Egypt Part The Third 2022 - Things Are Not Quite The Same, And Word Gets Around...

 So after a day of not doing a lot my legs are now used to being back on solid ground and I no longer feel like I am still on the train.

My hotel is next door to the one I stayed in on my last visit and Abdullah the 'house boy' has already spotted me and told Mahmoud the cook on the top floor who leaned over the balcony on the top floor next door to talk to me, my hotel is one floor shorter you see.

Today I will venture a little further afield and take the public ferry across to the East Bank... I take a late breakfast in the hotel, (2 hard boiled eggs, pitta bread, tea, cheese and jam, English pounds GB£1.50), and walking out the gate I find the nuisance from my last stay sitting outside the gate. (Egyptians are not allowed in hotels where there are foreigners staying unless, a) They work there, or b) They are staying there themselves)

How the nuisance found me I do not know but all I can say is the 'bush telegraph' works extremely well.

So what's changed?

A lot less people selling boats trips, taxi rides, and whatever else they can sell for a start, Instead of crowds of them there are now only a few and yet the number of boats moored on both sides of the Nile is just the same.

And what few people there are are a lot less pushy, but I know how to get rid of them now anyway so they didn't really bother me a lot.

A little shopping never goes amiss and prices are still the same, a few essentials like some fruit... and toms and cucs..

The fruit set me back by 35 LE, or £1.60 if you prefer, and the tomatoes and cucumber were £5, or 25p if you like...

Meanwhile the public ferry no longer goes straight across to the other side of the river but now lands a lot further north near the museum which was a bit of surprise as it is no miles to get to the market and Luxor Temple. Well not really miles but quite a long way. 

I haven't got to the bottom of why it has been changed.... Yet.

                                                                                                              

One thing I did find out walking past the Temple was how people knew I was back, this is down to a tour guide that I have used twice in 2017 and 2019 and he saw me getting off the train the previous night. So that is one puzzle solved.

One thing about them moving the ferry is that there is now a couple of cafes nearby. The 'boy' making the coffee assures me that he is 'very beautiful', I will leave you to make your own decisions about that!

Meanwhile back at the hotel some Irish people have just arrived, they flew in via Hurghada which is how a lot of people seem to be doing it, probably because of the cheaper flights. They have just spent a week in Hurghada and are trying to do the rest of Egypt in a week. It's not going to work.. I try and help and give them a few tips of what is most important, but they have got one thing right and that is that they want to do a short cruise up the Nile to Aswan but have been put off by a TV program showing Joanna Lumley all dolled up and sipping cocktails. I assure them that a Nile cruise is not like that unless the TV company are paying a fortune for one of the 'select' cruise boats.

Wandering around my neck of the woods I take make morning exercise through the banana plantations along some very dusty tracks...

Passing just one of the many stables in the area. They make quite a thing of horse riding here and most of the Egyptians can ride it seems, if they can't ride a horse they can ride a donkey. With the amount of horses and donkeys here I am surprised that they don't all grow prize roses in their gardens. 

Indeed they don't seem to use the manure for anything just stack in bigger and bigger piles on the side of the road, although I suspect that in some areas they burn it as fuel judging by the smell at time.

Wandering about in the middle of nowhere I come across the shell of a new building which according to the sign is set to become a new hotel, the sign does not say when but looking at the state of the building it will not be in the near future.

Heading back in to 'town' via the main road to the desert and The Valley of The Kings takes a while because you have to keep stopping to talk to people many of whom do not speak much English but enough to ask where you are from

 ''England'',

 ''Ah, lovely people''.

 So you see we are not as bad as we think we are!

Arriving back in the ''village'' I find out what the best dressed bride will be wearing this year, and stop off at the bakery where I admire the pitta breads and get given one still warm from the oven.

The pittas are quite 'fluffy' when they come out of the oven... The man on the counter selling them has to give them a bit of a 'pat' to squash them down a bit, a skilled job if ever I saw one....

Meanwhile back at 'The Corniche' it is time for a picnic lunch on the ''Ahmed''

A variety of 'sandwiches' in pitta bread along with bit s and pieces cost a massive 100 LE, about £4. The delivery boy didn't get a tip he got a leftover sandwich instead, and a new taste was to be had,

pickled pink turnip, unbelievably salty!! I will not be eating those again a hurry!