SHEESHA

So for those of you who are virgins to the world of sheesha, my parents and i have become addicted. There were two sections to our trip, one was Cairo and our great tour guide Eman. The next was everything after Cairo and our tour guide named Adel (not A-del, like a girls name but Add- del) Adel was.... well interesting. But he is for later. To connect these two parts of our trip was Sheesha! A flavored tobacco, with no nicotine, that is placed inside of a sheesha pipe, that looks like a giant bong, and you smoke it through a pipe. It was hilarious, and so much fun.

Our first night in Cairo I was introduced to Sheesha, my clean lungs had a fit and i coughed and sputtered much to the amusement and delight of the staff (and my parents). We even found beer at our favorite spot Christos's (Beer in a Muslim country is hard to come by!) By the end of the trip Brian was smoking Sheesha and blowing it out his nose, his lips never leaving the pipe. Apparently this is how the "pros" smoke said one man (however many locals laughed at this technique!) And I could inhale and everything without coughing!

After we left Eman, whom we came to appreciate even more after Adel, we headed out to Luxor, to get on our Nile cruising boat. These boats look like they should have a big waterwheel on the back of them. They are a big long rectangle. We were a little disappointed to learn that as we arrived so early (730 am) we would not be able to check into our rooms until 930-10:00. We were kindly requested to sit in the lounge for the next 2-3 hours. I was an unhappy camper as to arrive in Luxor at 730am we had to leave our hotel at 330am!! Instead of sitting in the lounge we found the pool upstairs and crashed on lounge chairs, bags beside us like homeless people!

Cruising the Nile is a lot of fun. You wake up every morning and instead of a beautiful new view outside your window, you look into some one else's. It is actually quite humorous as when you dock, the boats dock 5 across, so whoever's boat is on the outside, you have to walk through the lobbies of 4 other boats to reach land! It was really amusing. We always got to dock right at the port so i never got to go wandering through others boats....
The Nile is amazing. It is incredible how wide it is! I am used to rivers like the Elbow, widest part is really not that big (from what i really see or pay attention to) The Nile is Huge!! No crocodiles much to my disappointment, due to a dam. What really amazed me is how lush and green everything is beside the Nile. The Sahara desert rises up behind about 5km after the riverbed, but surrounding the Nile is a beautiful oasis that stretches down the rivers side.

We spent more time visiting temples, and tombs, museums, and sheesha cafes. It was such a wonderful time. It was awe inspiring to see technology and knowledge that was so advanced in a civilization that is over 5000 years old. They had hinges at least 3500 years old that quite literally looked as though it had been purchased at home depot! Where did this knowledge go! We went to perfume, papyrus paper, oriental carpets, and cotton factories. Yes Egyptian Cotton. You can buy 1000 thread count Egyptian cotton sheets for the mere price of 400USD!!! Right. Unfortunately could not convince the parents to shell out! What the heck do you need 1000 threads per square inch below you anyways?? I am quite content with my 150, everyday layman's cotton thank you very much!

Now i must share with you our guide Adel. Although the man had a good heart, really tried to make sure everything on the tour was taken care of, he was the worst guide ever! Firstly he informed us that we was going to name our group Isis, for the god of love, beauty and music. Okay i thought, kind of lame that he is naming us, but i thought it was just a cute-sy tourism thing. No... wrong. Let me introduce you to the "clapper". The most annoying toy invented. Parents of young children i will take you on about this. Envision what looks like a cheap Chinese toy hand on a stick. There are two plastic sides of the hand, and when you shake it, it claps. Doesn't sound so bad? Imagine attached to this toy is the arm of a man who has a incessant clapping tick. The moment he steps off the tour bus, he feels the overriding urge to "clap". So he claps and claps and claps, waving the damn toy around as if without it, we would scatter and loose ourselves in the abyss of ...... the temple?? In addition to the OCD clapping, he also calls out ISIS..... Isis, come here please. Isis... Iiiisiiissss! Closer, closer please. Come closer. When we are all surrounding him, and he is explaining, he unconsciously taps the clapper against his leg causing it to... CLAP!
Within 15 minutes of our first tour with him i had my own overriding urges. One: to inform him that i was a person, not a lost puppy. Two: DESTROY THE CLAPPER! Come to find out everyone on the tour was also plotting their own demise of the clapper. We briefly discussed a coup, but realized he had all the tickets to the temples, and we would not be able to enter with out him.
Adel was a very nice man, but just wasn't meant to be a tour guide. However we took what we got from him, supplemented ourselves with a lot of books, and had vicious discussions between Brian and I about which god was on the wall, or which flower was being represented on one of the pillars. Fortunately we had Sheesha to bring us back together each evening.