I am in a taxi in Austin headed HOME!

Watch for lots more pics this weekend ;)

And I'm trying not to get cranky.

So many delays on both ends of this trip! I should have been home Wednesday night. That changed to Thursday night. Now another delay means I'll be spending the night in Chicago and flying home Friday. At least I'm getting closer.

At Heathrow. Couple of airport pics for you.

Yesterday the driver got totally lost. What should have been a 45 minute ride took over 2 hrs and I missed the checkin window.

New driver today plus a navigator. This morning, however, we're encountering dense fog and crawling along.

I really do want to come home.

I am still in Cairo. The driver who picked me up at 5:45 am to get to the airport for an 8:50 flight got lost, and I couldn't make my flight. I'll be on the same flights tomorrow.

Upsides:
1) I learned what happens when Egyptian drivers have an accident: pretty much nothing. We got clipped from behind hard enough to spin us 45 degrees. After regaining control, the other van pulled up next to us, argued emphatically with my driver (all of this at 90kph), and just kept going.
2) I got to have my day of cooking with Samia, Rasha's mom. I'll be coming home with all sorts of new recipes and ideas.

Pics: Rice with assorted nuts, molachia soup, stuffed doves, and ro'a.

I'm headed to the Cairo airport. I'm sad to be leaving, but eager to be home, and to see my dogs and my friends, not necessarily in that order :/

I'll return, for sure. Rasha's family is wonderful. They remind me a lot of my family in many ways - boisterous, loving, and full of laughter. I'll miss them.

Lots more when I'm home and have recovered the photos from my dead iPad.

Pic: Rasha and her dad, Ibrahim.

I'm back in Cairo for my last few days in Egypt. I finally got to see the fabulous Egyptian Museum, wandered around downtown Cairo, made another visit to Khan El Khalili market (the back roads this time, way cool), had a visit to a... well... perhaps "2nd world" doctors office, a day trip to El Fayoum, dinner on a boat at a Greek club on the Nile, and a decidedly old school afternoon at a French cafe downtown.

And somewhere along the way, my iPad died, so I can't upload my camera photos. I'm hoping (and if someone would like to reassure me I'd be most grateful) that my photos to date are salvageable. Should be - it's solid state memory after all.

So here are a few iPhone photos for now: lunch at Qaroun Lake, water wheels in El Fayoum (part of an irrigation system built in 1800 BC), and inside Cafe Riche in downtown Cairo.

Tomorrow I'll be spending most of the day cooking Egyptian with Rasha's mom. I plan to come home with lots of new techniques :)

I wasn't sure what to expect of Sharm El Sheikh. To be honest, I'd never heard of the place before this trip. I did a liittle research and learned that it's a hot diving destination, that Mt. Sinai is nearby (naturally — it's on the Sinai Peninsula), and that of course it has markets. What I wasn't prepared for was a main drag with casinos, hotels, and clubs lit up like Xmas (Which, ironically, it is. Coptic Christmas is January 7, but I assure you that was not the cause of the display.) When we pulled up to our hotel, the Oriental Rivoli, my heart sank a little. The name of the hotel was an ostentashish display of white lights. A Starbucks and a Body Shop flanked the entrance. A McDonalds was next door. A walk along the boardwalk on Naama Bay got us away from the chains, but most of the restaurants were blaring western music (an odd assortment — Coldplay, theme from X-Files, "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down", "Afternoon Delight" — and the area with shops was full of blinding flourescent lights and deafening disco and rap beats. The hotel was lovely. 3 pools, tons of beautiful antique Egyptian furniture, and excellent service. We all really needed a bit of R&R, so a day hanging out by the pool playing cards was welcome. After a day of rest, we really only had one day in Sharm, so there simply wasn't time to visit some of the best sites, as the all took a full day. I would have loved to visit Petra (Jordan is a short small-plane hop away), but it wasn't possible. I didn't even dive, for a variety of reasons — no dive buddy, a still-healing broken rib, transportation confusion...

I did take a glass-bottom boat ride. I'm sad to say the Red Sea reefs I saw are dying. There was more dead area than living coral. There were fish — parrot fish, rockfish, angel fish — but not very many.

It's not that I didn't have a good time in Sharm. Far from it. It just didn't feel like Egypt.

Until the last night.

We went to the Old Market. What a place! Eygyptian music, shisha/tea bars, traditional shops and vendors, dancers and performers in traditional garb. Fantastic! The market bumps right up against the Red Sea Mountains (also called the Eastern Mountains or the Sinai Mountains) and in some cases spill up into the rocks.

We climbed up to a little shisha bar on the side of the mountain. I was going to write that it was built into the side of the mountain, but there was really no building involved. Steps and niches were carved out, and pillows and cushions were strewn about. The tables were wooden blocks.

From our perch we saw Nubian dancers, another whirling dervish (which I've since learned is actually a Tannoura, or skirt dancer), and fire dancers. The mountains were beautifully lit, and the sounds of the vibrant market surrounded us. It was a wonderful evening.

Pics are mostly from the Old Market, plus a few from the hotel and from the boat.

Back in Cairo now. Egyptian Museum and some downtown wandering today.

I walked a couple of blocks down from our hotel in Sharm El Sheikh to a little 7/11 type store and found this guy patiently waiting for his owner to finish shopping.

Still at the Old Market in Sharm