Cellar Check

hard work this isolation

solar powered Tesla lawnmower

making sure we'll make it till tomorrow

Snow on Mount Pausillo

Keep splitting the firewood

Sars-CoV-2: my view from Europe

Wednesday, 8 April

    If 1000 people die today and the curve is flattening off, that means that 1000 people will die tomorrow.

Wednesday, 25 Mar

review the math lesson: exponential and logistic growth of Covid-19 by Animated Math.

   The inflection point from exponential growth to "logistical" growth occurs when the change from one day to the next equals the change from the previous day to the day before that. In other words when the rate of growth is equal on successive days. 

   The increase in deaths in Italy between the following dates:

Mar 21 = 625

Mar 22 = 795

Mar 23 = 649
Mar 24 = 601

Mar 25 = 743
Mar 26 = 685

   I'm not going to state any conclusions for fear of jinxing it.

Tuesday, 24 Mar

on line dichiarazione for those entering Lazio
And this is the current general autodichiarazione for travel anywhere in Italy

Monday, 23 Mar

OMG, rate has eased in italy, everyone knocking on iron for good luck (which is what they do here).
Coronavirus Data & Statistics best data aggregator 
World Health Organization world covid-19 map
JohnsHopkins interactive world covid-19 map

Sunday, 22 Mar

Swab testing (to confirm active infection) is a start, but, in the absence of targeted therapies, only adds to statistical data. This article in Science makes a good case for antibody testing and why it might reduce the measure of morbidity rate.

Patrick Shaw Stewart contributes these tips from years of observing viral infection. From here you can also follow much of his work and contributions.

Saturday, 21 Mar

completely off the subject, but I just discovered the Red List of endangered species, but after a quick look, I wondered where the bacteria and other invisible species were given their sympathy. And then, of course, what about all the newly morphing sub-living viral particles that predictably pop up?

Exciting news from Germany, a possible compound that blocks RNA replication of SarsCoV2. Tough reading but real encouraging science as opposed to Trump's optimism.   

Thursday, 19 Mar

   Scenes from the epicenter  click for Sky News story on hospital in Bergamo

   This from Jill in Rome:

   And this from NPR story on why Italy is in so much trouble:

Some question why Italy was caught off guard when the virus outbreak was revealed on Feb. 21.

Remuzzi says he is now hearing information about it from general practitioners. "They remember having seen very strange pneumonia, very severe, particularly in old people in December and even November," he says. "This means that the virus was circulating, at least in [the northern region of] Lombardy and before we were aware of this outbreak occurring in China."

He says it was impossible to combat something you didn't know existed.

Wednesday, 18 Mar

This from the commune Citta della Pieve: 

++ AGGIORNAMENTO COVID-19 E RACCOMANDAZIONI ++

Buon pomeriggio concittadini,
vi informo che ho ricevuto ufficiale comunicazione di altri 2 casi positivi al Covid-19 nel nostro Comune, ambedue hanno contratto il virus in ambito lavorativo fuori Regione e si trovano già in quarantena. 

Come ho ribadito, nei giorni precedenti, la maggioranza dei pievesi hanno ben compreso la gravità di ciò che sta accadendo e di conseguenza hanno dimostrato, fin da subito, di essere ossequienti alle disposizioni normative emanatane ed alle regole che, come comunità, abbiamo il dovere di rispettare scrupolosamente. 

Mio malgrado, devo dire che una piccola parte no, nonostante tutto continua ad approcciarsi con troppa superficialità alla battaglia che ci troviamo a combattere come Comune, come Nazione e come Pianeta!
Questo mi addolora non poco, perchè in questi giorni estremamente difficili ho bisogno di voi, di ognuno di voi, perchè è il singolo a fare la differenza nella possibilità di isolare il virus.

Vogliamo tutti uscire da questa situazione il più presto possibile, io per primo, allora aiutatemi e soprattutto aiutate la nostra comunità. State a casa! 

Un solo componente del nucleo familiare va a fare la spesa, una spesa importante che duri più giorni e quando uscite dal supermercato possibilmente non gettate i guanti monouso lungo i cigli delle nostre strade! 
Questo è un momento che dovrebbe portarci ad accrescere il senso di responsabilità e rispetto per la nostra comunità e per il nostro territorio e non un momento di egoismo e menefreghismo. 
Le passeggiate ci sono permesse, ma devono essere effettuate e riconosciute come eccezionalità, da evitare. Piccole passeggiatine intorno casa vostra, da soli e solo quando veramente necessarie. 

Questa battaglia, dal nemico invisibile e subdolo, non è uno scherzo e chiedo il vostro supporto, se vedete qualcuno che contravviene alle regole o se vedete assembramenti chiamate immediatamente i nostri vigili e le forze dell'ordine affinchè possano intervenire tempestivamente.

Grazie per la vostra preziosa collaborazione,


Fausto Risini

  Rant alert: Testing in Kent, UK is effectively prohibited. This global failure has thrown away the most effective preventive weapon in controlling this threat: contact tracing. It's over. Now we are fighting a pathetic rear-guard action while we are chased in the growing rout. With no effective therapies.

   Second trip to the local grocer (LIDL) revealed a abundance of stuff. Lots of fresh food on sale, presumably for lack of customers. Even free crackers. Masked police at the round-abouts checking declarations of intent. 

Tuesday, 17 Mar

   It's hitting closer to home now. Britain has taken an unusual, less "draconian" approach; allowing the schools to stay open and many businesses to continue. The subsequent data is beginning to climb up the exponential curve. Confirmations and deaths are piling up.

    Meanwhile, what do you know? Trump is going to initiate Andrew Yang's guaranteed basic income to keep the country from bankruptcy. Funny how it takes a hard slap to the head. Let's hope the slap is hard enough to knock some talent into office. 

Sunday, 15 Mar

    More bad news today: Trump tests negative.

    Opinion article by an Italian-American in New York. 

    Quaranta Giorni. "40 days" hence the term Quarantine. Thank you LaVerzura. Please click for a well written, first person impression of life in our town during this crisis.

Saturday, 14 Mar 

    The bright heart of Italy

Friday 13th March. days of warm sun and isolation

    Here's a recent study from Germany indicating an RNA particle shed early in the infection. Here's a pretty good press interpretation. The study seems to indicate fairly rigorous immunity and very low infection potential from recovered individuals. 
    In the meantime, UK seems to be on a program to harden off the population through slow infection. This is supposed to lessen the impact on hospitals and the economy, but, seems to me, puts old folk at risk. If high infections rates hide behind a terribly inadequate testing regime, UK could be betting on lower than calculated morbidity rate. Trial and error pandemic policy. 

