Pool-Side Relaxation and Curb-Side Stress
Hello Faithful Readers,
I'm sure you've all been chewing your fingernails in worry over the risk of Poor-Little-Me stuck at Heathrow, while all this horrible stuff has been going down in the UK. Bombs made out of mouth wash and deoderant...how utterly rediculous!
Anyway, you can all breathe a sigh of relief, happy in the knowledge that I have not been incommunicado because of chaos at LHR, but rather because I been working very hard at lounging poolside and beachside in Cyprus for the past 5 days...
I know, I know; you're all very relieved:0)
That, and you probably want to kill me because there is no logical reason why I should have gotten so lucky as to spend 5 glorious days sun tanning in Cyprus...Truly, there is no rhyme nor reason to the patterns of this crazy world. (Unless I was Florence Nightingale in a previous life, that is).
So Cyprus was lovely. We were put up at Hannah's parent's villa in Annarita, which is a lovely little town close to Pafos. Hannah's parents, being just about the most generous people I've ever met, let us stay at their villa, eat their food, and lounge by their pool. More than this, they took us to lovely secluded beaches and even took us to play mini-golf, where a most momentous event occured. I got a hole in one.
Yup.
Me.
Who has NOOOO patience for golf, in any of it's forms
Got
A
Hole
In
One
I even have a fancy certificate with my name and the date and everything on it as proof. I'm going to keep it forever and ever:)
Now, I just have to figure out a way of justifying the fact that even with the Hole-In-One, that I still got the worst score out of the six of us, and then life will be perfect.
So, Cyprus was 5 days of pure relaxation and fun with C&H and those floating noodle things that you put in swimming pools.
I do have some nice photos of Cyprus, but they will have to wait, as the Internet Cafe we are in right now a has already made Brad's fancy-smancy Ipod blow up - yes, he's cranky - and we don't want to risk blowing up the camera as well...
But, as the cliche goes, all good things must come to and end, and so this morning we got up early, packed our bags and headed for the airport to catch a flight to Cairo. Now, I am not a nervous flyer at all, however, I was a wee bit disconcerted to note that the windows of our lovely Egypt Airways aircraft had been put in upside down....the windows shades pulled up from the bottom of the window, rather than down from the top. Decidedly odd. Nevertheless, the one hour and ten minute flight flew by (pun definitely intended) especially because they actually fed us - Air Canada eat your heart out! They fed us on a one-hour flight!
And we landed safe and sound at Cairo International Airport at 3 o'clock this afternoon. Now, I was expecting the airport to be complete, unadulterated chaos. I expected a mad house, with millions of people yelling and crowding around with no order or organization whatsoever. On the contrary! My first surprise of Egpyt was that the airport was spotlessly clean, very efficient and not busy at all! Whew:) We sailed through passport control, got our bags in no time and then were whisked out of the airport by the guy from our tour group who was right on time to meet us.
Oh - I suppose I should interject here that the Tour that we were supposed to do, which was Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Turkey, was cancelled because of idiot people shooting at each other in the immediate vincinity of my vacation destination. Svolochie!* Anyway, as that tour was cancelled, we booked a new Egpyt one, which takes us to the pyramids, Luxor, and the Sinai Peninsula. We also rebooked a different tour around Turkey, so we will be there for 3 weeks after we have finished our 12 days in Egypt.
Now, interjections over with, I think the smoothness of the airport experience lulled me a bit; I was starting to think that Cairo was a pretty normal city. And then we got in the vehicle and started to drive into the centre of the city.
THIS PLACE IS HUGE.
And
CROWDED.
CROWDED.
CROWDED.
Cairo was apparently designed for 2 million inhabitants. The current population of the CITY - not the country, just the city is a wopping 23 million souls. All vying for a toehold on the pavement of this crazy town. The roads have no lines to divy up the lanes. There is just a seething mass of traffic** vaguely heading the same directions. To quote our driver 'accidents happen here every second'!
