On our last evening in Cairo, we went downtown.

On this date in 1951, the inconveniently Midtown course of the ticker-tape parade in honor Gen. MacArthur forces a couple of unlikely pedestrians off the sidewalk and into the street.  He looks rather put out, but isn't she reveling in the unexpected attention?  a one-woman parade all on her own, really.  Looks to be this close to just centering herself in the middle of the Avenue and starting to wave.

Funny, isn't it, how ever more difficult it gets, as time passes, to credit that theirs was considered a Great Romance?  Here they look more like they've hardly been introduced, and wouldn't have much in common (taste in overcoats aside) once they were...

My forebrain accepts that this undoubtedly entirely respectable enterprise is very likely named after a term of art in the omnipresent local petroleum-extraction industry - but my lizard brain just laughs and laughs...

Apparently, the shebab - the Sultanate's rising crop of teen boys - live in some kind of pop-culture time warp, at least as evidenced by this graffito Koko and I found on a pavement yesterday in one of our wanders around the neighborhood. It's not a place we go regularly, but often enough that I'm fairly convinced it's new-ish, at least.

This is a tag that would have seemed fairly naff back when I was of the age to be doing this sort of thing, rising thirty years ago. Here, it approaches the surreal. Which is, I suppose, all too often what one can expect from the intersection of East and West...

"Where," asked Gentle Reader CK rather peremptorily in reference to the last post, "is this?"

The answer is the notorious resort Sharm el Sheikh, whither Mr. Muscato and I have repaired for a minibreak. We were startled to see the reminder of home shown above at the very entrance to the heart of honky-tonk Sharm, the town of Na'ama Bay.

It appears that all the principal thoroughfares are named for various regional leaders, but His Majesty has the prime luck to be namesake to the main avenue of approach. I'm not sure that the rather dismal T-shirt shops and shisha joints that line his street are exactly the image he usually tries to convey, but I'm sure the city fathers' hearts were in the right place when they named it.

Mr. Muscato and I, for various professional reasons, pretty much have to take our big vacation around this time of year; it's also a good idea to get a little time out of the inferno back home, so that the memory of cooler weather can help one last until mid-September.

The result, however, is that for the third year in a row - and really, really, we're not trying and it actually has been in each case a fortuitous accident - we've ended up in a new city for its iteration of that annual phenomenon of modern life, the ABCGLBTQMVP Pride Parade (I can't keep up with the damn acronyms anymore).

After Paris and Amsterdam in previous years, this time around it was Berlin's turn. Of course, one of the main critiques that people who find fault with these kinds of festive events trot out is that no one ever pays any attention to the tens of thousands of ordinary Joes and Janes (or, in this case, I suppose, Wilhelms and Wilhelminas) who turn out, instead concentrating only the the broadest stereotypes of gay life.

I guess you have to count me in, 'cause I all I took was pics of beefcake:

...(And I have to say there was some pretty good eye-candy on offer, although our Berliner friends moaned about the cloudy weather, which kept far too many shirts on)...

...and drag queens. I'm loving Marlene, but her companion looks like the world's most depraved leprechaun.

I think we saw Bruno.

And I know we saw a number of haughty, disapproving mesdames (do you think that the camera and Nivea goodie-bag detracts from the look? The latter were, by the way, weirdly omnipresent - Nivea must have hired about 5,000 good-looking boys to hand out little packs full of travel-size samples - a fairly clever promotion, as the giveaways contained everything from moisturizer to deodorant, meaning that every one-night stand in Berlin last night included a handy trick bag).

In addition to the ladies, as noted, there were plenty of gentlemen...

...more than a little sheer, brazen, and very amusing bizarerie...

...and, in amongst the wild-eyed apes protesting to Angela Merkel ... tens of thousands of Wilhelms and Wilhelminas (of all nations) having a wonderful time.

As did we, with a day that included sekt and strawberries at one chum's glam flat just off the parade route, a turn 'round the massive rally/concert/party in the Tiergarten after the parade (German festival food: fabulous), and an evening of (for us) extremely late nightclubbing at an Arabesque dance party in Kreuzberg.

