15th
A hot Friday
We were very glad we weren’t working on site today as it was exceedingly hot and still. Our first ‘Friday job’ was to wash the car which we started at 7.30am by which time the sun was already beating down.
Jeff washing our hire car at the back of the hotel.
The entrance to our hotel is actually at its ‘back’ (not on the main street), within the sports complex which houses the football stadium and a swimming pool. There hasn’t been a match in the stadium while we’ve been here but young men and boys can often be seen training and jogging around the complex. Beside the hotel entrance is a monumental stela of the type which is often found outside official or prominent buildings in Egypt recording their opening dates. Since they always start by giving the name and title of President Mubarak, they remind us very much of ancient Egyptian stelae!
The entrance to our hotel. Note the white ‘stela’ to the left of the door.
The ‘stela’ recording the opening of the hotel on 4 November 1996. The largest lettering in the third line is the name of the former President, Mohammed Hosni Mubarak. The next largest letterings (in the sixth and eight lines down) give the names of the Governor of Kafr es-Sheikh and the owner/manager (? - the writing is a bit too cursive for me to read securely!) of the hotel.
After getting the car as clean as we could, we retreated to our room to avoid the worst of the heat and to catch up with writing up notes and other chores before venturing out for a walk late morning. The streets were very quiet as most of the shops are shut on Fridays until mid-afternoon, so we had a very relaxing stroll around.
Jeff has just noticed (early evening) that there is some cloud building up – we suspect the climate got over-heated today and it is about to crash with a thunderstorm or two!!