    Yesterday Italy imposed a nationwide shutdown of all non-essential business. I drove to the store armed with a signed declaration (as required, downloaded and printed) stating who I was and where I was going. No police, little traffic, store loaded with everything except people, plenty of loo paper, employees cheerfully wearing masks, and disposable plastic gloves supplied outside with the shopping carts. It was all quite pleasant except for the impatient tailgater chasing me home. 

    We spend our days enjoying the peace and quiet, reading and writing. So far the wine cellar is holding.

    There has been some criticism of EU authorities not following the Chinese/Korean model of active testing and control. Here we are simply told to stay home while hospitals overflow and no public testing is conducted. Reported cases here in Italy continue to grow exponentially while in China/Korea all indicators are falling.

Tuesday 10 March

      National lockdown takes effect

Monday 9 March, pensieri inutili

    Italy officially imposes a national lockdown, extending the travel restrictions to all of italy.

    I'm concerned about the veracity of the data. Poor data due to the lack of universally qualified testing procedures and a general lack of experience with this pathogen only opens the door to conjecture and hysteria. 

    Evidently, this new virus is capable of leading to fatal illness. And it seems to effect weaker individuals. Rates of contagion can't be accurate due to the lack of testing among the general population. The rate is being characterized as typical exponential growth. It seems likely the rates of contagion are much higher, or at least further along the exponential curve than suspected. The rates of morbidity have no basis in fact at all until adequate data is achieved. The only data reported is the number of deaths vs. verified cases; but verified cases rely on positively tested individuals. It is highly likely that many individuals who have contracted the illness are not demonstrating severe symptoms and therefore not submitting themselves for diagnosis. Tests for these individuals just isn't available. I am personally aware of family members who seem to suffer from the symptoms but are reluctant to submit to testing and are happy to quarantine themselves. I returned home from Egypt with a fever and was told to stay home. 

    We have calculated, based on wild estimates, that this virus resembles known flu viruses with similar morbidity. Current contagion estimates are simply not reliable.

    This is not to be mistaken for an attitude of denial of the seriousness of the pandemic. The rates of increase are classical exponential growth which is alarmingly steep in the latter part of the curve. Caution is the best policy and we support the draconian measures the Italian government has put in place and we encourage every political entity to exercise the same degree of caution until adequate date is available.
    Luckily, this crisis comes at the perfect time of year. Early Spring in Italy can encourage a love of life in the darkest heart. As the season opens up, so will our understanding of Sars-CoV-2 and Covid 19.
    Looking across the fields we see the occasional car or truck but very little activity. Trains run infrequently. Our neighbor stops by daily on her walk with her daughter, and, in fact, we see them more now than ever before. In the meantime we wash our hands and prepare ourselves for our flu jab in two years.
   And here's your primer on exponential and logistic growth of Covid-19 by Animated Math.

Tuesday, 3 Mar  What to do

    I received an attachment from a friend with advice from a lifetime researcher on coronal virus. Here's what to do:

Dear Colleagues,

As some of you may recall, when I was a professor of pathology at the University of California San Diego, I was one of the first molecular virologists in the world to work on coronaviruses (the 1970s). I was the first to demonstrate the number of genes the virus contained. Since then, I have kept up with the coronavirus field and its multiple clinical transfers into the human population (e.g., SARS, MERS), from different animal sources.

The current projections for its expansion in the US are only probable, due to continued insufficient worldwide data, but it is most likely to be widespread in the US by mid to late March and April.

Here is what I have done and the precautions that I take and will take. These are the same precautions I currently use during our influenza seasons, except for the mask and gloves.:

1) NO HANDSHAKING! Use a fist bump, slight bow, elbow bump, etc.

2) Use ONLY your knuckle to touch light switches. elevator buttons, etc.. Lift the gasoline dispenser with a paper towel or use a disposable glove.

3) Open doors with your closed fist or hip - do not grasp the handle with your hand, unless there is no other way to open the door. Especially important on bathroom and post office/commercial doors.

4) Use disinfectant wipes at the stores when they are available, including wiping the handle and child seat in grocery carts.

5) Wash your hands with soap for 10-20 seconds and/or use a greater than 60% alcohol-based hand sanitizer whenever you return home from ANY activity that involves locations where other people have been.

6) Keep a bottle of sanitizer available at each of your home's entrances. AND in your car for use after getting gas or touching other contaminated objects when you can't immediately wash your hands.

7) If possible, cough or sneeze into a disposable tissue and discard. Use your elbow only if you have to. The clothing on your elbow will contain infectious virus that can be passed on for up to a week or more!

What I have stocked in preparation for the pandemic spread to the US:

1) Latex or nitrile latex disposable gloves for use when going shopping, using the gasoline pump, and all other outside activity when you come in contact with contaminated areas.

Note: This virus is spread in large droplets by coughing and sneezing. This means that the air will not infect you! BUT all the surfaces where these droplets land are infectious for about a week on average - everything that is associated with infected people will be contaminated and potentially infectious. The virus is on surfaces and you will not be infected unless your unprotected face is directly coughed or sneezed upon. This virus only has cell receptors for lung cells (it only infects your lungs) The only way for the virus to infect you is through your nose or mouth via your hands or an infected cough or sneeze onto or into your nose or mouth.

2) Stock up now with disposable surgical masks and use them to prevent you from touching your nose and/or mouth (We touch our nose/mouth 90X/day without knowing it!). This is the only way this virus can infect you - it is lung-specific. The mask will not prevent the virus in a direct sneeze from getting into your nose or mouth - it is only to keep you from touching your nose or mouth.

3) Stock up now with hand sanitizers and latex/nitrile gloves (get the appropriate sizes for your family). The hand sanitizers must be alcohol-based and greater than 60% alcohol to be effective.

4) Stock up now with zinc lozenges. These lozenges have been proven to be effective in blocking coronavirus (and most other viruses) from multiplying in your throat and nasopharynx. Use as directed several times each day when you begin to feel ANY "cold-like" symptoms beginning. It is best to lie down and let the lozenge dissolve in the back of your throat and nasopharynx. Cold-Eeze lozenges is one brand available, but there are other brands available.

