The Museum is an amazing collection of hundreds of thousands of old artifacts collected from crypts and the side of the road. We saw mummies, daddies, and other corpses that didn't make it through the humongous museum.
Emerging from the museum we were besieged with a dozen informal taxis all clambering for our business. Deb selected a reasonable looking older man figuring if he had survived this long driving in Cairo, he must have some skills. She thought being named Mohamed might help with Allah. This was almost a no-go when Deb got in and didn't find enough seat belts. Mr. Mohamed prayed to Allah and the seat belts appeared. The trip back along the ring road (the highway, hardly any camels or horses) we saw almost no traffic and we made it back in 30 minutes. Apparently Mohamed had some pull with the big guy.
Back at the hotel we had lunch by the pool. David and I jumped in and swam. Meanwhile Deb went shopping and emerged with 3 t-shirts and a camel for a total of 320 Egyptian pounds. The salesman was named Mr. Mohamed.
For dinner EMO Tours picked us up for a "Nile river cruise."
This included dinner with such exotic Egyptian delicacies as spaghetti, Kung pao chicken, and cheesecake. A couple Malaysians appeared. Then a few Egyptians. Finally a crowd of about 60 Indonesians all clad in down coats appeared (it was 20C, 60F, so we knew that had to be from someplace really warm). Judging from the frown on their faces, the Egyptian belly dancer showing lots of skin really seemed to offend the Indonesians. But the Egyptian whirling dervish named Mohamed went over well. When it was all over our tour company threaded us through the camel, horse, human and car traffic and the roadside evening meals to our hotel.
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