Shisha Monday

Sleeping on the trains last night went really well. I did end up having the compartment to myself, so I got a pretty relaxed and uninterrupted sleep. We got into Aswan by around 12pm, so 15 hours on the train. We transferred to our hotel, freshener up, I used the internet briefly, and then it was off to see the Aswan dam mad the huge man made lake behind it. It's very big! It has enough water in it to supply 80 million people for 20 Yeats, apparently. It wasn't very exciting, though, just a dam and a lake. Dams kind of freak me out, so I was happy to leave. Then we caught a small boat to a tiny island with a temple on it. The temple used to be just off the island, but when they built the dam, it went underwater, so they relocated it after about 60 years. It was from the Greek and Roman times, and covered in carvings and hieroglyphs. We were there while the sun was setting, and it was beautiful!

Then we came back to the hotel quickly, and then went for a short walk around the spice market across the road. It had a lot of amazing smelling spices! But nothing I wanted to buy. Then we caught a boat to an island in the Nile... oh, I forgot to mention the hotel is right on the edge of the Nile, its gorgeous! Anyway, we went to an island with a Nubian restaurant on it. Nubians are the native people of the area. We had a selection of Egyptian salad type things, rice with cinnamon, and beef tagine for dinner. It was very nice!

Then we caught the boat back and our tour guide organised a van for some of us to go to a traditional coffee shop. Nearly everyone went, and the guide paid for the whole thing himself, even the coffee shop! At the coffee shop, which was an old Nubian house on top of a hill with sand floors, I had a mint tea and tried smoking the shisha. There were four flavours, but they all tasted the same to me, just sort of sweet. Having never smoked anything before in my life, I have nothing to compare it to. It wasn't horrible, but wasn't anything special. I certainly wouldn't rush to do it again. But, I'm glad I tried it :)

And that is all for today. I'm really tired now. In the morning most of the GroupWise doing a six hour round bus trip to a temple, but I'm staying behind. I'm going to sleep in, have a swim in the pool and organise my stuff for going on the sailing boat for two nights. Sounds much better than getting up at 3am to see ANOTHER temple and spend 6 more hours on a bus!