On the bright side, and this really is a bright side, we got upgraded to a 5* hotel for the night. I guess they figure that the tourists who are dumb enough to come here at the hottest time of year (the temperature is usually between 40 and 50 degrees in August) deserve some kind of compensation:)
So Friendly Driver Guy takes us to our hotel, and gets us all nicely checked in, while we stand there in our back-packs feeling decidedly out of place. Then he asks us if we have student cards as the prices to get into tourist sites are significantly cheaper for students. We hang our heads forlornly and reply, no, we are not students. Friendly Driver Guy says, ' no, I didn't ask if you were students, I asked if you had student cards.' Slightly puzzled, we reply that no we don't. He asks if we are under 36. 'Yes' we respond eagerly! 'We are under 36'. SO FDG informs us that the ever so friendly Egyptian government gives out ISIC (International Student Identity Cards) to any tourist who comes here, under the age of 36. 'Sweet' we yell! This is great news, so we blatantly lie on a nifty little piece of paper he hands us, stating that we are in fact hard working students, plus the cost of the ISIC card, which for some odd reason is about $10 more here than it is anywhere else in the world....hummm....odd...And tommorrow morning we will get fancy Student ID cards that should save us a bunch of money here and throughout the rest of the trip as well.
All in all we were pretty happy with our introduction to Egypt.
Then we found out that we had to cross the street to get to the bank machine.
Woah Nelly!
As I mentioned, traffic here is the dictionary definition of insanity. Add to this insanity the sad fact that there are no crosswalks or traffic lights for pedestrians to cross at. You think BASE jumpers are dare-devils?!? Nope; pedestrians in Cairo - now there are some truly fearless folks! As a pedestrian in Cairo who needs to cross the street, you must walk to the edge of the curb, take a deep breath, close your eyes, repeat 'I have good medical insurance; I have good medical insurance' like a mantra, envisage all those games of Frogger that you played as a kid, try to forget how many times that poor Frog died a gruesome death under the wheels of a pickup truck, and make a run for it. Horns honk, breaks squeal, drivers swear, and the lucky ones make it accross. So far B and I have been lucky! Man, what a rush!
But right now, after about 2 hours at this Internet Cafe, I am truly starting to melt into my chair, so I am going to play Frogger for the last time this evening and head back to the fancy hotel accross the street and relax in my beee-uuu-ti-fully airconditioned room.
Tommorrow we are going to see the pyramids and the sphinx ! Am very, very excited about this, so new super-cool photos should be forthcoming.
Bye for now,
T
* Not particularly nice Russian word.
** 'Traffic' in Cairo is not just cars and trucks, but also pedestrians, donkeys, horses, scooters, motorcyles (and NO ONE wears a helmet), and just about anything else you can think of.
I'm sure you've all been chewing your fingernails in worry over the risk of Poor-Little-Me stuck at Heathrow, while all this horrible stuff has been going down in the UK. Bombs made out of mouth wash and deoderant...how utterly rediculous!
Anyway, you can all breathe a sigh of relief, happy in the knowledge that I have not been incommunicado because of chaos at LHR, but rather because I been working very hard at lounging poolside and beachside in Cyprus for the past 5 days...
I know, I know; you're all very relieved:0)
That, and you probably want to kill me because there is no logical reason why I should have gotten so lucky as to spend 5 glorious days sun tanning in Cyprus...Truly, there is no rhyme nor reason to the patterns of this crazy world. (Unless I was Florence Nightingale in a previous life, that is).
So Cyprus was lovely. We were put up at Hannah's parent's villa in Annarita, which is a lovely little town close to Pafos. Hannah's parents, being just about the most generous people I've ever met, let us stay at their villa, eat their food, and lounge by their pool. More than this, they took us to lovely secluded beaches and even took us to play mini-golf, where a most momentous event occured. I got a hole in one.
Yup.
Me.
Who has NOOOO patience for golf, in any of it's forms
Got
A
Hole
In
One
I even have a fancy certificate with my name and the date and everything on it as proof. I'm going to keep it forever and ever:)
Now, I just have to figure out a way of justifying the fact that even with the Hole-In-One, that I still got the worst score out of the six of us, and then life will be perfect.
So, Cyprus was 5 days of pure relaxation and fun with C&H and those floating noodle things that you put in swimming pools.
I do have some nice photos of Cyprus, but they will have to wait, as the Internet Cafe we are in right now a has already made Brad's fancy-smancy Ipod blow up - yes, he's cranky - and we don't want to risk blowing up the camera as well...
But, as the cliche goes, all good things must come to and end, and so this morning we got up early, packed our bags and headed for the airport to catch a flight to Cairo. Now, I am not a nervous flyer at all, however, I was a wee bit disconcerted to note that the windows of our lovely Egypt Airways aircraft had been put in upside down....the windows shades pulled up from the bottom of the window, rather than down from the top. Decidedly odd. Nevertheless, the one hour and ten minute flight flew by (pun definitely intended) especially because they actually fed us - Air Canada eat your heart out! They fed us on a one-hour flight!
