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3 Days for Egypt, Spring 2009
Back in August of 2008, Tabitha really wanted to go to Egypt as part of our around-the-world tour. We weren't able to make it work, so we decided to go in the cooler season. In March I had enough days off in a row to make a quick trip. We didn't really want to spend very long in Egypt, but we wanted to see Cairo and some of the pyramids.Since we weren't able to get to Cairo on USAirways flights, we checked out the schedules and tried to find a direct flight from CLT to Europe with good seat availability. Back then the only options from CLT were London and Frankfurt. London had good availability, so we bought some ZEDs for the London-Cairo leg on British Airways. The return trip didn't have any good options for direct CLT flights, so we looked at the PHL options and saw that there was space on a flight from Rome. All we needed were some ZEDs for Alitalia, and that was no problem.
We got to spend most of the first day in London, and you can read all about our time there by clicking here. Once we made it from Gatwick to Heathrow, we learned about the "staff travel" process at BA. It's quite amazing actually, with a process of clearing standby passengers outside of screening, so that you don't have to bother with going all the way to the gate unless you are cleared onto the flight. This was our first introduction of many to BA's high-class operation. Of course, our opinion of their service level may be somewhat tainted by the free business-class upgrade.
We had our own little office, complete with lay-flat beds and great food. The bed-seats were a huge advantage, since we had been awake for a long day with little sleep. We arrived in Cairo just after midnight to find that our prearranged transportation wasn't there waiting for us. We booked our lodging with a hotel that had great reviews on trip advisor, and the rate included transportation from the airport. The trouble is that we gave her our arrival date based on the actual time of our arrival, since that was on our itinerary. This made sense to us, but since that time was after midnight, we were arriving on Tuesday night by her standards, not in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, as we actually were. We were able to get this resolved with a phone call from a helpful gentleman who also lined up a taxi for us. This was perhaps one of our more favorable experiences with an Egyptian business-person, though he did tell us that he actually worked for the government. Who knows whether he did or not.
We were glad to get to the hotel and especially glad to find it to be as nice as advertized. If you are planning to go, look for the Hotel Longchamps.
Breakfast was included, and we were on our way the next morning by 9:00 or so. The hotel staff wrote our destinations out in Arabic on little slips of paper so that we could hand them to the taxi drivers and get to where we wanted to go. The hotel staff proved to be another great experience with Egyptians, and perhaps our last, at least until our last stop at another hotel.
There are a couple of things that we learned pretty quickly in Cairo. First, we would in no way pass as locals for any number of reasons- topping the list included that we didn't speak Arabic and the color of our skin. Second, people in Cairo, especially the ones that are in areas where there are lots of tourists, seem to make a sport out of getting as much money as they can from visitors. They don't have the same set of social principles that we do, especially when it comes to business-related norms. I had complained a bit about this after our trip to Cancun Mexico, but Cancun was nothing compared to Cairo. We had read a little bit about this before our trip, so at least we weren't too surprised by it. Out of the hotel we found a cab to take us to Giza, the city just outside of Cairo where the largest pyramids are.
On our way to the entrance of the pyramid area, our cab driver was bombarded by people who wanted to be our friends. Lots of people wanted to sell us tickets, sell us guide services, sell us camel ride, sell us sand, sell us whatever they could. The cab driver didn't seem to like us very much, so he dumped us out right in the middle of them. That's the next thing we learned about Cairo. Beyond our appeal as distributors of money, locals didn't seem to really like us very much.
Once we waded our way up to the admission gate, we paid the relatively princely admission price and were in the clear, or so we thought. I will say that the exchange rate was very favorable, and even with the relatively higher prices that we paid, the trip was still quite affordable. With the exception of the fancy dinner at the end, we spent around $200 in the entire time in Egypt. But admission to the pyramids and the antiquities museum accounted for almost half of that.
Our entire visit of the pyramids was filled with solicitations from all sorts of vendors. Many of them would start out by saying that they worked for the government and wanted to see our ticket. After the first couple of these, we started ignoring them. Several wanted to sell us camel rides or have us take pictures of the camels. We tried to brush them off and enjoy the scenery. The temperature was warm, but it wasn't terribly hot as we might have imagined it to be.
We paid the equivalent of an extra $10 each to go to the boat museum, which was worth the money. Part of this equation was the air conditioning and the freedom from all of our newfound Egyptian "friends," but the content of the museum was also interesting. Part of the ancient Egyptian custom involved burying all sorts of things that belonged to a recently deceased person, and in this case the boat was no exception. The museum houses the full-sized excavation of the boat, which has been reconstructed and suspended high in the room. I'm especially facinated with ancient wood, since it tells the story of how trees grew during the life of the tree that produced the wood. You can look at the growth rings and see good years, bad years, and in most cases, lots of years. We got to wear nice little booties to protect the floor from our sandy feet.
After the boat museum we walked over towards the Sphinx.
The Sphinx itself actually has a small chamber in one of the paws, which we thought was interesting. Along the walk we encountered a group of small children who were giggling and saying whatever english words that they knew to us, leading us to believe that they were quite entertained by us. There were a few vendors selling pyramid goodies, and we were able to sneak a picture or two.
One of the tomb areas had a guy in there telling us to take pictures of the carvings on the wall. This is a great example of the kind of scam artists that we encountered. After he told us to take the pictures, he pointed to a sign that said that pictures weren't allowed, then told us that we wanted money.
We found a cab driver who was willing to take us to the museum for the fare that we were willing to pay. By now we realized that unless you give up on negotiations and walk away, you won't be able to get even close to what the fare should be. We passed this huge truck of onions on the way. We were a long walk from the museum when his cab broke down, so he flagged down another cab and paid him to take us to the museum. That was nice of him I guess.
We didn't get any pictures inside the museum, since they don't allow cameras. The museum was worth the stop, since it was packed with artifacts from ancient Egypt, including the mask and several other items from King Tut's tomb. The first picture below is the museum. We left there to go to the Coptic part of town, which has lots of old buildings. We took a taxi, but realized that we could have taken the metro instead. The metro is much cheaper, and we used it to get back. The buildings were neat to see, but we had to admire most of them from the street since we arrived after the area closed. The last picture below shows a structure that was built by the Romans back in their occupation.
The hanging church was open, so we were able to take a peek inside. It is one of the oldest christian churches around, and you can see that it has two aisles, which was common at the time.
We stopped to take a break and enjoy the evening air. We could hear the noises of the neighborhood as people were coming out of their houses. We took the metro back to the part of town by the river so that we could be in the right place to eat dinner at the Hilton.
Our flight didn't leave until 3:00am, so we wanted to take our time and have a leisurely dinner. We had read about the revolving restaurant at the top of the hotel, so we went there. It turns out that they had a dress code, and we didn't meet it! That is the downside to the small luggage I guess. The good news is that they had a lounge in the floor below the restaurant and we found a table there. The room didn't rotate on the lounge level, but that was just as well, since our table had a view of the city, the nile, and Giza in the distance. It turned out to be a great dinner, though expensive by any standard. We left the hotel for a walk up and down the river, and had to keep declining offers for boat rides and such. Our last cab ride dropped us off at the airport at 10:00pm, then we had to wait until they were ready to allow us to enter the boarding area. It had been a long day, and it made for a long night.
We finally made it to Rome just after sunrise, and then to PHL and CLT. Tabitha's parking charge was for just over 3 days, which meant that the trip was a whirlwind to say the least.
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