Kourion

Here I am in Kourion, for some reason looking delighted to be sitting in the midst of these beautiful ruins above an azure sea on yet another perfect Mediterranean day.

And I was delighted, despite irritation at my fellow travelers, who were still complaining about Egypt -- the dirt and the dust and the poverty, and how it had the nerve not to be a prosperous European country when people like them wanted to go there.

Cyprus is beautiful. The archaeological sites are models of clarity and good maintenance, with restrooms and wooden walkways and clear multilingual signs. Egypt is poor and crowded and messy, and they clearly didn't take our modern sensitivities about dirt on our shoes into account 4500 years ago when they put those pyramids out in the middle of the damn desert.

It's probably too late to move the pyramids, since we still can't figure out how they built them in the first place, but I hereby demand that they start shampooing those camels! And teach them not to run down hills when tourists are riding them! And not be such a poor country!

That'll teach them.