isaac wanted to play pool but it was E£10 for an hour's play and they were off in half that time. We waved off our new friends just after 8 pm, having exchanged e-mail addresses and promised to scan some photos and send them to each other in cyberspace. Very 90s, I thought. It was a shame to see them go. We've shared some great times with them over the last few days and it's been a pleasant relief to talk to people who speak our own language and who we have a lot in common with. As much as we enjoy meeting and conversing with the Egyptians, who you can't fault for friendliness, it's still good to chat about familiar things and share a few laughs at this bizarre culture's expense.

We went back up to our room once they'd gone and Scott was still fuming about the train tickets and decided to go to the station to see if he could upgrade. Once he was there, the man at the cash desk said yes we could upgrade but Scott'd have to get the stationmaster to cancel the second class tickets. The stationmaster then sent him back to the cash desk to get the first class tickets. It was only at this point that the man bothered to check his computer to see if there were actually seats. Of course, there weren't any available in first class, so at least part of what Amigo were saying was true, so Scott had to pay E£3.60 each to get the exact same second class tickets reissued. I've been struggling since we arrived to find some sort of logic in the way the Egyptians do things but have come to the conclusion that there isn't any. And that's why it all works in a totally chaotic but strangely functional way. It's like the rules for crossing the road. The traffic obeys no signals and everyone drives like a complete maniac but they expect pedestrians to apparently risk life and limb and therefore are prepared to just steer round them. The whole country seems to run on the same superficially random and disorganised way but I think they just do everything by different rules. It would take me a good while to become adequately familiar with the Egyptian gestalt in order not to live here and be frustrated, dismayed, surprised - pleasantly or otherwise - at every turn.

Wednesday 18th November

We'd had nothing special planned for today except a bit of shopping. We both wanted one of the short-sleeved white shirts we've seen around. We knew a reasonable price for them would be E£20 from what they charged on the boat and I wanted to get some little pyjamas for Gregory for Christmas. We set off with this shopping list. Every time we leave the Windsor, the pattern is the same. The big, round bloke on the corner plants himself in the middle of the road as soon as he sees us coming and says, 'Taxi?'. We say, 'No thank-you, we're just walking.' He says, 'Later?' and we say, 'Maybe!' Then the caleche driver who took us to Mish Mish or one of his friends says, 'Caleche?', pointing at his carriage, and we say, 'No thank-you, not today' and he says, 'Later?' and we say, 'Maybe!' Then the man at the shop points over to his fridge and or calls from the pavement, 'You want water?' and we say, 'No thank-you, we bought two from you yesterday' and he says, 'You coming back later?' and we say, 'Yes, later.' This has happened about a dozen times so far. We walked round Luxor temple, stopping at the tourist bazaar and haggled furiously. We got two shirts and the pyjamas for E£60, the man starting at E£105. Then they managed to flog us and unplanned T-shirt and another pair of pyjamas for me for another E£40.

Scott needed to get a new watch-strap and the jeweller invited us into his stone shop next door after fitting Scott out with a new strap. The haggling must have got into Scott's blood as he tried to beat the jeweller down from E£15 to 10. The jeweller gave us a lucky scarab each but we left his stone shop without buying anything, which must be a first, because funds are now really tight. We've both taken extra money out of the cashpoint to last us till Saturday.

We dropped our purchases back at the hotel and walked the long slog to the Nile Hilton at the far end of town and drank outrageously-priced Cokes on their sun terrace and caught a few rays. A chatty service taxi driver took us back to the Windsor where we loafed around swimming, showering (without causing tidal waves) and watching the sun go down till dinner time. We ate at the new Anubis restaurant in the Visitors' Centre. Scott had a bizarrely minuscule and overpriced cheeseburger which must have been designed for people who don't really like fast food, and I had a nice bit of grilled fish with chips. There was a very pretty cat hanging around who I gave a sliver of fish to as it eyed me quizzically. In an attempt to economise, we half-inched some big bread rolls and, when the waiters weren't looking, Scott stuffed them in the front of his shirt and we scuttled from the restaurant trying not to dissolve in fits of giggles on the way. They, plus some jam and cheese snitched from breakfast, should make us a tasty lunch for tomorrow.