I, as many others do, hope that this pandemic will be reasonably contained, BUT I personally do not think it will be. Humans have never seen this snake-associated virus before and have no internal defense against it. Tremendous worldwide efforts are being made to understand the molecular and clinical virology of this virus. Unbelievable molecular knowledge about the genomics, structure, and virulence of this virus has already been achieved. BUT, there will be NO drugs or vaccines available this year to protect us or limit the infection within us. Only symptomatic support is available.

I hope these personal thoughts will be helpful during this potentially catastrophic pandemic. You are welcome to share this email. Good luck to all of us! Jim

James Robb, MD

Our little coronacrisis

17 April, Friday

   Mobile testing due to arrive tomorrow. It understood that both girls will be tested, but that is a little unclear.

   As of April 12, Germany and Italy lead the world in number of tests per capita. Germany has tested 2.1 and Italy 2.0 percent of the population. By contrast US has tested .98 and UK .49 percent.

14 April, Tuesday

Thomasina still coughing, no fever. We report her symptoms to Umbria health officials. 

12 April, Easter Sunday

Happy Easter. 

     Yesterday, Thomasina complained that she couldn't sleep because her cough was keeping her awake. A week after arriving here and setting up in the empty house of Amie and Marc, she complained of cold symptoms. I drove over with a thermometer while Alex called the doctor. As of last night, she has no fever.

     Thomasina believes she has a cold. She also states bravely that she would not dread getting the coronavirus. She believes that she would overcome it quickly and that it would make her immune. I agree but, then, I still worry. A constant anxiety accompanies every contact we make, even with our own children. Everyday for two months we are faced with alarming news. We have been getting screening calls from the Umbrian coronavirus tracking office in Perugia and up until now have reported no symptoms from either girl. 

Picnic suppers at Santa Maria

10 Aug, Good Friday

Thomasina reports cough, no fever.

8 Aug, Wednesday

We have a summer picnic with the girls. Thomasina reports cold symptoms.

1 Aug, Wednesday

girls fly from Heathrow to Rome. Alex picks them up from the Rome airport

23 Mar, Monday

May IB exams have been cancelled.

21 Mar, Saturday

 For information on quarantine and passenger screening:   
Alitalia: From Italy 892010 (Paid number)
From abroad +39 06 65649 (Variable cost based on your tariff plan to the fixed network)

International Baccalaureate info update page  for you Isolde

La Squadra Cadell social distancing at Little Ships, Ramsgate, UK

     We enjoyed an unusual Skype dinner party last night. Alex and I set the table with our laptop and, at the prescribed time, we joined another couple for supper. A great evening!

20 Mar,  Friday

   We purchased air tickets for the girls to return to Italy, 1 April. No foolin'.
Alitalia, 1 apr 2020, LHR -> FCO, 19:50 - 23:20,  book code JUVOMP 

  Just in time to get the victory garden in shape.

19 Mar,  Thursday

    Confusion still reigns. Isolde is in the International Baccalaureate program, a global standard of instruction. She takes classes in a UK school that offers both the state diplomas and the IB program. The Prime Minister announced cancellation of all schools and exam programs but the International Baccalaureate organization is not prepared to cancel exams worldwide. No solution as of this afternoon.

    Europe is closing borders, airlines are parking their fleets. Getting the girls back to Italy may only be possible by using the Alitalia repatriation flights in April. 

18 Mar, Wednesday 2020  evening

   Isolde and Maeve are waiting for an announcement from their school and the International Baccalaureate program on what will happen to the exam schedule. This is crucial to Isolde's admission to Oxford. 

17 Mar, Tuesday

  Tonight, we learn that the son of the landlord of the guest house where Isolde is staying is likely to have the disease. He has returned home and Isolde and her roommate have fled. We are housing them in the Royal Harbour Hotel and hoping they are not now vectors of the disease. School is still open but fewer and fewer teachers and students are showing up.

the situation

  1- The prime minister has just announced the closure of all UK schools.

  2- We have Thomasina up in Durham and Isolde in Ramsgate. Thomasina is in a university affiliated "dorm" room which she must move out of. Isolde, with her friend Maeve, has just moved from Victoria's house to the Royal Harbour Hotel at the generous offer of Jamie and Caroline. 

  3- The virus crisis has precipitated all these moves. The whole world is closing down fast. Stocks plunging day after day. All "gains" made during the past three years of Trump erased. Travel restrictions clamp down harder and harder each day. Whole airlines stopping service, borders closing, prices rising, and the guarantee of returning to UK shrinking fast. We would love to have the girls return to Italy for the rest of the year. 

   4- Both girls are reporting possible exposure to the virus through various contacts.

   5- Scarlett, Dominic, Isabella, Barnaby, Isolde, Maeve and Thomasina are due to arrive at Royal Harbour Hotel. Scarlett is coming from London where she has been exposed to her roommate, a health care worker, who has been exposed to the virus. Scarlett has symptoms.

   6- Two Italian roommates at victoria's house have reserved a house (?) for next year. Isolde and Maeve have been invited by the mother, Sabina, to occupy the house through the summer.

Trump's Coronavirus Calendar

You're killin' us, my President

Egypt part 7. Re-entry

Re-entry

(please go to part 1 if you want to read the diary in chronological order)

   From the moment we left Italy we felt a sense of unease. The coronavirus was beginning to threaten Italy although it had, supposedly, not entered Egypt. I had mislaid my official residency papers and was traveling on a temporary passport. I wondered what was going to happen when I returned. And compounding all this was the bankruptcy of our airline. They put us on an Arabian aircraft with no guarantee of a return flight. And all the while we traveled in Egypt, AirItaly would not answer a phone call or email. The details of our housing or travel after being kicked off the cruise ship remained completely up in the air. I had done some looking around Aswan Airbnbs from Italy some months before but we had nothing reserved and no idea what Aswan even looked like. And, finally, we didn't want to repeat our train ticket fiasco. The train return to Cairo was even longer than that to Luxor. The first thing we needed was a good WiFi connection. It's funny how travel today relies on that.

