At the Tourist Restaurant

Today we spent several hours at this uniquely Egyptian restaurant along the Giza - Sakkara road.


Like many tourist businesses it is currently suffering from a dearth of visitors.  During previous years, busloads of tourists would arrive and depart. Today, there was one small group of Japanese tourists there when we arrived (with lots of high quality photo gear, of course) and another small group from China came and went a bit later.  The restaurant is adding some business by hosting outings from local clubs or other organizations.  Today's group was being entertained by a singer during much of the afternoon. 


We had an excellent grilled chicken lunch, kept warm on a brass charcoal burner.


I am surprised that the tourist businesses can survive these severe downturns.  Some are reportedly renegotiating their leases, drastically reducing salaries etc. to survive.  This very sad newspaper article about the horse stables not far from us will give you an idea of how bad things became in that business over the past two years.

But we saw one positive sign this afternoon.  As we returned home, there were about fifteen tourist buses parked near our building at Golden Eagle Papyrus, Gold Eagle Perfume, Gold Eagle Bazaar and the other Golden Eagle businesses just down the block.  This means that a ship is in port at Alexandria and the tourists have made the run in to see the pyramids and have a dinner at one of the lucky hotels.  This is the first group of this size that we have seen on this trip.