Day 25. Cairo.

I am watching Looney Tunes in Cairo. One of those "best-laid plans" situations- I got a phone call, in my cab, from my carefully-researched pension, telling me I was staying somewhere else tonight, and moving tomorrow. I'm not sure why- I was struggling with my cab driver's bluetooth thingy- but, when you get cab phone calls of this nature, really, you just go with it. Plans of an evening to re-group, do laundry, catch up on correspondence- on hold. This place is super sketchy. The streets around me are pitch black at 6 pm, and I'm looking at the back side of a giant row of billboards onto a superhighway. Thank heavens I have earplugs. I made it as far as the corner store for water, and some kind of sweet flaky unidentifiable bread. I am a relatively bold traveler, but striking out from this particular locale, in the dark, is a Bad Idea.

The great news? I have 378 channels. What are the odds, really, in a place that doesn't have a sign on the street? I mean, faucets are dripping and I just heard an epic catfight, actual caterwauling, from the airshaft below me, and it's a "provide your own towel" kind of place. Again I say, 378 channels. Now, I wasn't born yesterday, and I know that even in a foreign language, 300 of those channels will have nothing decent on. But still- I am simultaneously watching Looney Toons, and the Simpsons Movie, and old Bradley Cooper/Jennifer Garner movie, and about 6 soccer games. I have BBC, CNN, and an Arabic MTV, where fully-covered women are doing solid-gold dances. I have both Nickelodeon, and Al Jazeera Child, which looks like a version of the Muppetts. Al Jazeera itself has just done what can only be described as a loving and sentimental tribute, in English, to the New Orleans Saints and the passion behind their Super Bowl win. I have TV Korea, TV Jordan, TV Saudi. And I'm not making fun, really, but so far there are 3 channels of camels.

I feel sure there's a B-movie or two in my future*- our most mediocre films, the kinds featuring Vin Diesel or the Rock, seem to be showing up a lot here. But tomorrow: Pyramids, Memphis, Saqqara. More soon!


*addendum to this post, immediately after writing I flipped to a Billy Baldwin movie. But I settled on Once Upon A Time in Mexico, because who doesn't love a good shoot-out involving Johnny Depp and Antonio Banderas?