Tipping in Egypt has been raised to a new art form. We're not sure if it's just an ancient Arabian culture thing, or the fact that they just don't pay people enough - but you basically need to tip someone, something, for everything. They call it baksheesh, which translates to "you can't have enough egyptian pound notes in your pocket."
Fortunately they're only worth about 20 cents a piece, but since you have to tip to even get the parking attendant in the garage to take your money - you end up running out of them pretty quickly.
In one particularly good example, Patrick and I bought some postcards in a gift shop on our last day, and the total bill was 16 pounds. I gave the cashier a 20 (wanting the 4 one pound notes), but she quickly asked, "Do you have a 1 pound note, so I can just give you a 5er?" I, of course, said, "No" - Patrick didn't catch on at first and said, "Yes" (He knew that I had about 40 in my pocket). Basically we went back and forth until Patrick acted like he was looking for some and come up empty. Finally the woman reaches in the back of her drawer for a wad of about 300 one pound notes and painfully gives us our change of 4 pounds.
Congratulations to Lucia - Alberto proposed and she accepted. They met each other when she was part of the Sesto implementation in Italy. 
OK, I'm finally done. It took me awhile to get all the posts done on the Flat Stanley website, and all the other posts done (might even have a surprise video later) . . . 
As some of you know, Patrick and I have been hosting my nephew's Flat Stanley for the last couple of months. So to make sure that I wasn't being redundant, I updated his blog with all the places we actually went in Egypt - so you can go there, or click on one of the individual sites we visited:
Here's a composite of the people we ran across in Egypt - sorry about not spelling the names correctly, everyone.
Having fun with photo editors. I actually saw this done by a graphic designer, and I thought it was really cool. Here's a composite picture of all the animals that we saw in our visit. And yes, I don't know what they all are (except for the cow)
Alas, travelling to a country in Africa is not without its potential pitfalls. We were warned about not drinking the water, so we took about 3 gallons of bottled water with us. Unfortunately vegetables and fruits are rinsed at some point (and then get eaten), so it's kind of hard to totally avoid the bugs than run amok through the country.
Sorry Hosni, but I thought I should point out that Egypt is still a military dictatorship. Not like we had long political discussions with our tour guides, but it was interesting to visit one after a long break. I think the last one I was in would have been Morocco 20 years ago.
Tipping in Egypt has been raised to a new art form. We're not sure if it's just an ancient Arabian culture thing, or the fact that they just don't pay people enough - but you basically need to tip someone, something, for everything. They call it baksheesh, which translates to "you can't have enough egyptian pound notes in your pocket."