Cairo Day 1, Thursday

Backblipping as I was too tired for blip at night.

Neither of us had a good night’s sleep because of hard beds, big heavy duvets all tucked in, and brick- like pillows. We organised for a different room, no duvets, and smaller softer pillows. Decided to slip breakfast as we were having an early lunch.Our faithful travel kettle did the job for coffee first thing.

The main event of the day was going to Ayman’s family house to go through the things he’d been keeping for us, since they had to get taken out of N’s flat. These were things we’d collected over the 10 years we’d been coming to Cairo, the biggest and most important was a tall lamp. See Bb’s extra shots for Thursday to see our creative way of packing it to check in as excess luggage! Fingers crossed!

It was lovely to meet Ayman’s sons again and his wife for the first time. She’d prepared a whole table spread of food. All delicious. Lovely Egyptian hospitality. Varying degrees of English was spoken by them, but we got by.

After the lunch, we went with Ayman to an old fashioned big department store to look into packing options of the lamp. We left with it all wrapped up and a frame of brush poles holding it all together

A rest back in the hotel and then dinner at Hana’s Korean. We first popped into the Flamenco Hotel to say hello - it’s where we stayed for the first couple of years. Bottom right shot was taken there. Same family running Hana's and we were warmly welcomed. Food good as ever there!

A fulI-on but successful first day.