16 March 2000 (late afternoon)

Mena House Hotel. Courtesy of Paul Mannix, Wikimedia Commons.

After my walking tour of the Giza Plateau, I return to Mena House and track down Chaz. He’s by the pool with others from our group and eager to tell me about his own  adventure. It turns out that while I was examining the requisite antiquities, he witnessed something he never, ever expected to see in Egypt: A tall, thin Mickey Mouse and a few other “something is a little off” characters, dancing on the grass to the delight of the hotel guest’s children.

“Mickey Mouse” and friends on the lawn at Mena House

Pierced metal lamps at Mena House cast a lacy pattern. Photo courtesy of joepyrek, Wikimedia Commons.

We go back to our room, collect our baggage, and then proceed to the main building to check out. I’m going to miss Mena House. The lobby smells like incense and pierced metal lamp shades cast lacy patterns on the polished marble walls and floors.

On the way to Cairo Airport, we pass the Giza Zoo and see goats and a flock of flamingos. The park is spacious and grassy, with light poles shaped like drooping flowers.

Old mansions hunker next to the highway, windows broken and shutters layered with dust. Some buildings are crumbling at the edges and visibly leaning, but there’s laundry hanging from the balconies.

We whiz by a horse track and basketball courts and then the Cairo Railway Station, which is built of light yellow stones and has keyhole windows with bright blue shutters. The rail yard is packed with passenger trains. Moustafa tells us it takes nine hours to go from Cairo to Luxor by train. In first class they serve at least two meals and have entertainment areas: It costs around $40 US. The third class train has no windows and costs about a dollar.

Al Nour Mosque in Cairo. With many thanks for this image to beautifulmosque.com

Moustafa points out (it’s hard to miss) the Al Nour Mosque, with its green copper domes and two outsized minarets. It was started by the people in the neighborhood, but they ran out of money and for a long time it sat unfinished. Apparently King Fahd of Saudi Arabia would pass by on his way to and from the airport, and asked why it was languishing. When he heard the locals were broke, he donated enough to wrap it up.

The next highway-dominating feature is a billboard photo of President Mubarak, looking dapper in a suit and tie. The Nile is gray-green in the late afternoon light.

At Cairo airport things are much calmer than when we arrived, since the Hadjis are all in Mecca by now. We board our plane and most of the group nods off, although I can’t imagine why when there is so much to think about. I’d like to peel the cabin wallpaper and take it home with me: It’s a cream background with a repeating design of a golden scarab topped with a sun disk, surrounded by feathers and sitting on an ankh.

Luxor airport has only one baggage carousel and there are more taxi drivers outside than personnel inside. The air is balmy and there isn’t much traffic. Already I sense the pace of things here is slower than in Cairo… unless you are with our group.

We check into the New Winter Palace, which is next to and shares grounds with the Old Winter Palace. Once again our bathroom is fit for a pharaoh, with a tub the size of a sarcophagus and marble everywhere. Because Egypt is a desert country, I expected the hotels to have those conservation-friendly Eastern Bloc shower heads that emit needles of water so sharp they take the skin off your back. But these faucets flow in such a luxurious stream, I can almost imagine I’m in an ancient villa with servants pouring the water over me from earthenware jugs.

Historic Winter Palace Hotel. Photo courtesy of H. Grobe, Wikimedia Commons, with changes to suit the look of this blog.