UKNova Radio - 13/10/07

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Balcony furniture and emergency rations

Last night we went out buy some furniture we fancied putting on our balcony. It's from a shop down the road and, through writing numbers on a piece of paper and the translation of a guy we think came over from the restaurant across the road to help, we finally negotiated a good price for two single seats, a double seat, and a little table.

Getting them back to the apartment was an adventure, as the shop guy flagged down a man in a van driving up the road, and persuaded him to load it all on the back and drop us off. Yet again my immense hatred of tipping came into play as I was offering him money for giving us the lift (he'd already been given something by the shop owner), and he kept taking offence, shoving the money back at me, and shouting a lot. I spoke to my dad on Skype last night who completely summed up the reason it gets me so angry - I don't feel in control of the situation, and have no real means of controlling it due to not speaking the language. You hit it right on the head, dad! Still, at least I now know that "ish-reen" is 20. I won't be forgetting that in a while.

Alice also rediscovered an envelope marked "Emergency rations - only to be opened after 40 days and 40 nights" that Jim gave us as we were packign our bags in London. Unfortunately we're a few days late opening it, but we love the contents! Check the vid to see what was inside :D

UKNova Radio - 06/10/08

Today we discussed the striking amount of police around the place, water deliveries, and what nice clothes the kids wore for Eid! Plus, we played a load more fantastic new music.

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Scotty's new guitar

Musings from the Nile Hilton

At the end of a long and tiring day, we muse over adapting between living and being a tourist in the same city. The irony, of course, is that of course we're doing this from a gorgeous hotel room balcony as sunset falls over the Nile in the heart of Cairo. I guess we English will always find something to moan about!

Sphinxus!

So, out here it's the Sphinxus rather than the Sphinx, but it's still the same awe-inspiring statue. And, as we had time yesterday afternoon after visiting Saqqara and Dashur, Mohammed suggested that we check out the Spinxus. We didn't have time to do the pyramids at Giza as well, but in a way I'm pleased we didn't see them up close as we can go again some other time and see them properly (and go on a camel ride!)

Still, as you'll be able to tell from the video below, this was an absolutely brilliant way to round off our day-trip and we were truly blown away.

Saqqara and Dashur

As suggested by Alice's previous post, we spent yesterday out doing "tourist-y" things. We had a driver, Mohammed, who collected us from our apartment in his clean and air-conditioned car, and then drove us all around the sites and sights of Egyptian Cairo for the day. In the morning we travelled out past the fields of crops and vegetables into the desert to check out the oldest man-made buildings in the world.

The complex at Saqqara was built for the pharaoh Zoser by his chief minister and architectural genius, Imhotep. His famous "step-pyramid" is the earliest surviving man-made structure in the world and is pretty amazing to look at.

We later moved on to the Red Pyramid at Dashur, this being the first "real" pyramid with straight sides. This was built by Snofru (2613-2589 BC), the first pharaoh of the Fourth Dynasty, after his first attempt was unsatisfactory. He had first had a go at building a pyramid a couple of kilometres away, but halfway thorugh building it realised the sides were going at too sharp an angle and were exerting too much stress. So this "bent" pyramid changed angle halfway up, and set in place the 43° used in all other pyramids, including Great Pyramid at Giza which was built by his son, Khufu. Sadly the bent pyramid is still in a military zone, and so we couldn't visit it up close, but we did have an incredible experience going inside the Red Pyramid...