Egypt

Our day trip to Cairo changed many peoples minds about further trips and caused the ship to go into sanitary lockdown. Needless to say Egypt was dirty, do not ever eat or drink anything there (apparently you are to starve and dehydrate). Having said that we did eat in a giant ballroom, our Canadian marine engineer friend told us you could play football in there, at the very swanky hotel and have gross sparkling water on the bus.

Sparkling water = evil

We drove 3 and a half hours from Port Said (pronounced how people say west side) to get to Cairo, Gareth wanted to sleep but our guide kept yelling at him.

Security was insane, we had to have our passports (we didn't elsewhere), there were armed escorts on the buses as well as in front, behind and at each side as we drove in convoy. There was also stringent security checks everywhere (and sadly no cameras allowed in the musem).

The pyramids and sphynx were not terribly impressive, the sphynx is tiny and her face is all washed off we did get lots of pictures though. Gareth was going to go into the pyramid but it was tiny, he had to double over to get in. The museum was packed with a lot of the same things most dusty and without plaques which was rather sad. Our crazy guide took us on a speed tour, we had to run each time her high pitched voice stopped.

We were very very glad to get back to the boat at 9.30, which was after it was scheduled to have left, though the pushy hawkers (the worst we'd seen) didn't let up until we were actually on the boat. '$3 million dollars, you use to hit your wife.' Since we had no money at least we weren't tempted though Gareth still managed to get a ride on a camel