Red Sea - day 30 Egypt - Suez Canal Yacht Club
St Barbara's Web Diary
Peter & Sue Goldsmith
Thu 17 Apr 2008 10:02
12.00 17th April
Well the measurer arrived at the last minute so we are off. By the way,
yesterday was day 29 not 22.
Suez City is a really fascinating place, very little evidence of tourism,
this is a real taste of Egypt with bustling streets, people at work in tiny
workshops, repairing bicycles, making and fixing rather than just
'recycling' via the local tip. The seemingly few gift shops we saw were very
keen to entice a small group of novices in. An Indian man stopped us on the
pavement with stories of living in London, meeting his wife in Singapore -
who he insisted on introducing us to inside his shop - as he summonsed his
son to produce 'drinks, three 7ups' then regaled us with wonderful best
price in town gifts for our families. A difficult one to get out of but the
bottles of cold drink went down a treat and the Egyptian drinks coasters
will also be a treat for some lucky recipient once home - at least they
won't have to listen to the story of this nice little Indian man who enticed
us...blah, blah, blah!
This is also a city for pavement cafes and scary food. We found a place with
a pizza oven outside and a chef knocking up dough which just looked so good.
But this is not just pizza, this is Egyptian pizza. The dough is stretched
and spun to more than two feet across then, when paper thin, folder back
almost like layers of puff pastry. This is proved, then opened, a filling
put inside and cooked quickly in the main oven. Filled with peppers, onions,
tomatoes and cheese and something like corned beef. It was very nice and
very different. (It would have been fantastic without the corned beef, but
hey, when in Egypt!).
We still await the measurer - a mystical and elusive Egyptian keeper of
artefacts who will work a spell on the boat. As soon as he's done we will
leave for our 'holiday' on shore. We are off to Cairo by taxi, two nights
there visiting the pyramids and museums, then a sleeper train to Luxor,
perhaps a boat trip on the Nile and more temples, then somehow to Aswan and
Abu Simbel for one of the finest temples, originally built inside a mountain
then more recently, moved into another. All of this will be rounded up with
flights back to Cairo and a return to StB. It should be a great week but it
means, as Peter said yesterday, there may be sporadic updates of our travel
while we are gone but we will do our best to keep our readers up to date.
Peter2.