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 [...]

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 [...]

WALK LIKE AN EGYPTIAN (Cue Go-Gos music…)
Our hotel is in the relatively quiet island neighborhood known as Zemalek. The shops are more upscale and cater to employees of the many embassies located in the area. (The U.S. embassy, however is not in Zemalek and we seriously doubt it looks like one of the many colonial [...]