Our last 24 hours in the US was spent in New York City. Our home for the night was The Pod Hotel, a cute, hip little place that felt a little like we were staying in an Ikea ad. We took the concierge's advice for dinner and had a fantastic Indian meal at Indigo Indian only a block and a half from the hotel. The maitre d' (owner??) was a very helpful and friendly Bangladeshi man who took great interest in where we lived and what Dave was doing in Egypt. He then proceeded to tell us a little of his 'story' and his idea of helping children in the world. We think he was talking about blindness caused by nutritional deficiency, but his accent was SO thick, that we are not really sure what he was saying!!
After our lovely dinner we walked a dozen or so blocks to Sardi's. Sardi's was once the favoured haunt of Broadway stars, producers, et al, and has walls covered in caricatures of famous patrons. We got talking to some people in the bar, one of whom was a fascinating, non-kosher Jewish man (by his own admonition) with whom we proceeded to discuss religion AND politics.
Our flight back 'home' went by pretty quick and we had an easy time thru immigration and customs, but that is where our good times ended. We had one of our worst taxis experiences (thus far) getting home. I won't go into all the details but our driver managed to go miles out of the way and ended up stopping to ask directions about 8 times. He was fined as he picked us up, which we think was because he stopped in a no stopping area. We agreed to pay his fine, which we understood to be 20 Egyptian pounds (about $4) but outside our apartment he was saying it was 10 x that. This is where the language barrier becomes so acute. We paid the exorbitant fine plus the fare just to get rid of him, but we've learnt our lesson and next time we fly into Cairo we will have our own driver/taxi prearranged and waiting for us.
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