    Happily, Aswan turned out to be obviously prosperous and modern. Looking across the Nile from our berth I expected to see an island and a Nubian village. That's how an Airbnb host described it. What really impressed was a huge, multi storey hotel lit like Disneyland. We fired up Data Roaming, hoping the money held out, and hastily reserved the Happy Nubian Hotel I had spotted months ago. Feeling really disoriented, we clumsily climbed into the 50cent public ferry with our gear and sailed across. The gigantic tourist hotel slowly vanished behind palm trees as we approached the landing and details of the far shore came into focus. And surprise, surprise, we set foot on a crude landing giving way to a very poor, dirt paved intersection of footpaths between a confusion of mudbrick structures. Yes, this really was a Nubian village, Jazirat Aswan, its authenticity confirmed by domestic goats and a small gang of barefoot school boys. These guys greeted us excitedly, grabbing our heaviest bags, determined to personally guide us to wherever we were going. Wherever that was. "Animalia" I remembered from part of the description of the guest house."Animalia, Animalia" everybody repeated and we set off on a long walking tour taking us down alleys, around corners, across field paths and finally to a door which didn't look anything like I remembered from the Airbnb photos.

 Knock knock. "Animalia, Animalia." Animalia? An older woman pointed with authority to the kids. Off we went on a big tour of the island, ending up right next to the elementary school and not far from the landing. They got a tip and we got a good laugh.

    It was a nice place, very rustic and authentic with hand plastered walls and brightly colored accents. We occupied a third floor room with a comfy, covered balcony big enough for a picnic table and wonderful wooden benches furnished in gay pillows. We loved the contrast to the dreaded cruise vessel. But our anxiety remained because the WiFi proved too weak to stay connected. Determined to get organized, I insisted we return to the landing and either check with the WiFi at the dockside restaurant or return to the city in search of a connection. Luckily the restaurant generously offered a powerful connection as well as a great vegetable tagine, and I began to note the difference in cultures from across the river. The gagging repetition of chewy pita filled with a mysterious spiced porridge began to repel me to the point where I actually enjoyed the cafeteria food served on board the cruise. But this tagine! Wow! Finally something tasty. We found ourselves at the edge of Nubia, old Ethiopia. Skins darker, obviously poorer, probably discriminated against; but delightfully Rastafarian.  

leaving Aswan at dawn

   Train ticket done, Airbnb reserved in Cairo for the next night and we reassured ourselves with a schedule; but we still couldn't reach our Airline company. In our desperation we commandeered a friend in UK and another in Italy to continue non-stop calling to the help line. Tantalizingly, the calls were answered but would timeout after hours of waiting for a human assistant. Looking back on the experience, I realize this is where we made a mistake. We had purchased traveler's insurance before we left Europe and we were covered for cancelled flights. Aswan has an airport and so does Luxor and we should have booked our return from there rather than take the endless train ride back to dirty old Cairo. Upon investigating flight options, we ruled out a connection through Athens and chose one through Casablanca that returned us to Rome in one day. Anxiety continued to follow us on our long retreat from the upper Nile.
    Going out is fun. It's an adventure. Coming back is seldom joyous apart from the expectation of the comforts of home that beckon. Two weeks of kitchen sink laundries, doubtful meals, and the slow grind of lugging a ton of belongings takes a toll on the spirits. Yes, it's nice to have no housework or lawn mowing to think about but the strain of keeping all the details organized can be fatiguing. Have you got your passport? Why don't these socks match? I left my earbuds at the guesthouse. How much does that cost in Euros? Do we tip this guy? Why doesn't my roaming work? My batteries are dying.
     The before dawn ferry ride across the Nile proved the highlight of this day. I don't know how or why there was a boat available but we tipped the guy, you can be sure! We were the only passengers. Through some breach in cosmic logic, a private taxi had been prearranged by Ehad, our historian/tour guide. The driver was late meaning we could have slept another half hour, but at least we didn't have to drag our gear up the road to the train station. In a counter-breach in cosmic logic, the train we had acquired tickets for was one of the filthiest in service, just to prepare us for our return to Cairo. Probably. Alex, unluckily, had to use the loo only to confirm our impression of the cleanliness of Egypt's rolling stock. I held it for 10 hours. The guy on seat 61 says rail travel is the only way to go and he's very helpful with that and he says that the train from Aswan to Cairo affords one a true look into the Egyptian river life. He's right, of course, but you know, we've already seen quite a bit of it. And it's not that great second or third or fourth time around. So I tried to sleep after sadly finishing my book; but anxiety over our next connection kept me churning over how we were going to get from the Ramses Train Station in Cairo out to the far tip of Zamalek ("sa MA lek"), a new neighborhood for us.
    Uber, the only way to fly in Cairo, failed to function as soon as we arrived. No roaming. Why? Ha. too bad. It was dark. We dragged and dragged and dragged off into the night, checking every 100 meters until we finally flagged a taxi. English? Ne. Read Address? shrug. In we get. The poor host expected us hours ago. After a bizarre tour of one-way streets in the dark, the taxi reversed to a stop. Out. Pay a paltry note for an angry snarl. Where the fuck are we? Into a lit building and bewildering search for a flat number or floor number or ANYTHING...and then the phone rang. And a door opened. How this stuff happens in Egypt, I'll never know. If this were Rome or London? Past check-in? Forget it. Pitch your tent, roll out the sleeping bag. 
   Dina was our hostess and she was just painting on the face before stepping out into secular night life hidden somewhere in Cairo. No muslim restraints in evidence, in fact an obvious gay-lib attitude at play. The night was evidently young. We took our inspiration and stepped out for a walk around, finally opting for the desperate falafal take-out just outside the door (where the same hand takes your money and scoops out the ... the... what is that stuff, anyway?).
Later that same evening (or morning) familiar sounds of human eruption might interrupt one's sleep, and at 4something AM, familiar people smiled as we packed frantically for our dawn ride to the airport. We awarded Dina 5 stars as is the custom at Airbnb. She was cheerful, after all.
    This time Uber worked, thanks to Dina's wifi connection, and off to the airport we rushed. There's a lot to be said about traveling at pre-dawn hours in Cairo. One is likely to get where one is headed and in half the time. Once, while rushing to the airport to drop off Isolde, we ran into a daytime traffic jam inching our way along in stop-and-go traffic to finally arrive at the scene of an upturned motorcycle still in the center lane and a stiff, pained rider limping around in the lanes. Ah Ha! Maybe this is Trump's dream of every man for himself. Medicare for none and ambulances too. A post-apocalyptic scene. The driver swerved around and stepped on the gas.
    Air Royal Maroc flight to Casablanca left Cairo as scheduled to our utter relief. My stomach churned but not enough to refuse the wonderfully western cheese omelet and coffee (or is that tea? hard to tell). Umpteen hours later and another flight to Rome and I had to check my geography to understand that we were accumulating some fuck-all mileage that would qualify for platinum status if we were ever to contemplate visiting another muslim country. We should have flown to Greece, at least. By the time we reached Rome I had wolfed down another air lunch. The landing was one of those miracles of air travel when the pilot wrestles the bouncing craft into an impossibly smooth touch-down, generating an audible sigh of relief and rousing round of applause. At the arrival gate it was obvious I needed an unscheduled emergency stop at the nearest facility. Then, passing through the surprise body temperature screening, they stopped me. Alex had passed through ahead of me and could see on the monitor my face was defcon red. No sirens, luckily, but I was asked to try again. I was not feeling all that great and perhaps they could see I was suffering under my dual duffel bags. Somehow a squabble began over the testing instruments, I straightened as best I could and put on a Hollywood face. And passed through. Why? Who knows. I had a fever. I know i did. And at that moment, I would have enjoyed a week's stay in any old hospital. But no. They sent me through.
    We only had half an hour to make a train connection to our home station. Alex rushed ahead and I staggered along. We got directions, marched down the corridors, bought tickets somewhere and finally found the platform. There was the train, our last connection on this insane pilgrimage. We jumped on and sat heavily with a final sense of accomplishment. The train eased out, slightly early, and then announced its stops. Oh No! Wrong train. NO!! We interviewed the ticket-taker independently as well as a number of passengers and formed a new strategy. Off in Orte, back on the train we should have waited for in Rome.
    Luckily the train stopped in Chiusi and went no further of we would have slept through the stop. Then one final drag to our car, a fumble for the keys... and ... home.
    The news next morning confirmed that coronavirus had been detected on a cruise ship in Egypt. In the meantime, Italy declared self imposed social isolation and was about to shut down completely. Now we began to wonder if that dry throat, that runny tummy was actually a deadly disease. We self-quarantined and the vacation was over. Back to real life.

