And we ate at Macaroni Grill and Baskin-Robbins

Adjacent to our Intercontinental City Stars Hotel in Cairo was a mall. A fancy, beautiful, very big mall, frequented by rich people, not the people we saw as we drove through the streets of Cairo.

Wael told us that in Egypt there are only two classes of people now: very rich and very poor. The middle class is disappearing, going down. That is what's happening to Wael. Once middle class, he's going down. He cannot find enough work. His education prepared him to be a tour guide, which he does very well. But since last year's revolution, tourism--upon which the country depends heavily--is way down. With numbers like, before-12 million visitors per year, after-1 million.

The people we saw in this mall have money and time to spend it.

Here is a picture of one wall near a mall entrance.

It was in this mall that we saw our favorite T-shirt. A guy passed us wearing it, and we asked each other, "What does that mean?"

Just four words, but they proved useful to us from time to time. But I'll let Ann tell the four words.

A Day in Giza

You can't drink the water in Egypt (or Jordan). Nestle does a huge business there with bottled water. Bottled water is what we drank.

But here is the Nile. Water. And plenty of it.

Wael said he can drink tap water in Egypt, but we can't. People who live on the Nile drink water straight from the river. But he can't.

Tap water in Israel is safe. Nasty, but safe.

We crossed the Nile to go into Giza. Pyramids. Camels. Sphinx.

$2 to get on, get up, get pictures taken, and get off.  $20 to ride fifteen minutes down to the smallest pyramid. Our friends Eric and Juliana paid their $20 and went. Ann and I didn't but kind of wished we had. So when we got to Petra--the last day of our trip--Ann took a short ride in front of the temple.

Eric and Juliana Short--yes, that is their name, Short

Ann and her camel at Petra

Mother, daughter, Sphinx. I am really tired of what I'm wearing here. I did not wear that outfit every day of our trip, but this is all one day. Okay?

Other camel riders at the Sphinx

It's really camel country here. You might drive down the road (say, in Jordan) and see a house with a camel in the yard. The camels in this part of the world are Dromedary camels--one hump, long legs.

I'm not exactly going in order here

The burned Parliament building. "We fired it!" said Wael.

Tahrir Square. Still some people there in tents after a year. Wael says no one knows why.

It's Muhammed (that is his name, but it would be a safe guess for about 65% of the male population) at the papyrus place. That's a lovely thing about going with a tour. They will take you to places where--it is devoutly hoped by the proprietors of those places--you will spend your American dollars.

Muhammed spoke his English very well. I detected a mix of accents--Egyptian, or at least middle eastern--and southern United States. I asked him, eventually getting the truth---well, maybe. Alabama. He says he grew up there, has dual citizenship.

From here we headed to the pyramids.

Okay, yes, I bought a piece of papyrus.

Here is Wael being intermediary for us at the pyramids. We've been out to hang around the largest of the three pyramids of Giza--the one owned by Cheops--and would leave, except for the arms of the vendors reaching in. You can see that Eric has bought the small metal replica of the three pyramids. And someone else on the bus is about to buy one also.

A Little Egypt

Fresh flowers daily, so they told me, in the lobby of our Cairo Intercontinental City Stars Hotel.

So I took a few shots. Replicas of the Sphinx (the wisdom of man, the strength of a lion), an obelisk, a pool, a palm--all parts of the Egypt we would soon see.

This is Wael, our little Egyptian guide, our protector--sort of--from the relentless vendors, our teacher and, soon, our friend. We were a small bus, thirteen of us, and we liked it that way. And we would have taken Wael with us into Israel. Too bad, it couldn't be.

Truly, it was a luxury hotel. Clean and beautiful, a respite and oasis from the city we became acquainted with. But--and have I said this?--Cairo was disappointingly filthy and ugly. But I loved being there.

