Tanya's first look at the city

I got up pretty late and thought I would have a look at my view - the sky was blue, if not a little smoggy and the pool, well the pool was mostly empty and what little water there was in it was green - very glad I didn’t give him a tip!

I went down to breakfast and found Tracey and Elena who had been on my flight.
We had brekky and went for a bit of a wander.

We went towards the Sheraton and figured there might be a bit of shopping to be done around there.

The traffic was totally mad.

A guy came up to us and took us around a bit.
We wanted hats but couldn’t find any.
He ended up taking us to his friend’s papyrus shop.
I didn’t buy anything but it was nice to be in the air-conditioning.
Ali, who owned the shop was lovely and gave us tea - that was where I had my first of many hibiscus teas, both hot and cold.

We went back to the hotel and I snoozed a bit and read my Lonely Planet Egypt Guide.

I got up and went downstairs for our first tour meeting.
There seemed to be a lot of female guides and I was glad that our guide was male - I figured that they would be able to be a bit pushier on our behalf.

Anyway our guide Marc was really nice and was from Belgium.
He just told us that most of the briefing would be done after breakfast the next day and that he just needed all of our flight and insurance stuff then.
He told us that if we walked up along the river we could come to some floating restaurants.

It was a lovely walk along the Nile.

"The city looked lovely all lit up"

The city looked lovely all lit up and there were lots of couples “courting along the river” - just chatting and holding hands.

We went to TGI Fridays for dinner and our first sheesha pipe - it was apple flavoured and very nice.

We went back to the hotel and hit the sack - we had to be up at 7.00am for breakfast before the briefing and our first day on tour.