And we landed safe and sound at Cairo International Airport at 3 o'clock this afternoon. Now, I was expecting the airport to be complete, unadulterated chaos. I expected a mad house, with millions of people yelling and crowding around with no order or organization whatsoever. On the contrary! My first surprise of Egpyt was that the airport was spotlessly clean, very efficient and not busy at all! Whew:) We sailed through passport control, got our bags in no time and then were whisked out of the airport by the guy from our tour group who was right on time to meet us.
Oh - I suppose I should interject here that the Tour that we were supposed to do, which was Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Turkey, was cancelled because of idiot people shooting at each other in the immediate vincinity of my vacation destination. Svolochie!* Anyway, as that tour was cancelled, we booked a new Egpyt one, which takes us to the pyramids, Luxor, and the Sinai Peninsula. We also rebooked a different tour around Turkey, so we will be there for 3 weeks after we have finished our 12 days in Egypt.
Now, interjections over with, I think the smoothness of the airport experience lulled me a bit; I was starting to think that Cairo was a pretty normal city. And then we got in the vehicle and started to drive into the centre of the city.
THIS PLACE IS HUGE.
And
CROWDED.
CROWDED.
CROWDED.
Cairo was apparently designed for 2 million inhabitants. The current population of the CITY - not the country, just the city is a wopping 23 million souls. All vying for a toehold on the pavement of this crazy town. The roads have no lines to divy up the lanes. There is just a seething mass of traffic** vaguely heading the same directions. To quote our driver 'accidents happen here every second'!
On the bright side, and this really is a bright side, we got upgraded to a 5* hotel for the night. I guess they figure that the tourists who are dumb enough to come here at the hottest time of year (the temperature is usually between 40 and 50 degrees in August) deserve some kind of compensation:)
So Friendly Driver Guy takes us to our hotel, and gets us all nicely checked in, while we stand there in our back-packs feeling decidedly out of place. Then he asks us if we have student cards as the prices to get into tourist sites are significantly cheaper for students. We hang our heads forlornly and reply, no, we are not students. Friendly Driver Guy says, ' no, I didn't ask if you were students, I asked if you had student cards.' Slightly puzzled, we reply that no we don't. He asks if we are under 36. 'Yes' we respond eagerly! 'We are under 36'. SO FDG informs us that the ever so friendly Egyptian government gives out ISIC (International Student Identity Cards) to any tourist who comes here, under the age of 36. 'Sweet' we yell! This is great news, so we blatantly lie on a nifty little piece of paper he hands us, stating that we are in fact hard working students, plus the cost of the ISIC card, which for some odd reason is about $10 more here than it is anywhere else in the world....hummm....odd...And tommorrow morning we will get fancy Student ID cards that should save us a bunch of money here and throughout the rest of the trip as well.
All in all we were pretty happy with our introduction to Egypt.
Then we found out that we had to cross the street to get to the bank machine.
Woah Nelly!
As I mentioned, traffic here is the dictionary definition of insanity. Add to this insanity the sad fact that there are no crosswalks or traffic lights for pedestrians to cross at. You think BASE jumpers are dare-devils?!? Nope; pedestrians in Cairo - now there are some truly fearless folks! As a pedestrian in Cairo who needs to cross the street, you must walk to the edge of the curb, take a deep breath, close your eyes, repeat 'I have good medical insurance; I have good medical insurance' like a mantra, envisage all those games of Frogger that you played as a kid, try to forget how many times that poor Frog died a gruesome death under the wheels of a pickup truck, and make a run for it. Horns honk, breaks squeal, drivers swear, and the lucky ones make it accross. So far B and I have been lucky! Man, what a rush!
But right now, after about 2 hours at this Internet Cafe, I am truly starting to melt into my chair, so I am going to play Frogger for the last time this evening and head back to the fancy hotel accross the street and relax in my beee-uuu-ti-fully airconditioned room.
Tommorrow we are going to see the pyramids and the sphinx ! Am very, very excited about this, so new super-cool photos should be forthcoming.
Bye for now,
T
* Not particularly nice Russian word.
** 'Traffic' in Cairo is not just cars and trucks, but also pedestrians, donkeys, horses, scooters, motorcyles (and NO ONE wears a helmet), and just about anything else you can think of.
posted by TK at 10:10 AM
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