Taxi Madame? Carriage? Egyptian Husband?

Luxor—I'm still in Luxor because I missed my flight to Sharm El Sheikh after failing to look at the departure time on my ticket. The taxi that brought me to the airport cost $7; the one that brought me back cost $14. I guess I deserved that—no excusing stupidity.

No chance for another flight for three days so I'm back at the Nefertiti Hotel. I love this place and it feels like home. I have met so many fellow travelers here (the joke is we'd be 'tourists' if we were less pretentious). It's absurdly cheap given the location, the amenities and the warm service. I live on the deck below; that's the view across the Luxor Temple to the Nile.


Among my many new friends are two lovely Finns (one who lost her patience with a relentless tout and shouted "Fuck off!" to him, only to get her face thickly and disturbingly spat upon) who come here to see some sun. A solitary motorcyclist from London, traveling from Alaska down the West Coast to Chile and across to Africa, has been on the road for three years after selling his fashion business and "retiring." He has been blogging and studiously avoided for his mother's sake mentioning that in Guatemala he was surrounded by a gang and held with a gun to his head while they robbed him, but someone he met along the way mentioned it on HIS blog and linked to the British biker's, so his mum found out anyway.

I have the most fun with a crazy 60-something Canadian backpacker who has been all over the world many times since her hippie days in the '70s, always traveling on no money at all. She summited Kilimanjaro three years ago (she is my hero) and is on her way to Tunisia and Morocco with a backpack as big as she is. My company keeps her away from the cigarettes she's trying to avoid (ill-advised: EVERYone in Egypt smokes); her company does not keep us away from the alcohol I've avoided for more than two weeks. (That's another Canadian guest with her.)


At first we both like the big, booming Welshmen who join us on the roof-top deck in the evening...until their cigarettes come out and she starts to shake. I ask them if they can not smoke around us, and they do, until they pull out the gargantuan cans of Egyptian Stella beer, then the bottles of wine, and soon they're too inebriated to care about the cigarettes. We move.

I don't like their lack of discretion about the alcohol in this hotel run by Muslims where no alcohol is served, but I don't start to really dislike them until I find out they're revolution tourists—the Europeans who've been inserting themselves in the national political scene for its entertainment value. They happened to be in Cairo last year for the big demonstrations in Tahrir Square, and they're intending to be there again for the expected rallies and demonstrations that will mark the opening of Egypt's new Parliament on January 23, and the first anniversary of the revolution on January 25. One of them, Peter, is so proud of himself for having dodged rubber bullets last year (while Egyptians were being killed by real ones). I should've known that as Parliament Day approached he would not move his abundant self from the couches here on the roof, much less head north to Cairo on the train to join the first anniversary demonstrations.

Meantime the U.S. Embassy has emailed me to be aware of the possibility of trouble in Cairo and other cities as the anniversary approached, but the atmosphere here in Luxor is cheerful and celebratory. NOBODY has a good thing to say about Mubarak, and I'm teased good-naturedly for being from the nation that was so good to their despot. I hear the cheering from my upper deck and walk to the big central square opposite the main mosque and old Luxor Temple to watch the celebrations. Vendors are selling roasted nuts, candy and falafel; happy men old and young wave Egyptian flags. Children are circling around the "dangerous" demonstrators on rented electric mini-cars. I know from the TV in our hotel lobby that the parades in Cairo have shut down the streets (the military government declared January 25 a national holiday), but here in sunny Luxor it's a quiet, ordinary day.




I'm glad I'm still here because it's the first day in the 15 days I've been in Egypt that's been WARM, so I walk along the corniche on the Nile with absolutely nothing to do. Since there's so little tourist business EVERYBODY wants to stop me and either sell me something, book me for a carriage ride or a trip by taxi, or just chat about why no Americans come to Egypt. (I've noticed this too; I'm the only American I've met.) I'm starting to enjoy their ingenuity in getting my attention (note the headline, above) as I march past their stalls with my purposeful Egyptian stride. All I can think of is that the American news media have focused so much on the demonstrations in a few square blocks of Cairo that Americans fear they'll never get home.

It was too late when I got up today to join a tour; the cafe beneath the window of my new room went ALL NIGHT LONG. Tomorrow I'll be on one of the hot air balloons that float over the Valley of the Kings at sunrise for a view of these miles-long temple marvels from the air.




Later, my Canadian friend Gail and I stop at the famous Winter Palace Hotel on the corniche, a five-star hotel built in 1886 Victorian splendor. We have been told we can enjoy a cup of coffee amidst the acres of fabulous gardens behind the hotel.

Cutting through the vaulted lobby I see the gardens beyond. Groomed lawns, palm trees, an aviary, fountains, a swimming pool, several restaurants and a pool-side bar. Around a clay oven under some trees several veiled women laugh while they pound mounds of bread dough. We walk under a tree dripping yellow trumpet flowers and I notice that it's covered with hummingbirds.

The last occupant of the Winter Palace was King Farouk (or FFF, as his subjects called him: "Fat F...... Farouk"), overthrown in the 1952 revolution that launched six decades of military rule. (His queen ousted him too for his other "f": philandering. She remained unmarried and a happy commoner for the rest of her life.)



We ask to sit at a lovely outdoor restaurant and watch the nearly naked guests pool-side while we drink our coffee. It becomes clear that Mohammad the server wants us to move on, so we order lunch we don't really want yet. Then he starts taking our plates before we've barely touched the food. He does this about five times and I'm getting pretty testy at the worst service I've ever had anywhere, much less at a five-star hotel. Then when he says he can't take Gail's Visa card, when we've seen the sign for it coming in the hotel, she gets up, goes and gets the bill from him, and marches off inside to pay the bill. He comes to me expecting sympathy.

I spend a good hour that night blasting him and the hotel on a travelers' web site I like (TripAdvisor). May Mohammad learn better manners—or pass his job along to someone who already has some.

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