Cairo filled with foreigners

Railways were laid. The Suez Canal dug. Colonial ambition surged. And the Winter Palace would come to cater to all whims, confirming status and identity in a land of mummified novelty. The lustre endures. "Thank you for a magnificent stay, it was all that we had been led to expect," write Tony and Cherie Blair in the gilded hotel guest book. Ambassadors, dukes, princes, Hollywood starlets and the World Bank president have all left handwritten praises. Condoleezza Rice writes: "I look forward to returning to this beautiful, historic hotel." No sooner have we arrived and I want never to leave. At reception we sip glasses of karkaday, a hibiscus-flower tea, sugary-sweet and served chilled in the desert's eternal sunshine. I could spend all morning on the brocade upholstery, spellbound by a grand marble staircase and its Art Nouveau cast-iron balustrade, awfully pleased to have booked two nights in this heirloom."Would you like to go out to the garden?" a silver-haired Englishman asks his wife. Her name is Rosie and she's in a floral-print summer dress. He wears a silk cravat with a pink shirt and white pants. They walk the lobby's floor together with all the aplomb of a couple off to a society ball. Truth be told, I have no savoir-faire for such aristocratic occasions. Not that it matters when a porter in a red jacket and black fez shares the news. We've been upgraded to room 327, King Farouk's top-floor suite where the last of the khedive leaders that ruled the British condominium of Egypt and Sudan resided variously from 1936 until 1952, when he abdicated and fled on the royal yacht to Monaco. The privilege usually costs €468 ($814) a night for foreigners (Egyptians pay half price) and comes with polished walnut furniture, elaborate window drapery with tasselled ties and a gilded rococo coffee table. Moncler jackets The bed, naturally, is king size. The room is enormous; a good thing considering the size of the flat-screen TV. We feel like royalty. Yet, my girlfriend still hangs four pairs of wet knickers in the shower and I wash socks in the sink. Nicolas Sarkozy has bedded down across the corridor in the presidential suite ($1800 a night) with Carla Bruni. The French leader took the former model on a public first date to Disneyland in Paris. Two weeks later, at Christmas, they came here to indulge, presumably, in the pleasures well-heeled travellers have always sought in the land of Nefertiti and Cleopatra. To justify such extravagance abroad – the ballrooms and crystal chandeliers, the silver service fit for a pharaoh or viceroy, or a Cairo princess – we intend to enjoy every minute: draw a bath deep enough to drain the Nile; lounge in white Egyptian cotton robes; call on the shoe-shine boy; pinch the Hermes toiletries."The whole world has heard about Egypt and dreams of one day coming to Egypt," says Jacques Serpollier, a Frenchman in silver cufflinks and a pinstripe suit and the proud manager of the Sofitel luxury hotel."About 80 per cent of the archaeological monuments on the planet are in Egypt and most of them are here in Luxor."