Alan Irwin’s Blog

CRUISIN’ FOR A BRUISIN’
It goes without saying that we are not cruise ship types, and we should have gone without cruising the Nile. Granted, it wasn’t the QEII but let’s just say we expected a lot more from Thomas Cook than a well-appointed cabin in the bowels of the engine room; food that could be [...]

DAM(N) GOOD
In the 1960s when Egypt decided to build the High Dam which would create Lake Nasser, flood huge areas of the Nile Valley and drown what was created thousands of year ago, UNESCO with the cooperation of several countries, amassed an international army of scientists, historians, photographers, archaeologists, engineers, geologists and other experts to [...]

MOUSSAKA AND MORE
Again, anything with eggplant has been fabulous and the koushari has remained a good fall-back food. The tahina (tahini) has been consistently good as have been the shawarma (grilled meat sandwiches), kofta (spiced, ground, grilled meat balls), the yogurt (full fat) and honey. Pizza is everywhere but we’ve only seen and enjoyed “Egyptian [...]

KICKING ASWAN
For those of you not (yet) into Twitter, here’s Alan’s first tweet from Aswan: “Aswan is a sleepy little town. Harriet bought two souvenirs and then slept for 12 hours. Bargaining is hard.”
Aswan is a nice little city on the Nile – sort of the Cancun of Egypt with dozens of cruise ships disgorging [...]

STRAY THOUGHTS, STRAY CATS
The ancient Egyptians may have revered their cats but the present-day Egyptians… not so much. It’s not uncommon to see bands of felines begging for food. Some are a bit aggressive, although their small size is a testament to the failure of their approach.
If one were to believe in reincarnation, the [...]