Thursday 19th November-Friday 20th November

With nothing special to do, being in need of some relaxation and in an attempt to spend less money, we decided to while away the day by the pool. At the Sheraton. We really do have weird ideas of economy. We walked to the hotel which is as far south as the Hilton is north, i.e. a bloomin' long way, with our carefully-made sandwiches, then spent E£25 each to get into the pool area and a further E£14 on two small bottles of Pepsi. Oh well, at least we didn't have to buy lunch! The foyer of the hotel had a most excellent gadget - an automatic money exchange machine. I fed in £10 sterling and it read the note, converted it into E£ and spat out the correct amount, even down to the last ten piastres, at a very good exchange rate. It even said thank-you.

The Sheraton's pool is circular, has a lovely view over the Nile to the West Bank and is the perfect temperature - five degrees below the ambient temperature. We secured two sun-beds pointing at the sun and a pair of enormous green and white striped beach towels. Pity they didn't have the Sheraton Luxor's name on it otherwise we'd probably have filched those too. We spread ourselves out, lathered on the suncream and sat back to soak up the rays. All round the pool, basking walrus-like on the adjacent sunbeds, were bodies that could only be English. In their shapeless swimsuits, nouveau riches Calvin Klein baseball caps and lobster-tinted skin, they couldn't have come from anywhere else. The raucous accents from the women paddling dog-like in the pool trying not to wet their permed hairdos confirmed the suspicion. It's a terrible thing to say about one's countrymen, but the Brits abroad are not a pretty sight. We got chatting to a diamond geezer from south London (home!) who was spending ten days with his wife at the Sheraton. They spend most of their time by the hotel pool, eat in the hotel restaurants every night and occasionally go on a hotel-organised trip to one of the local antiquities. It's easy to be snobbish about these things and scoff, 'How can they possibly say they've been to Egypt if that's all they do?' in a stuck-up, studenty manner, but it's understandable, having been here for a while, that if you can afford to go to a swanky hotel and let them do all the dirty work, it's a pleasant, stress-free option, especially if you have the money and time that comes from being comfortably retired as they evidently are.

The man, Bob, told us about a woman they'd met near the hotel who was English and well into her sixties. She'd come to Egypt for a short holiday, much as they had, but she'd met a 25-year-old Egyptian and, three weeks later, married him. She was now living with him and his assorted relations in what the Londoners obviously considered to be a hovel with no electricity, running water and chickens scratching in and out. Even though we've come into the sheltered, cosy world of the fattened tourist, we've found something to raise the eyebrows as we have every day since we arrived.

While I scribbled in my diary, Scott went for a wander around the little complex of shops attached to the hotel. He came back looking somewhat puzzled. He explained that he'd seen an enormous pink bird walking about by the various boutiques. Was it a flamingo, I asked. No, it wasn't a flamingo, he said, it had a huge beak with a pouch hanging down from it. I know my birds pretty well but if this wasn't a flamingo then I was at a loss to think what the hell it could be apart from a pelican and you don't get huge pink pelicans as far as I'm aware. Needless to say, I had to go and have a look for myself. When we got there, a four-foot tall, albino pelican, for pelican it was, strutted along the path outside the pond area where the other, more normal, birds were. It was indeed pink and had pink eyes too, which it fixed on us with a vicious gaze from chest height and lunged at my hand when I made an attempt to stroke its feathers. It then waddled off and watched intently a game of backgammon between two of the shopkeepers. Every so often it would get too excited by the aggressive dice-throwing and peck them. Egypt could never be called boring!

We ate our lunch on the water's edge looking out over the moored-up feluccas. We thought it'd be impolite to nosh on our sarnies within sight of the barbecue and bar staff. We spent a very pleasant afternoon spread-eagled under a perfect sun and reluctantly packed up, handed in our monstrous towels and went out to get a taxi back to town. We still had several hours to kill before Amigo were due to pick us for the train journey back to Cairo. We'd already decided to go to the Mars Bar in the Venus Hotel for dinner as they did good, cheap food and beer. Enric the donkey-driver, immortalised in the Rough Guide, materialised after the waiter had spotted that we had the book with us, but we had to disappoint him by saying we were heading back to Upper Egypt that evening and had had our fill of the West Bank. From our perch above the street we had a good view of the comings and goings of the locals and watched the material shop over the road doing a brisk trade in 3 m lengths of djellabah fabric. Unlike in Cairo, most people here stick to the traditional mode of dress.

