Cairo Arrival

I arrived here in Frankfurt at about 7:00 AM local time; however it is 2:30 AM according to my watch. They won’t let us into the gate area because there is another flight leaving before my flight. I did get some sleep on the plane, but not much and not well, which is normal. My boarding pass said that I was to go to gate B43. When I got there, I was told to go to gate B60. So now I’m waiting outside of the gate. I managed to get quite a lot of reading in my “Eyewitness Travel Egypt” book. Hopefully I will know enough so that when the guides start talking, I’ll understand what they are talking about.

As we left the plane (by bus), I asked someone to take a picture of me with the plane in the background. I neglected to get the starting picture from Newark.

I’m supposed to be in Cairo by about 3:00PM local time. My flight is supposed to leave here at about 10:00 AM local time. I think that there is only an hour difference between here and Cairo.

Well I was correct about the time difference between Cairo and Frankfurt. The flight was about four hours and I actually slept on the plane. I met one lady on the plane who is on the tour. It turns out that there are only 21 people on the tour. At the airport I met Susan Weiss, the lady who got in touch with me before the trip. She and her husband are very pleasant people, although I’m confident that all the people will be pleasant. Unpleasant people don’t usually take trips of this nature.

I was impressed and pleased with the way the arrival was handled. There was some one there BEFORE we had our passports stamped. I was directed to go through passport control, get my luggage and wait in the baggage area. The guide took out luggage and put it on a luggage cart and turned us over to another guide who took us to the mini-bus, where our luggage was placed in the back of the mini-bus. The guide, a young lady named Hanaa (pronounced Hannah), was on the bus and explained what we were seeing. The drivers in Cairo are insane! They make New York drivers appear sedate. One of the people in the bus pointed out that there were no stop lights or signs of any sort. The airport is on the eastern side of the city and the hotel where we are staying, which is Mena House, is on the western side of the city. We actually crossed the Nile. I am very impressed with Mena House. I have a room on the fourth floor WITH a balcony that faces towards the Pyramids, which we will be seeing tomorrow.

This evening was “at leisure”. I took a quick walk around the grounds of the hotel. They have a very nice pool area. I also investigated internet access. It costs 3.5 Egyptian pounds per minute. Since the $1 is about 5.5 Egyptian pounds, I estimate the cost at 60 cents a minute. However if you exceed forty minutes, you don’t pay any more. I went to the informal dining room where I ran into Susan Weiss and her husband. I had a pleasant meal after which I headed for my room to prepare for tomorrow.