The weekend before last we went to Seqouia which has to be one of my favorite restaurants in Egypt. It is right on the Nile, open to the breezes during summer (like now! we watched the moon traverse the sky as the evening passed), in a cozy tent during the winter, with delicious food, fresh juices (mango juice has hunks of fresh mango in it!) and beautiful ambiance. Best of all: Seqouia has DELICIOUS shisha (hookah, hubbly bubbly). Apparently grape flavor is popular now, I did try it and it's yummy, but I stuck with my old favorite Mixed Fruit (Fakhfakhina or Cocktail). Going back to Seqouia, though, was really just an excuse to see a friend I hadn't seen since I was last in Egypt: Ahmed. I was so glad to see Ahmed again, and only he was able to swing us reservations at Seqouia on a weekend night during Ramadan! Also with us was Tegan, a friend from ASU who is studying abroad at AUC for the year. She and I met through COAR nearly four years ago now. While at Sequoia Justin and Ahmed enjoyed a good game of Tawla (Backgammon). The place was packed by about midnight and an engagement party set up camp behind us (Ahmed said it was probably the after-engagement party as it was all young people so they had probably spent the early evening at the formal engagement party hosted by the parents, then the young people left to Sequoia for the informal after-party). They were all dressed formally for the party, men in suits, but the women were fascinating to me as they were dressed (decked?) to the nines! Beautiful dresses and glamorous hair styles and jewelry and high heels. I got a glimpse of the newly engaged woman's ring finger (you wear the ring on the right finger during engagement, move it to your left after the wedding) and holy cow I've no idea how she even walks evenly with the weight of that thing off her shoulder. Huge. Prices have gone up in Egypt since I was here two years ago, there was 22% inflation last year ALONE. Seqouia's current minimum charge was a bit of a surprise to me, double what it was in 2006. It's certainly not a budget restaurant and there were definitely only people of a certain class (maybe I should talk more about class issues and stratification I've observed in Egypt but that's the stuff of PhD dissertations not measly blog posts). The place is gorgeous and it's worth it for a treat once and a while. I've posted a few pics below although we didn't get a pic of the Nile view, too bad, it's the best part.