Once back at the Windsor, we lay down for a pre-train snooze and were sharply awakened by Amigo haranguing us to get ready to go to the train. They whisked us and our luggage off to the station with much fuss and bother, then we had a twenty-minute wait for the train to actually arrive. The Amigo bloke hung around till we were in our second-class seats and waved us off, probably thinking 'Good riddance' judging by the look on his face.

The sight of video screens in the carriage sent a chill through my heart but we'd missed the film, thank God. We were the only white faces in the carriage, which was a little unnerving, and there was no sign of the paranoid security that there had been in first class. Sleep was not an option as everyone steadfastly stayed awake the entire night and at every station people selling all manner of stuff came through the carriage. Behind us were two giggly teeange girls, unchaperoned and obviously trying to get off with the two blokes in front of us. Despite being between roughly 18 and 21, they were all four behaving like 14-year-olds. It's quite sweet in a way considering what a relatively sheltered unbringing they've probably had, but it was bloody annoying at 3 am. NOW I've had the worst night's sleep of my entire life.

The last hour of the journey dragged with a painful lack of speed as the train groaned its way through the outer suburbs of Cairo. We spotted the Bent Pyramid at Dahshur but it was still another 40 mins before we finally crept into Ramses station. After fighting our way out of the confusing mess of the station we insisted our way to a cheap ride to the Windsor. The driver wanted E£10 for the short trip but we were only prepared to pay E£5 and refused to pay what he asked with the sort of stubborness that only comes from being awake for over 24 hrs. He said he needed more money to pay the parking fee at the station. They really come out with some bullshit sometimes!

Arriving in the dusty, cosy environs of the Windsor was like coming home. The man on the desk knew exactly who we were and where we'd been and asked whether we'd had a nice time before getting the bell boy to show us up to room 23, directly above and the same specification as our old room 12. We had a gloriously relaxing shower, splooshed on some of Scott's citron essence and went to enquire as to whether the Citadel would be open as it was Friday. We were told that it would and set off to find some food on the way.

Not feeling desperately adventurous, we headed for Groppi's as it's a known quantity and wound up at Garden Groppi's which we'd not been to before. It has an open patio area with shady trees and we sat in the sunshine to eat warm cheese and ham croissants and BIG slices of cake, washed down with fesh mint tea. The best mint we've had is still the stuff we had at Restaurant Alfi Bey where they used fresh mint leaves rather than teabags. Once replete, we went to find a taxi. On our second attempt, we got someone who understood where we wanted to go and he dropped us off in the square in front of the complex which we'd walked through on the way to Ibn Tulun. That seems like a long time ago now.

We followed the Rough Guide's map to the entrance, but couldn't find it. Somewhat bemused, we pottered around a bit and were told to take a taxi, we thought facetiously, by some boys as they reckoned that it was forty-minute walk. We eventually spotted a couple of similarly lost-looking tourists and asked them if they knew the way. They'd been told to keep walking anti-clockwise round the outer walls by a German they'd met. So we set off with them. Every so often we'd ask where the entrance was and the people would keep pointing in the same direction we were going. It was getting hot and we were walking along a busy, choking road. Finally, after a good half an hour of brisk striding, we saw what looked like the entrance. They've evidently changed entrances since the Rough Guide was written.

Crowding all over the place were school parties and Egyptians on their day off. We haven't seen so many locals all on holiday before and guessed that a lot of them were visitors to Cairo rather than residents, as many of them had seemingly arrived in the fleet of tour buses that sat waiting outside. There are several museums in the Citadel and a few mosques. We decided to go to the Military Museum first and walked around the way-marked route through endless scenes of Egyptian glorification in largely insignificant battles. It's nothing like the dispassionate documentary attitude of London's Imperial War Museum. Herds of Egyptian families charged around the rooms, most of which were blocked off and darkened for no apparent reason, not really looking at anything.

Outside the musuem is a pretty impressive collection of military hardware, mostly planes. They have a couple of MIG fighters, courtesy of the Russians, which look mean and swish. We sat on the grass in the afternoon sun for a break and were approached by a youngish man. It was a sad realisation that the first thought we both had was 'Oh no, what does he want to sell us?' In fact, he just wanted to ask us the time.

