Today is an easy day. All we have to do is fly to Cairo.
It would have been a great morning to go for a falucca ride. There are many faluccas right outside our hotel and every day we have people asking us to go out with them. The last couple of days there hasn’t been any wind and we have seen them being swept downstream by the current, finding it impossible to sail upstream and resorting to rowing to get back to their berths. Of course this morning there was good wind, we just didn’t have time to go out. Maybe next time we are in Aswan.
A note about Aswan. We really liked this city. It is dominated by the Nile and there are lots of boats and opportunities for boat rides. Everyone is very friendly, it feels very safe and it’s size makes the city very manageable.
Also a note about clothing…
We have seen women in a variety of levels of cover. All the woman have at least long pants and long sleeve shirts. Often the shirts are long and loose. Most woman have a head scarf or hajib. It is not unusual to see women completely covered with just their eyes showing. These ladies also tend to wear gloves. Often they dress in black with some decoration, gold or silver chains and necklaces. It looks incredibly hot, but our guides have said that loose fitting clothing is cool.
Many men are dress in galabeya. Interestingly, when we were on the boat, the crew went swimming in the underwear and undershirts. Most men in Cairo wear western style clothing.
Back to our activities—we arrived in Cairo and were met by Mustafa. We drove again through the terrible traffic to our hotel. We weren’t to far out of the airport when our driver decided to turn around and go a different way to avoid a big traffic jam.
We got to the hotel and got settled. That evening we stayed in the hotel for dinner. We had Italian. For me it was a nice change because Egyptian food is heavy on the vegetables. We have had a lot of hummus, tahini, baba ganoush, falafel, and koshari. Not my favorite.