We've done most of the heavy-duty museum going and other duty-travel that we planned for here, and so now the last few days of vacation will be, one hopes, less taxing; I don't know about Mr. Muscato (since he's still fast asleep), but my calves are going to require some serious downtime.

What I've decided is proof positive that Magda didn't really die, but simply came to Paris and, following in Mama's footsteps, opened up a shop. Hell, you could half-convince me that she's got Jolie and Eva helping her out; I think a Death Becomes Them scenario is all too plausible with those gals.

Another perfect day in Amsterdam, brisk and sunny. Mr. Muscato and I go about bundled up in sweaters and scarves, even though the locals appear to be under the impression that it's high summer.

The insistently chinois motif on two walls of our otherwise tremendously comfortable room brings to mind dear Mr. Wilde's deathbed comment: either this wallpaper goes, or I do. Since the rest of the hotel is so entirely pleasant, however, we've decided to stick it out.

Not least because this is our view.

Mr. Muscato's old friend The Dutchman took us motoring today. It turns out, rather to our surprise, that Amsterdam is in fact entirely surrounded by Holland, a country distinguished, from our limited experience, by scenic villages, sheep-ridden meadows, and, as above, absurdly picturesque vistas. This was a lovely castle, poised between a river and the Zuider Zee, surrounded by gardens of an almost numbing beauty.

And then, as if life weren't ridiculously lovely enough, we had a memorable lunch at a tiny, scenic inn, one at which I noticed only as we were leaving the discreet Michelin star tucked away inside the door.

Tonight: dinner chez l'Executrix and then some pub-crawling.

While out strolling yesterday, Mr. Muscato and I spotted Edith Sitwell having tea with Virginia Woolf.

Living in Cairo, it's hard to forget the 26th of July, if only because one of the main streets through town has been given the name (Shar'a sita wa ashreen iulio in Arabic, which really is a mouthful to try and relay to a taxi driver).

What the date marks, though, is the abdication of Egypt's King Farouk, an event that caused headlines in 1952:

Farouk's abdication marked the end of over 1oo year's rule by his family, who originally arrived in the country as Albanian soldiers of fortune in service to the Ottoman Sultan.

The revolution began a repudiation of all things royal, starting with the King's ubiquitous portraits.

Unlike their Russian or French counterparts, the family all escaped safely. Farouk departed Alexandria on the royal yacht, accompanied by hundreds of pieces of luggage, his daughters, and his second wife, Nariman, a commoner whom he had married only a year earlier in a (fruitless) search for renewed popularity and (more successfully) an heir, after having divorced his first Queen, Farida, for her unfortunate habit of having daughters.

Nariman never made much a splash; even at her wedding, she was overshadowed by her stunning sister-in-law, the Princess Fawzia (who looked not well pleased at the whole affair):

Farouk and family spent the first few years of exile in Italy, living in many ways much the same life they had in Egypt.

Nariman eventually returned to Cairo, marrying several more times and ending her days in a simple apartment in the city's Heliopolis neighborhood.

Farouk's later exile was, to be kind, undistinguished, involving a great dealing of gambling, eating, drinking, and cavorting with showgirls. He is now most remembered, perhaps, for the only witty thing he ever said:

"The whole world is in revolt. Soon there will be only five Kings left - the King of England and the kings of diamonds, hearts, spades, and clubs."

In Old Cairo, an attempt at a glossy shop in a distinctly not-glossy neighborhood. The Arabic spells "ben-tee-oon." Well, they're trying.

I was initially enchanted with a women's accessories shop called Dilemma; I then noticed that the real dilemma in this neighborhood is that no one has apparently cottoned on to the drug reference at the center of the O'Neill Jeans shop sign. In 1853, Mr. Levi Strauss did indeed open an emporium in San Francisco; how the O'Neills became involved (and what role cannabis and/or Rastafarianism played) is shrouded in mystery...