Heavy rain in the port city of Alexandria left voters huddling under plastic sheets, while cafés in the posh Cairo district of Zamalek offered cappuccinos and biscuits to society ladies who waited as long as seven hours to cast their votes.
On a day I am casually offered a cappuccino at the Stoke City training ground, it feels appropriate to ditch a few stereotypes.
Unlike rivals that offered their employees cappuccino bars and free gyms, Lehman favoured only those benefits that come free, like the opportunity to wear casual dress.
Under kosher rules, meat and dairy can't be prepared or eaten together, but I don't register the absence of dairy until David quizzes our waiter about coffee and is offered a soya cappuccino.
Eventually he, John Denham and the bloke from Dragon's Den went into the Las Palmas Cafe ostensibly to launch something called Labour's Seaside Manifesto (it promises new sea-defences for Blackpool) but in fact to be offered chips and cappuccino.
When I peered inside, the liveried waiter offered me a cappuccino and the wifi password.
It also offered the first decent cappuccino in the city since the rock'n'roll days of the 1950s, added Schofield, who was 21 when Cornerhouse opened its doors.
Now that Amazon has forced the collapse of Borders and the humbling of Barnes & Noble, independents are gaining ground with customers who value the experience they offer: author events, cappuccinos, lovingly curated selections, relationships with salespeople.
Increasingly, breakfast-time eateries (with some notable exceptions) are far more likely to offer lattes and cappuccinos and croissants than mugs of sweet, milky tea and latherings of dubious pork products.
Its food exquisite - at €35, the risotto with saffron in crayfish cappuccino and basil is supreme - and offered at an array of restaurants including a Polynesian eatery reputed to be the finest in the Mediterranean.
