January 27th: A-traveling we will go

Today was just one of those days. It happens on every trip and there is no avoiding it. We gave over the day to the drive back from Siwa to Cairo. BA and LC did the morning climb up the mountain again and we had a short breakfast before packing and hitting the road at 10a.

It suffices to say that we didn’t hit our in-airport hotel (!! - accommodations due to a miscommunication with our guide...grrrr) until nearly 8p. We were making great time until we hit the city limits in the last hour. Cairo rush hour traffic is remarkably like L.A. traffic. Unreasonably and stupefyingly painful. Nearly as painful as finding ourselves booked into a crappy Novotel that apparently hasn’t heard that the 20^th century has long gone by – it’s bright white marble and brass lobby is followed up by shabby carpets and such – to be expected I suppose. Oddly they have wi-fi but it’s broken in the lobby and you need to buy a card with username and password to use it elsewhere but they have run out of cards? Don’t ask. And so much for my Macbook Air that has no Ethernet port. Argh.

We made the best of it. The boys repaired to their room for room service and CNN and we had a mildly pleasant make-do dinner of Chinese food in the restaurant downstairs. They have a Swiss restaurant and Chinese restaurant – both occupy the same room, it just depends what menu you ask for. Odd. But just the parallel universe of this kind of travel.

Oh and it’s also such a throwback to the days of smoking in restaurants. Everyone smokes everywhere here, and in the restaurant the non-smoking section is smack dab next to the smoking section. Go figure. I don’t miss those old days.

After a few days of a twinge-ing finger…I took a closer look and guess what? Found a stitch the doc missed when taking them out! Now I know why it’s been bugging me. Gonna yank it out tomorrow after snipping it with LC’s nail scissors. That should help that pulling, tugging thing I have been feeling.

G still has that annoying cough and as much as I hate to be me having to listen to it, I can’t imagine how frustrating it must be for her. I hope she gets better because I am starting to worry! But that’s me, the worrier. She has tried everything from eating honey on lemon slices to downing teaspoons of Siwan olive oil and still, hack hack, hack. Oy.

Ok off to grab a few hours sleep before the next chapter. I won’t miss this hotel, that’s for sure.