New Year's Eve in Cairo and Weird, Round, Blue Things.

So, Gavin ( a Kiwi guy I know) and Van (an American guy I know) decided at the LAST minute that they wanted to go down to Cairo for New Year's Eve. No plans, no hotel, nothing. So, I decided that sounded like fun and I would tag along. They had booked the 9a.m. train...there was no way I was getting on that train because I had a *ahem* headache. They went down in the morning and paid a visit to the Harley Davidson shop in Cairo (yes, I guess there is one).

I finally made the 3p.m. train and met up with them at the Hard Rock Cafe (yep, Cairo has one of those too). On the way down, I did manage to book a hotel room for us, and the guys found a New Year's Eve party that was being held on The Blue Nile (a big river boat). It cost over $100.00 and supposedly it was "no jeans allowed," but since we came down with only the clothes on our backs, the club said it would make an exception. After dinner at the Hard Rock, we headed over to our hotel to check in. I take my passport everywhere I go...just in case I have to suddenly evacuate or something (hey you never know). For whatever reason here in Egypt you have to have a passport to get into a hotel room. Gavin and Van didn't bring theirs because they didn't know. Fortunately, they were able to get copies from a nearby Internet Cafe and we were able to get our room for the night.

We headed over to The Blue Nile around 10p.m. The guys thought that they were told we had to be there by 10:30p.m. in order for them to hold our reservations. We arrived at the club (thinking that we were probably totally under dressed) and discovered there were NO other people there. What the hell? Time went by, another guy showed up, in jeans, but still no other people. By 11:30, there were maybe 20 people in the whole place, yet all of the tables were reserved. To make things worse, they played this awful, slow music that was about to put us to sleep: a Dolly Parton/Julio Iglesias duet, Kenny Rodgers "Lady", Bee Gees "How Deep Is Your Love?" (which I love by the way), Eagles "Hotel California" (which is the most popular song in the Middle East for some reason), and other snore-inducing songs. Gavin asked, "They're going to do a countdown aren't they?" "Of course," I answered. We each got a little bag of party favors: hats, noise-makers, masks, etc. and there were balloons set to drop on the dance floor. Of course they're going to do a countdown. The next thing I knew, it was 12:02. What the hell? No countdown.

We went outside to get some fresh air. "Ummm, Happy New Year I guess." and I gave Gavin and Van each a kiss on the cheek. Meanwhile there were 3 other guys outside with us. One guy was from Lebanon visiting the other two; his cousin and his cousin's friend. "They remarked, "This is a really weird party. " Yes, very strange indeed. I'm glad the Egyptians agreed with us that it was weird. I pulled out our noisemakers from our bag of goodies. Included in the bag were a small, clear bag of blue things. They had a hole in them and we thought maybe they were maybe smoke bombs or fire crackers or something. We tried to light them - nothing. We tore them apart - nothing. We sniffed them - nothing. We tried to eat them - nothing. So weird. What ARE these??? Suddenly, a d.j. started to play party music. People were now on the dance floor. I guess the real party doesn't start until after midnight. So weird.