Egypt part 6. Old Hands

Old Hands

    

    Everywhere there is evidence of old hands at work. It pops up from the sandy floor as if out of a Shelley poem. Ozymadias is actually the greek name for  Ramses II, Egyptś favorite pharoah. You can read all about it somewhere else but I´ve got to admit: when I was there I felt that transporting whoosh out of my place and into a completely different perception. The whole effect is spoiled by the crowds, just like it is here in Italy; but when you get home, a lot of that is forgotten. Crowds are familiar, an enormous, elongated, granite head of Akhenaten is strikingly memorable.

     Bored on the train, I would take peeks at downloaded google maps with our blue, GPS dot creeping along. I´d repeatedly scan the distance from the Luxor railway station to the public Nile ferry where we would be crossing in the dark to find our next Airbnb. It was a poor preparation for the romantic beauty of the Luxor waterfront at night, The Kornish. Endless, tiled, lit, clean, it followed the Nile east bank all along the edge of the city and, most strikingly, along the eerie, lit columns of the Luxor Temple. Docked by their tens and twenties sat the enormous cruise ships, idling, smoking, spewing waste water into the river. An impression of contrasts. But dominating everything was the Temple. Next day our guide led us through the site along with visits to the nearby museum and the Karnac temple a kilometer away. The morning after that, off we drove across the Nile and into the Valley of the Kings.

    The pyramids are really old. They are like landforms. And, yes, there is a Temple near the feet of the Sphinx, but it all looks fairly battered and eroded as if it really belonged to the earth. Word is that the largest, and oldest, pyramid of Khufu (Cheops) was completed around 2560 BC. Thatś almost 4800 years ago. Early Old Kingdom. Oldest of the seven wonders, the only still evident. The necropolis at Giza is on a plateau representing the very edge of the desert just south west of Cairo. The plateau is absolutely loaded with little pyramids, grave sites, as well as the three huge pyramids that oddly dominate. 

     The temples are sites of cult worship. They are characterized by human scale architecture and meant to be occupied during celebrations by holy people and rulers. They are generally newer elaborations constructed around or on sites of very ancient shrines. The best examples on the upper Nile are Ptolomeic (305BC, Macedonian, self-declared Pharaohs) and share design features such as the ridiculously enormous double gates (pylons) and densely columned hypostyles. There is an impressive string of them up and down the Nile and many are intact enough to get a good idea of their design, histories, and purposes throughout history. The Luxor Temple dates to 1400 BC, New Kingdom.

    The tombs in the Valley of the Kings are grave sites. These are also relatively recent, from 1500 to 1000 BC. They are cut into hard sandstone. Our historian/guide pointed out the continuation of the pyramid symbol as represented by the mountain peak at the head of the valley. The tombs are numbered by order of King Valley discovery, Tut being KV62. Most remarkably, the hieroglyphfic Templinscriptions remain brightly colored, giving a very convincing impression of the original condition. This being the New Kingdom Thebes, there was easy access to Nubian mineral wealth and the tombs were loaded with golden goodies which encouraged rampant looting shortly after the door was closed on the pharoeś mummy.

    This is the list of sites we visited:

1. Egyptian museum-    king tut's stuff
2. necropolis at Giza including sphynx and great pyramid
3. Luxor temple  - dedicated to rule of kings (check)
4. Luxor museum - brilliant statues particularly small diorite king tutmose III 
5. Karnak temple - dedicated to Amun Ra (check)
6. Kings Valley - KV6, kv8, kv2
7. Temple of Hatshepsut - 
8. Colossi of Memnon -
9. passed lock at Esnu during the night
10. Temple of Horus at Edfu - horse carriage ride at dawn. 
11. Temple of Philae - moved to isle of Agilkia
12. unfinished obelisk - likely hatshepsut. fault crack

   To visit the Temple of Horus at Esna we had to rise before dawn and, with boat loads of other tourists, mount battered horse drawn carriages for a brisk chariot race to the site. 
   I found the Temple at Philae really interesting. And lovely. Remember the European comet lander that fell in a hole? It was named after the temple at Philae. This Ptolemaic temple (and others) found itself partially submerged after the construction of the first Aswan dam in 1902 and its subsequent raising through the next 30 years. Evident damage to the Philae temple prompted Unesco to take on the project of moving it block by numbered block a kilometer away to the higher island of Aqulkia. Scattered blocks in organized rows still reveal numbers assigned during this remarkable project.
   The site must be reached by boat, much like it always has. The boat ride (think of aquatic bumper cars at the landing) winds through rounded granite outcroppings, the blue waters contrasting the sandstone temple beautifully.  
Wikipedia presents a well written article on Philae. 
   Our host, Maryanne, described our progress up the Nile like going back in time, yet our visits to historic sites went in other direction. The oldest sites are near Cairo and as we sailed up river, the sites became newer and newer. But she was right. The differences between a 3000 year old temple and a 4000 year old tomb are not immediately evident, but the life along the river banks looked increasingly rustic, eventually giving way to Nubian villages.

