We got back from our three week trip to Tunis and Egypt this week and have been trying to recover ever since. We flew to Tunis to stay with my wife's sister and her family for most of the stay. She also had her husbands parents there visiting. We arrived on Wednesday around 7:30 PM about 23 hours after we left our house. Timing was pretty good since we were tired and it was almost bed time. We slept until noon and never really suffered from jet lag. We went shopping with them and visited some glass blowing factories and looked at the Roman ruins in the area. Their house is on the Mediterranean Ocean and a mile from there you can go to the ocean shore and see old Roman docks and walls. We even found a Roman mosaic tile floor just sitting in the open right at the waters edge.

About two miles from their house is the Le Palace resort where the Cleopatra casino is supposed to be located. A visit there showed that the casino never opened and it looks like the building has been unfinished for several years. A few calls to the Abou Nawas Hotels in the area confirmed that their casinos were also closed. So much for casinos in Tunis.

On Friday evening we flew with about 25 other American Embassy employees for our week in Egypt. We were originally supposed to stay near the Pyramids but I convinced Cathy that we would rather be in downtown Cairo so we could shop during our free time (and visit the downtown casinos). We ended up at the five star Conrad which had its own casino and overlooked the Nile. Over the next three days I managed to hit 8 casinos in downtown Cairo. To prepare for the trip I had used the Web to get a listing of casinos in every town we would be traveling in. At the hotel I got a Cairo map and laid out the location of the casinos. In order to gamble at any of these casinos you have to show your passport and get signed in. Luckily they don't charge an entrance fee like most European casinos. The second night I decided to walk to the closest one which was about 2 miles away. Here is where my memory gets fuzzy since the name of the casino is different that the hotel that it is located in. After hitting the first casino, which I believe is the Ramses Hilton, I decided to walk another mile or two to the next one down the road. After walking about 4 miles I realized that something wasn't right. Apparently when going into the first casino I had to go around the building about 270 degrees from where the main street was at. When exiting I never got back to the main road and walked God only knows where into Cairo. Fortunately I never turned off the street so I just backtracked and made it home in one piece. Enough walking for me! The last night I took a taxi to the second casino which was the Nile Hilton. From there I walked a few blocks to the Semiramis only to find out that it didn't open until 9:00 PM. GRRR! I walked to the Shepheard casino and picked up a few chips. Now I had to take a taxi across the river to an island where the Omar Khayyam casino was located. Then it was another taxi to the other side of the river and the Cairo Sheraton. From there I walked across the street to the Pyramisia Hotel which had the Les Ambassadeur casino. Then it was back to the place that opened at 9:00 PM and finally home.

From there we flew to Luxor for our four day Cruise to Aswan. The whole time we traveled our group was provided with extra security. On the buses we had two armed guards (armed as in Uzi's)and police cars leading and chasing us. There were also undercover police providing a second layer of protection. At every location the bus driver had to report in to the police so they could radio our location to HQ. Kind of unbelievable. Anyway back to the casinos. There were supposed to be 3 casinos between Luxor and Aswan but they were all apparently closed. We saw all of the sights over the 4 days and other than the fact that most of our group got sick at one time or another we all had a great time. One little known fact is that by building the Aswan dam they are destroying all of the old sites because the water table is so high now. You can actually see the groundwater soaking into the ruins.

Back to Tunis and a week of rest before we go to Hammamet for the weekend. I had a great time there since I had taken my metal detector with me and picked up almost $30 in change from 6 countries on the beach. Unfortunately I didn't find any nice jewelry which is the main goal. At night I took a cab to the casino south of the hotel only to find out that it also was closed but that there was another one in the area that just opened. Then on the the other casino that was north of the hotel. One interesting thing about all of these casinos is that they are like the ones in Russia - when you enter you are the only person in the whole place. And for those of you interested I checked out the roulettes at each casino and everyone was "generic" in that they didn't have the casino name on them. They may have had their own "personal" symbols on them but I am not sure. In any case since no one else was playing I couldn't have gotten any anyway. We finally left on Tuesday for home and a well deserved rest. The scan shows the chips I picked up and I have another post with offers to trade or sell them.