Settle

My eyes hurt. The air here is quite caustic. Not just from the heat and dust but also from the rampant exhaust and other fumes that fuse with the street scents. The final product is a sickly sweet smelling mixture that provides the same amount of carbon dioxide as smoking a pack and a half of cigarettes per day. Coincidentally most Egyptians smoke while walking down the street so even a non-smoking ambient person is inhaling a good deal of smoke. Since my hotel is in Zamalek, which is the northern half of an island in the middle of the Nile, there is usually a decent breeze which cools and moves stale air somewhere inland where it can settle.
My fight here was blase. The Boston to Zurich leg was unreasonably fast considering that I started reading a excellent book and had seen either of the inflight movies. From Zurich to Cairo I was seated next to a textile engineer and his wife who were both from a city in Germany I had never heard of and could barely pronounce with a great deal of coaching. Neither one spoke very good English so to kill time communication was attempted in German. Keep in mind my German consists of about 4 verbs, 20 nouns and wild gesticulations which are liable to put an eye out.
Flying into Cairo was one of the more spectacular landings I have witnessed. We flew over the Pyramids and Sphinx at about 1000 feet before slowly curving around to land on a strip of sand next to a low concrete building and a larger amount of less groomed sand.
That's all for now as the Internet cafe owner is giving me dirty looks for staying longer than my $1.42 purchased. Pictures and hopefully a video to come.