Egypt part 5. Five Stars

Five Stars

          If you're ever stuck shopping for a special gift, a Nile Cruise should do it. I'm going to pass it on when I can. It's an experience I won't forget and it did shake us out of our rural utopia of backaches and home repair. Luckily, our hosts had done it some years before; and although the experience has suffered somewhat, we benefited from their trailblazing, not to mention historical knowledge. 

towel crocodile provided by the
cleaners

     Day one began early with a walk across the gangplank to the big reception doors on the side of the vessel. That was an exciting moment. I fumbled with the video button on my phone and got some shots of peoples backs grunting luggage. But it turned out not to be our vessel. We walked right through it and out the other side. And into the big reception doors of another vessel. And out the other side. And into the big reception doors of another vessel. And out the other side. Each ship provided a grand hotel lobby designed by Trump Inc. All variations on somebody's idea of senseless opulence. I lost count but we finally came to a stop. Up a carpeted staircase to a circular mezzanine surrounding the Trump Inc. chandelier. Up another carpeted staircase and down a carpeted, darkly paneled corridor. Now it's getting low, tight and sort of ship-like. Framed paintings suggested the atmosphere of a Mozart era seraglio. Dark haired beauties wearing sultry expressions and clothing revealing anatomies unlike any seen ashore. Our two cabins were at the very end of the corridor. Top floor, full stern behind. Each cabin was crammed with two beds, a single blocking the large glass window and a double blocking everything else. Other amenities included a warm cabinet refrigerator, empty; drawer fronts that easily came away in oneś hand; wobbly light fixtures with very little light; one distant electrical outlet; and a small drinking glass. The mystery of the fetid

dampness was solved when I discovered a persistent drip wetting my back when visiting the loo. That also explained the wet carpeting. A crew member lifted out a ceiling panel revealing a water tank partially wrapped in electrical tape which clearly needed more electrical tape. We got that and a towel for the floor, but the drip never stopped and I found it best to take a small umbrella to the loo.

    It had been ten days since we arrived in Cairo and eleven since I last saw my old coffee machine. Or any coffee machine, surprisingly. All coffee up to that point had been brewed from Nescafe crystals and powdered milk substitute, so the cafeteria coffee reflux boilers and real milk were a welcome relief. Actually, as cafeteria food went, I thought it was pretty good and I wolfed down lots of it. What was disconcerting was the view out of the high window. River water lapped up at about eye level reminding one what the view might be like from one of the lifeboats, if you ever survived the rush out of the dining room. Further, it was best to forget the depth of the Nile channels. The draught of this monstrosity couldn´t be much. We were likely sitting in the bilge while sipping our watery coffee.

  The deck just above our berth held rank and file of sunbeds, a little swimming pool, an expensive masseuse, an expensive bar, and a lot of awnings to hide under. The deck offered a nice view of the surroundings including a lovely assortment of fellow tourists, mostly from Germany, running from just fat to clearly obese; and proudly naked. Or just. We spent a lot of time enjoying the view.
    These gigantic floating hotels must number in the hundreds. Often we would sail in the company of two or three others, enjoying their diesel exhaust and disturbing racket. In port, they would tie to each other sometimes in tens, reaching out into the channel. The most charming craft on the river was certainly not our floating hotel but the local sailing vessel, the felucca with its ancient, elegant, curving lanteen rig. They hardly look like efficient sailors but I noticed the prevailing wind blew upstream while one could always rely on the current to bring one home. We did spot a few two-masted excursion lanteens called dahabiya. These really evoked a by-gone period and the fact that every one I saw was dragged by a tug did not convince me of their seaworthiness. Whatever, when I dole out my Nile Cruise gift package, itś going to be on one of these.

Egypt part 4. Comfy interlude

Comfy Interlude

     Our challenge is to get out of Cairo and up to Luxor and on to our 5 star luxury liner. This Nile cruise is the whole reason we are in Egypt and something we began to really look forwarded to. 

    Luxor is located at the big kink in the river about 700 km up river. Luxor used to be Thebes and it was the capital and cult center of middle and late kingdoms. East bank is the city, west bank is the grave yard. It takes some 7 hours by car and over 10 hours by train to reach from Cairo. A line of three in front of a ticket window never, ever moved so we followed online advice and decided to buy our tickets after boarding. Early in the morning, we dragged our stuff onto an empty train feeling smug and paid the fare, receiving a scrap of torn paper with arabic pen strokes. One stop later and our seats were challenged. Two stops later and we found ourselves standing. With ten hours to go. I retired to the noisy space between the cars and sat on my duffel trying to read my paperback. Alex succeeded in being given a seat by an egyptian gentleman who even now chats with us on WhatsApp.

   Luxor: what a relief! Oh my goodness! Our Airbnb on the west bank offered a clean rooftop terrace all to ourselves. I got very excited identifying the Temple of Hatshepsut on the far hillside. At our feet, farmers tended lovely green plots of grain and sugarcane starts. I wiped my finger on the tile. No black. Just a bit of Sahara dust which never left us. From here we had an electrical outlet and a wifi contact with our bankrupt airline and coronavirus. We spent the whole day up there, and in the evening watched a loud, muslim wedding reception in what must have been the grange hall. Free apple juice in back-to-school cardboard boxes. Simple, dirt streets. Cheerful children. Steet falafal for supper.

     Next digs lay across the river where the other half lived. We had a night in the palatial Pavilion Winter, an extension of the old Luxor Winter Palace Hotel. From the grand staircase, almost 100 years ago, Howard Carter announced the discovery of Tut's tomb. Lavish reviews show up on Trip Advisor, and, yes, with its enormous private garden it did look like a suitable place to spend one's winter. Alex swam in the heated pool and I began to feel far more important than I deserved.
      

Egypt part 3. The Icons

The Icons

     It's all about the pyramids. Isn't it? Really. The pyramids, sphinx and, oh my god, Tutankhamen. King Tut. Teenage heart throb, died at 19. So lovely, so golden. And it's all here. The whole story and all the wonderful goodies. All laid out in this gloriously old fashioned, dusty museum from the turn of the last century, which is about when he was discovered. He's upstairs in a glassed-off window suite with a lot of his tomb furniture set out in the hall approaching. As soon as you enter the great hall of the museum the draw is palpable. Right past the ol' Ramses colossus and straight up the stairs. There's time for the alien Akenaten later. Past the huge, garage sized sarcophagus boxes, once nested like russian dolls. I loved the detail of the heavy metal hauling rings on the corners. 

