Read the sentence below this image. Makes a lot more sense now, right?
This is the pleasant if undynamic breakfast I had two mornings at the pleasant if overpriced Philae Hotel in Aswan.
Egypt remains, uhhhh, pretty good. Aswan turned out to not actually be all that relaxing, despite what the consistently inaccurate Lonely Planet Egypt claimed. What it lacked in Luxor's sheer numbers of touts, hassle and bullshit, it more than made up for with quality bullshit and some petty thievery.
Leaving a restaurant called Emy's, on the Nile, where we'd paid the price requested by the server, which was already inflated, he tried to shake us down: "My friend, please give me ten pounds." (about USD$1.80) He was totally unable to tell us why, and started reciting the things we'd eaten. And paid for. And paid a service charge for, and tax, and left a tip. When I said I'd need to see a menu to look at prices, he responded with, "Okay, okay, go."
Then for a little business-as-usual corruption: you pay the entrance fee to get into a monument (in this case, the Tombs of the Nobles) then have to pay a "guide" to unlock the tombs, that the layabout tourist police hands you off to, so he can take his cut later. Ummm, so what did we pay for here? The privilege to pay more?
Now in Alexandria, which as a city is my favorite of the four places we've been in Egypt. A little less chaotic than Cairo, and far, far less bullshit than Luxor or Aswan. And a few restaurants that are actually nonsmoking inside (very, very rare in Egypt, where the smoking repulses me daily.) And the Mediterranean is lovely.
A couple more nights here, then back to Cairo for a night, then home. I'm ready.
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