We've moved in!

We're just writing from Costa Coffee (!) in Maadi - this is beside the Maadi Grand Mall (which isn't that grand really) and has internet access for just 50p for an hour (but is really slow so we can't upload a video yet).

We managed to move into our apartment yesterday as planned. It is really nice and looks like it did in the pictures (which you can never be too sure about). They have given it a lick of paint and today should be installing a new air conditioning unit in the main room. The place was really dusty - we expected it to be dusty and know it will always be dusty in Egypt, but we think that no one has lived here for at least a year because of the dust in the kicthen and wardrobes. So yesterday we went to the Carrefour supermarket and bought lots of cleaning stuff (along with some Egyptian cotton sheets to sleep on of course). We'll clean some more rooms today, but also hope to explore to "Road 9" where there is a guitar shop and a nice linen shop we want to look at.

You can see where we live on the map here

View Larger Map

The mall is marked A and is the flat-iron shaped building at the top of the screen. Below it you can see a roundabout. Between the two, on the right, is a first apartment block although you can barely see the gaps between the apartmetn blocks so they appear to merge into one. We're on the right-hand side of this first building on the 3rd floor (although Scott insists on calling it the fourth as he counts he ground floor as the first floor). We have a balcony to the front which comes of our living/dining room, a second balcony to the side that comes off the master bedroom and guest bedroom, and a third balcony at the rear that comes from the "bonus" room they didn't show in the phographs! It's a kind of 2nd lounge that doubles up as a spare bedroom.

We were quite tired after moving in and doing some cleaning yesterday, so started to get ready for bed around 10.30pm. We were about to turn off the bedroom light when our doorbell started ringing manically. So we threw some clothes on to see what was going on. Outside the door was a man with a huge telly on his back that he had just carried up the three flights of stairs to our apartment! It turns out this is the landlady's son and he and some friends were dropping off our TV and a new air conditioning unit for the living room. The telly only gets arabic channels at the moment - but he knows someone who works for Orbit, the satellite company, and so we can call him to set something up if we want to. We'd better get back soon actually, as the air con engineer is coming this afternoon to fit it and we are going to try and pay our rent to the son if he comes too.

Until we get faster internet we can't put any video tours of the apartment online, but we promise we'll share them as soon as we can!