The Golden Mask

     And the coptic shrine a highlight with its four, delicate, adoring golden goddesses protecting each elevation, hands outstretched, facing inward. Inside was once an alabaster refrigerator containing four alabaster mini sarcophagi containing his lovingly mummified guts. Ear your heart out, Donald Trump.
     The nesting coffins a ridiculously over-the-top execution of golden workmanship. Crazy beautiful, that Nubian gold so soft and smooth.
     It might have been 10 GB pounds to get in, I don't remember, and whatever cost and difficulty to get there; but it leaves a big, big impression. It tells a big story of human devotion, human effort, and human weakness. Weakness in the mortality of the half deity, and weakness in the mob psychology of the adoring followers.
   Back on the street we look across the glittering Nile, wide, drifting, graced with the odd felucca sail. Don't look too close, there's plastic pollution all over our planet and this is no exception. Before the old Museum stretches a new development project under construction to open the public space like a Paris jardin de la ville. Too bad about the garish Ritz-Carlton that grabbed the waterfront first, but the intention is clear. Right there is El Tahrir Square, which is actually a big, congested round-a-bout. If you type Cairo into google maps it will drop you on the obelisk of El Tahrir Square which commemorates the revolution (I've forgotten which one). I'm pretty sure a lot of rough neighborhood was cleared away for all this grandness, I know because our apartment is just there off the square.
    But we really came here to see the pyramids. And they are in Giza, roughly
14km away from our pin drop on El Tahrir Square. Too far to walk. Perfect for Uber. My tip for this part of the trip is to make sure your Uber driver is taking you to the Giza Necropolis, not Giza. We went to Giza and it was an eye opener. First, an elevated flying freeway took us, at great speed, on a tour of the most frightening maze of vacant, unfinished, 20 storey apartment blocks you'll ever witness. As far as the eye could see. How a society could afford to construct such useless, costly structures... I don't know. And all of them the same: reinforced concrete skeletons infilled with mudbricks, soaring to great heights, all with dead, empty eye sockets of windowless holes. Never occupied, perhaps like the empty tower blocks being built on the south shore of the Thames. A sudden off ramp onto the ground and we find ourselves on narrow dirt tracks, dodging goats, and wandering aimlessly through the canyons as the driver looks for the pin drop of Giza. "No, No. Pyramids. Pyramids." He does't speak english but he understands. We are out of there.
    The pyramids are located on a high plateau of land rising suddenly above low housing squalor of suburban Giza. Opportunistic guest houses saturate the approaches but, luckily, the plateau remains relatively unscathed. It is the very edge of the desert and it is our first step off the relatively green, congested Nile valley. From here it is open, vast, dry dust. Sort of like the sea, but lifeless. To walk out that way too far would be pretty stupid. Of course the forms are obvious. There they are. Nothing is hiding them. As you approach from the ticket office, one lies behind the other. They are small mountains surrounded by remarkable pavings that are staggeringly old. There are a few scattered blocks lying about which have been sloughed off, but most of the original limestone blocks that formed the smooth skin have been recycled by ancient builders. You sort of wonder if you stood there long enough you might be crushed by the next eroding block the size of a mid sized car.

    A short walk and then you realize that there must have been hundreds of these pyramids all over the place. It's a cemetery. But there are three big ones. And then there's the sphinx. It sits apart, below and somewhat dwarfed by the pyramid of Kahfre. The site has scale and majesty in keeping with it's age.

Egypt part 2. The Street

The street

I'll try to get this to
play, but it's just
a lot of car noise wih
 pedestrians having
 close encounters

    Cairo is home. Second time in Africa for me, but first time in North Africa. I'm a little surprised at the state of the place. After doing some reading, I chose to stay downtown to get a feel for the older architecture and to enable walking to popular spots like the Egyptian Museum. Isolde came prepared to explore the souks in the poorer Islamic quarter and, of course, the pyramids are really why we are staying in Cairo. 

bakery

    As we set out onto the street it's glaringly obvious we are foreign tourists. Shirt, hair, shoes, skin, language, knapsack, the bewildered look, it's so obvious. Surprisingly, we are often greeted with a cheery "welcome to Egypt," or "where are you from?" The early anxieties slowly ease as we get lost and then find our way again. Flash around, "where are we?" Oh. It's right there.

Walking around are a lot of women in full black peering through mail slots. And guys in floor-length dressing gowns. The street signs just aren't there, not even in Arabic. What my google map says doesn't show up in my actual reality and street view doesn't exist so there's no double-checking with an image. We find we have located ourselves in the middle of the DIY tech neighborhood. The shops are really tiny, cluttered; and the windows jammed with boxes of modems, digicams, motherboards, laptops, microphones, headphones, cabling, battery boosters, and earbuds. And that's just the stuff I can identify. Then the next shop, a meter and a half away, is crammed with the same stuff. Sometimes it spills out onto the street like a fruit stall and you have to step over stuff. The pedestrian course is never clear. Or carefully paved. A dirt section here, then a boulder of hardened concrete, a person cooking something, ten meters of shiny tile covered in diesel filth, broken mud bricks, an abandoned car. A couple of old guys smoking a hookah and looking at you. I reminds me of walking in the mountains. You can't look up because you'll fall down. It took us a while to figure out how to cross the street. Just find somebody you think you can keep up with and position yourself just downstream and try and stay in their traffic shadow.
    OK, Isolde. Off we go to the street market. As we weave our way east, things get even shabbier. Shabby Shiek. Now we enter kitchen appliance land. Roads blocked by rickety delivery vehicles wobbling under towers of boxed washing machines, fridges, dishwashers, microwaves, all that stuff. The sidewalks become canyons of the stuff, most of it stays in the box to avoid street contamination. And it's the same as the DIY electronics land, every shop is selling the identical thing. And they are tiny shops packed together in whatever corner of street level space available. But this isn't the souks, oh no. We open onto a sort of intersection with a freeway soaring over it. The crowds thicken. There's a mingle of traffic and pedestrian that approaches perfect solution. Equal parts. One dissolved into the other, moving in a sort of slow Brownian Motion. Then, down the sidewalk and the stalls begin and it is the most chaotic arrangement of useless stuff you've ever seen. I suppose it's a shopper's delight, but I'm entering one of Dante's levels. The main drag becomes a covered corridor so tight I have to step into somebody's tent to let a wide, black bedsheet go by with somebody wrapped inside. Looking at me. Then a guy yells and shoves a wide hand cart spilling bread rolls through. Overhead dangle pillows and fabrics and naked mannequins. It's impossible to tell the tent, the display, the product or the proprietor apart. It's all part of an intentional confusion, I'm convinced. Pause with curiosity and you're dead. They pounce. First of all it must be established that they have a close friend or relative who lives just down the road from you in Italy. Or California. Then you're let into a special secret about something. Then comes the invitation to have a little tea. No, No! It's free, no pressure. I'm not trying to sell you anything. Then the soft, silken hands slowly close around your common sense and stifle it and you find yourself looking at the Treasure of Indiana Jones uncovered for the first time and it's mesmerizing. Alex fell into such a trap and after half an hour snapped to the reality of her shopping bag full of exotic spices. Price: $400. US dollars, but disguised as egyptian pounds with too many zeros. It's an experience. Luckily we had Isolde there with her cheat sheet of Arabian numerals and a clear understanding of human nature.