And here is my bus window shot of the pyramids of Giza. I put it here to show a contrast between the hotel and the outside. You can't really see the extended piles of trash and rubble and garbage that line the streets. I did not take many pictures of what I saw in this great and storied and neglected city. Except at Tahrir Square and at the Museum, where you also see the burned out Parliament building, to which nothing has been done in the year since the "revolution."

Yes, yes. More later.

Learning the ropes, so to speak

It's the eight of us at the airport in Amman, Jordan. We're waiting for our flight to Cairo. We are among the thirteen who did not take the Nile River Cruise and for a while were regarded as somewhat less than legitimate by those who did take the cruise. They got over it, because we are great people, of course.

In this airport you will find restrooms. I used one, and it actually had toilet paper in the stall. In the public bathrooms you don't always find such a luxury. Once you have used the toilet paper, you may NOT put it in the toilet but must deposit it in the small basket next to the toilet. Then the toilet has a chance of flushing, but no guarantees.

Such conditions exist in all public bathrooms in Egypt, Israel, and Jordan. But our hotels were good.

The bathroom I used featured not one, but two "attendants." Muslim women who waited until you washed your hands and then handed you a tissue for drying. I learned later--you know, veteran on the tour--to refuse the tissue and walk out with wet hands. But at this time, I took the towel. The "attendant" held out her hand to me. For money, of course. I had a dollar in my pocket and handed it to her. She then pointed to her friend, meaning I should also give her a dollar.

I had no more dollars and said so, pulling my whole pocket out to show her.

By the way, having "attendants" in the bathroom did not mean the place would be clean. Just so you know.

Ann found another bathroom in the airport. No attendant. So she went free, pun intended.

Now, just so you know, bathrooms were a worry only occasionally. Know what I mean? But they in no way diminished the great fun we had and the wonderful things we saw. I just have to write about them, though. Don't you think?

In the picture we have me, Ann, Karen, Eric, Juliana, Kathy, Deanna, and Jeanie.

Yes, Somewhere in Israel

Here is Ann in a picture I like. Just look at that purely beautiful face.

Brian Johnson took the picture somewhere in Israel. That's safe to say. Brian has sent all of his pictures to all members of the tour. What a guy.

About Ann. I know she missed her boys and Jeremy, but I also know she loved this trip. And I believe she made the most of it, taking notes, keeping up on her pictures, writing her journal when we would get back to the hotel.

In Israel, we ate breakfast at the hotel. Always a buffet featuring typical middle eastern food--chopped vegetables, fish, many breads and rolls, and always several kinds of olives--and food to appeal to folks from the west. That means cold cereals (but never Cheerios, to Ann's dismay), yogurts, juices. Omelets and pancakes and French Toast (sort of), too.

And you couldn't buy a glass of milk. Or get one free either.

For lunch we were on our own. We brought snacks and nuts, but most days in Israel Ann carried a piece of fruit, a roll and butter, and a boiled egg from the breakfast buffet to supplement her lunch. That is until the day she peeled her egg and found--oh, it was an egg, but how old it was we could not say. It was brown. I mean, it should have been white, but it was brown. Don't remember if she brought another egg after that.

Evenings we'd come back to the hotel for dinner, another buffet with foods that looked like breakfast but which were now accompanied by chicken and other meat dishes as well. We didn't always know what it was, but we never went hungry.

Desserts always looked wonderful but seldom were.  No matter how fancy it looked, dessert tasted like not much. Twice, I think, we got ice cream. People spoke of it as if we were prisoners, deprived of anything nice for a long, long time. "Look!" you would hear from more than one person, "We get ice cream."

On the road, people bought Cokes and diet Cokes and Magnum ice cream bars. I liked the popsicles. The best one was a mango creamsicle.

How's this for fun?

Have you ever gone somewhere for the first time and felt like you were home?
Me, too, as in the above picture.

It's the Mediterranean Sea, my first visit there. But it's like home for me, a person who grew up by the ocean. Pacific Ocean.

We are stopped here briefly for a view of a Roman aquaduct and a quick step into the water before going to Caesarea, which Herod, the Great, built on the Mediterranean.