Cairo Again

I don't think I was ever asleep for more than 10 minutes at a time... the aircon was either full bore,meaning pants jumpers and sleeping bag liner. Of off, meaning we started sweltering and removing all the layers we'd put on a couple of minutes previously and then some.
Still we made it in, and got the minibus back to the familiar hotel from over a week ago now. After a bit of a diplomacy session on the bus, we decided to head out to the cairo bazaars for what would be the final day of the tour for 8 of us. Unlike Luxor and Aswan these were cramped and huge. Tiny alleys, with thousands of people. Had a joke with one store owner who askedwhat I was after. I said 'Nothing' and he says 'We've got that!'
Had a nice lunch at a local pizza bar, and I finally found out that Shawerma is the name for kebab meat cooked on a spit. Was a very nice sandwich :)
With the afternoon free I ended up spending 3 hours in the net cafe near our hotel. Wrestling with Picasa to finally get it to play nice with my USB stick and sync them up online. Can now also upload specific photos from my albums rather than the whole lot which should save some time, assuming I have the time to pick out the good ones to start with. Our final dinner as a full group we went to a local restaurant around the corner from our hotel. This time I had an Egyptian style pizza, which instead of being a flat base with everything piled on top, actually is more like a pita bread, with the base full of the meat, and the vegies and cheese piled on top of it. Was a nice twist on the standard pizza.
We also gave Hassaan a small gift - one of the breakfast boxes from our bus ride to Abu Simbel, filled with random little souveniers from home, and from our trip, including some Canadian, NZ and Australian money, a twinkie, a pack of Uno cards, a NZ rugby team cap... and some rubbish. On the box we'd written little thank you notes, and also included our tips for the trip.
And so the next morning it was farewell, as some of us headed off to the airport back home, and 4 of us continued on to Mt. Sinai.