Staying in Egypt
Giza, Egypt
Camels in the road! And horses! I thought the clip-clop I heard from the street through our window this morning was a horse-drawn carriage touristy thing. Nope. The carriages seem functional and they have what appear to be camel taxis. Incredible! (Correction: I learned later they are not camel taxis. They are only used for rides for tourists. Bummer.)
Last night we landed in Cairo on schedule at 1:05am. However, even after completing the customs cards, getting upon-arrival visas, and waiting in line for passport control, we (and dozens of other passengers from our Addis Ababa flight) waited for over an hour before our luggage arrived on the baggage claim belt. At 4am we finally laid in our beds for the night.
10am hotel breakfast time came early. Here they offer a plated breakfast rather than a buffet, which is tough when you have a selective eater. Though to be honest, I didn’t love it either. There’s a common deli meat that’s served, which surely was extracted from a machine as a crimson, smokey-smelling paste. It’s dyed red and cut in perfect circles with no texture variation. Blech.
While lounging in our room going in and out of sleep and screens (the boys on a Yahtzee app and me checking social), Josh and I were talking and decided to extend our stay in Egypt. I keep thinking countries requiring visas also require out-bound tickets (only China has so far), so thinking we’d need to present them to secure our visas (we didn’t), I bought us tickets out of Cairo to Jordan.
Our 8-day Egypt agenda ended up feeling really tight and we were squeezing all the things we wanted to do and see into too few days. So, we’re gonna make it 12 days, eat the $437 I spent on the flights to Amman and buy new ones: one-way tickets to Aswan. Then, we’ll take a boat trip up the Nile from Aswan to Luxor, then fly from Luxor to Amman, Jordan. Much of the what was found alone the Nile ended up in museums we’ve seen in Cairo, so now we’ll get to see the ancient tombs and temples where they were discovered.
It sucks to lose over 400 bucks, but we decided it sucks worse to get this far and miss out because I bought tickets too soon. It’s good we can course correct when needed…all the way down the Nile!