We meandered around across the courtyards and between the high, thick stone walls for a little while longer then decided to go into one of the mosques. Scott didn't feel right going in but all the signs said it OK outside prayer-time so we joined the thronging hordes in the biggest mosque, El Salah Al-Din, which you can see from all over the city. Crowds of schoolchildren were milling about and it was evident that the small groups of unchaperoned teenaged girls were enjoying their bit of freedom. Several said 'hello' to me, although they wouldn't speak to Scott, and two asked me to take their picture.

The mosque is quite something inside and totally different from the spartan, monotone interior of Ibn Tulun. Salah Al-Din has delicately carved woodwork, heavy, filigreed lamps of the sort we'd seen in the museum, gold leaf and curlicues everywhere and luscious, deep carpets which we padded over in our socks.

We tried to go to one last museum by the Citadel was closing early and the sun was going down, so we called it a day and took a taxi back into town.

We wanted to have a good meal to round off our holiday and had ear-marked the 'Valleey [sic] of the Kings' restaurant in one of the nearby hotels. Unfortunately, as predicted, we were running short of cash and the banks weren't open. We talked to the Reception man at the hotel and, as always, they provided the solution. He allowed us to pay our hotel bill by credit card, letting us retain the E£106 in cash that we'd set by. We knew how much dinner would cost, having already been to the restaurant to scan the menu.

We had prudently kept enough spare cash to afford a round of extortionately-prices G&Ts in the Windsor bar. What else could we do on our last night in Egypt? We sat at one of the tables with barrel chairs and I spotted Dorothy from the boat at another table. She was busy chatting so we couldn't really interrupt and say 'hello'. I took a couple of final photos with the throwaway fun camera of 'Fez Man' and his friend behind the bar with all its stuffed antelope heads and bottles of imported spirits.

We were at only one of two occupied tables at the Valleey of the Kings. The other was taken by a family of dark-skinned Africans who didn't look local and were knocking back a hearty meal with one eye on the TV in the corner. They reminded a lot of the Kenyans I spent time with who have the TV on as a constant companion and source of conversation even when no-one's really watching it. We had a pleasant and filling meal then wandered back through the still-warm streets to the Windsor. We arranged a wake-up call for 4.30 am with breakfast brought to our room and crashed out as the funky cafe opposite was just coming to life.

Saturday 21st November

We were both awake in the dark before the alarm clock started its tinny bleeping at 4.30. Then the phone rang and the Receptionist said 'Good morning!' in a chirpy voice that made not getting up impossible. Fifteen minutes and two showers later and a knock on the door meant breakfast had arrived - tea, coffee, toast, rolls, butter and jam in huge quantities. Good old Windsor! 'Cheeky Bloke' was on Reception lokking slightly bleary-eyed but in good ironic form as always. It took some more photos of the Reception area, including him smirking, to finish the film as we waited for the taxi to arrive. Once loaded up, we bid a fond farewell to our home from home and headed off into the sunrise.

So, what of Egypt? The length of this travelogue is fair testament to the power of the country and its people to capture the imagination and interest of a visitor. While the last two weeks have been frustrating, aggravating and bewildering in many ways, they have also been full of fascination, kindness, peace and beauty.

Never before have I come across such a race as the modern Egyptians. They defy and contradict understanding in so many ways. They will rob you blind and rid you of as much of your holiday money by flogging you anything, regardless of its actual value, as long as they do have something to sell. But we never at any time felt that they'd take something for nothing. I got the overwhelming impression that mugging tourists would be disrespectful to themselves, their culture and their visitors and didn't once feel at personal risk whilst walking through the streets. They are highly commercially-minded and always out for a fast buck yet they know how to look after their own. There are far fewer beggars on the streets of Cairo than in London and they'd sooner take any old job than rely on the charity of others. The ancient monuments provide by far their greatest source of income, yet modern Egyptians treat them almost with disdain and I would trust a passer-by in the street far more than I'd trust a tourist policeman if I was in trouble. Everything appears to happen in a totally random way yet, strangely, it all works.

We went to Egypt to see the relics of a charismatic, sophisticated and powerful culture. Even though those relics are only a weak shadow of what they used to be, the glory of ancient Egyptian achievement still shines through them and it doesn't need much imagination to recreate them as they once were. But, more than the pyramids, temples and artefacts, we'll remember above anything else the people of modern Egypt in all their bizarre, frustrating, charming and, above all, almost naively honest, ways.

Back to Africa page...