Egypt part 1. Cairo, Anyone?

Cairo, Anyone?

This experience has a dissonant thread running through it. And it begins before the beginning. It was one of those times when you open the drawer while packing the night before and the passport is not where it's supposed to be.

Here's the Shortened long story:

waiting for a passport, Italian style

   
Our plan of a leisurely train ride to Bologna for lunch before going on to the Milan airport morphed into an early trip to the US Embassy in Florence. There we split while I waited for a temporary passport and Alex went on with her train ticket. We teamed up again in crowded Bologna to find the train schedules to Milan all scrambled by a fatal derailment. I had spent a lot of time planning and purchasing our connections at Trenitalia.it. Now all that effort did nothing but prove my naivete in trusting that these things actually work. Pioneering new routes through uncharted territory (including the frantic Milan underground) we met our plane before takeoff only to find that AirItaly had gone bankrupt, adding more evidence to a developing theory of mine. They courteously placed us on some arabian aircraft and off to Cairo we flew. 

      All cities look dazzling approaching in the night air. I tried hard to identify stuff from my memory of the map, but it’s really only ever a bunch of lights. I think we arrived at quarter to 5 in the morning. Terrified, actually. Everything was in Arabic which I remembered must be read from right to left. But that didn’t help. We knew to look for the government guy selling visas and I had to ask him a couple of times before I believed him. Cash only. US Dollars. A hundred of them. Then passport control with my paper passport. Then out on the dark street crammed with hustlers in taxis. A particularly slick con artist had his own little podium where he was pimping cabs in elegant english. OK, OK. Off we go in a battered car across the parking lot where he had to stop to wash his hands and bow to mecca for a few minutes. Half an hour later we’re downtown in a pretty grotty slum just off a grand waterfront roundabout. He’s got the window down asking directions until we work around to the front of a corrugated steel and wrought iron gate where we got dumped on a broken sidewalk. 6AM. Dark. Not blending.
     The dark iron gate creaked open and a sort of Arabian Gandalf character beckoned us in. Then into an intimate phone booth of an elevator. Then some fiddling in the dark with a key and into a bright white room smelling of paint and fresh floor varnish. Not bad for the price. Everything looked new, including the cardboard furniture and plush velour bedspreads. I took off my fetid hiking boots, admiring the shiny varnish pine flooring, and checked the facilities. Bidet, good. Overhead hot water tank had to be switched on. The loo had a mysterious chrome nozzle thing down there and I tried the

view out back

 knob on the side sending an arc of water across to the floor in front of the sink. Got it. No loo paper. Mirror spanking clean, sink OK; but Damn! I stepped my socks into the puddle of water. Dabbing the bottom of my wet sock with the towel I left a distinct black stain. The bottom of my feet were black. I wiped a finger across the tile. Black. Across the varnished pine. Black. Across the carboard furniture. Black. Kitchen counter? Black. And so on around the apartment, out the door, down the lift, onto the street and throughout Cairo, actually. Everywhere. The place is hopelessly filmed in a diesel soot mixed with desert dust. Where it's been cleaned lately, it's hard to spot; but it's there. Where it hasn't been cleaned, which is everywhere outside, it covers everything in a thick, brown cake giving the city a monochrome miserableness. The Cat in the Hat's relentless spot. I had a look out the window just to make sure. And more than just dust, there's a lot of other stuff accumulating as well.
  It was early morning and an emergency check for

Cairo in the morning

complimentary coffee came up blank. Knives, forks, microwave, fridge all brand new. Fridge didn't work because the wall socket had no current, but that got fixed. But no coffee. Into our luggage and soon we had a cup of tea going. It's the first step to feeling at home. I forced through the paint-sealed balcony door for a bit of fresh air. Dawn in Cairo. Empty street. I could spy onto the roof of a next door building and there was a woman leaning over the parapet seeing what I was seeing. Me for the first time, her probably not at all. I'm sure she must have missed the jumble of junk littering the roof gutter, and the abandoned car, and the confusion of satellite dishes, and the spaghetti of wires. But she didn't miss the quiet. I did, because I had no idea what what coming. Our single pane balcony doors soon resonated with the traffic below once it started up for the day. And on into the following night and every night thereafter.      

      Isolde arrived late that night, coming from London on her own. We arranged a cab for her from the smiling taxi pimp at the airport. He sent us reassuring phone photos of their rendezvous and I walked out onto the street to meet her. I waited a long time, worrying just like a parent is supposed to. I stood there in my white shirt trying look easy to spot because the building entrance certainly wasn't. It was approaching 2 in the morning, fewer and fewer cars going by. But I spotted her near the intersection, next to some headlights. I walked up, relieved, reached into my pocket and gave the driver a tip. We hugged. "Who's that guy?" She said. Who. "The guy in the car?" I had tipped some innocent stranger probably a day's wage. She had been dropped off previously without me noticing. Laughing, hugging, reunited.


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post script

I wrote this in my travel notes after leaving Cairo- 

Next time, I would skip Cairo. The museum is being moved to the pyramids and the government is moving East to a new city of several million people. Cairo is expected to double its population and perhaps it is best left to the Egyptians. So far, Luxor is far nicer! There is an airport here and a car rental would get one to Giza much more quickly than the train.