EGYPT: February 4 - Getting there

Cairo, from the Citadel

After my Malta fiasco, where the airport gate was changed and I unknowingly watched my plane take off, I’ve become wary of missed flights.

At the airport

       Which is a good thing because 45 minutes before take-off to Egypt there was still no one at gate 44, and very few passengers, only one of whom was headed for the same destination as me.  I see a staff person coming down the walkway and ask if this is for the Cairo flight.  No, he says... and it isn’t even the right building!  A case of wrong church, right pew.  For some reason they have you check in at Terminal 2F but the flight leaves from Terminal 2E way across the parking lot.
       But I’m not alone in my error.  The other Cairo passenger and I rush off down never-ending hallways, running along moving walkways.  We breeze through immigration - luckily! - race past Gucci and other duty-free shops and manage to make it to the right gate 44 just as pre-boarding starts.  Close call!

During the flight, on which we are wined and dined, my neighbor is a young man from Utah, non-Mormon, non-Trump.  He’s going scuba diving in Sharm-el-Sheikh with his girlfriend.  We spend the 3½ hour flight talking politics, as I did on the way to the airport with the Haitian cab driver.  With Brexit, Donald Trump and the upcoming French and Dutch elections - plus Ukraine and Syria - politics seems to be all that’s on people’s minds.
       Upon arrival in Cairo, the group organizing this Ancient Egypt tour - Archaeological Paths - has a man already in the customs area.  He points us to the visa counter (automatically granted for $25 cash, U.S.), after which it’s the customs stamp line, then baggage.  I have all my clothes in the carry-on my daughter bought me for Christmas so I have a head start.

The trip into town, with about six other people, takes a good hour.  It’s not that the airport is so far outside of town, but rather that Cairo is the largest city in all of Africa.  Traffic is intermittently heavy, even at this late hour, and many on-coming cars have dim headlights or none at all.  Lane lines have no meaning whatsoever and horns are used to announce someone coming through between two cars where it seems there’s no room.
       Many people are standing along the busy 4-5 lane highway.  I presume it’s like Martinique, where you have island taxis cruising.  There are also many tow-trucks carting off wrecked cars, trucks with crushed cabs, etc.  As much as I like to drive, I don’t think I’d like to drive here!

Mena House

When we arrive at Mena House, our hotel, there is a chicane barrier at the gate to the property.  A soldier comes out of his sentry box, retrieves a German shepherd from its dog house - a sniffer dog - and walks slowly, carefully, all the way around our van.  Only then, and after checking the luggage compartment and the driver’s paperwork, does the barrier go up and we’re allowed in.

       The hotel is magnificent.  While our lovely Armenian minder, Sira, takes our passports to the front desk, we sit in the “bar”, listening to a flute and violin duo and sipping our welcome hibiscus drinks.  A golf cart then takes us down garden pathways to our various buildings.
       The room is spacious and clean, the mattress firm, and me tired.  So I eat one of the three complimentary oranges and it’s lights out.  Literally.