Gresham Hotel Cairo

... luggage and that would mean a major loss of evidence of this trip which would be very heartbreaking. Trust it to be Egypt Air (usually it would be Air Canada to lose the luggage, but they are both part of the Star Alliance so we guess it's a proxy move).

We board the KLM flight to Amsterdam and we can tell it is not going to leave on time which is suppose to be 4:10 AM. Good grief, we really are taking the long way home.

... us to a shop (I don’t like being right when it comes to this) but it wasn’t a perfume shop. It was a little spot down a random alley where they sold small wooden boxes that were inlaid with mother of pearl. They were beautiful and exactly what Anne Marie was looking for. She bought one that was probably real mother of pearl (unlike the plastic stuff they pass off as real in the touristy area of the market we had been in) but you can never be sure. I was ...

... and ran into the streets to greet her. She was awesome.
Early the next morning we all lined up at the ferry port to clear customs and board the boat. We waited for the 10 o’clock ferry until around 12 when we finally departed (typical, according to Jamie). The Egyptian government tries to do immigration on the ferry and it was quite entertaining to watch. Egypt is yet another country that does not understand the concept of forming a line ...

... water and he offered me a cigarette. I don’t smoke, but he sure drinks water. Like me, he had been fasting, and he seemed pretty happy to be breaking the fast with someone. He said a couple of prayers as he continued honking and swerving to get me to the airport in time to meet my family. I love Ramadan and especially breaking the fast in cabs.

When we got to the airport, I went to Terminal 1, where the Air France flight carrying ...

... four guys in a car drove up next to us and the two on the passenger’s side grabbed my butt and my roommate Laura’s butt, then before we could react, they sped off. It was the first instance of physical harassment that I had ever seen in Cairo and was shocking to our program director when we told him, especially because it’s Ramadan, when they are supposed to fast from sinful thoughts as well as food and drinks. I just wish I had time to grab ...

... mobile phone and eventually we found him. The hotel was in Zamalek, roughly a 30min drive from the airport, and within a few minutes of reaching the hotel, we had left our baggage at the reception (it wasn't check-in time yet) and were ready to go see the pyramids.

Or at least, my parents were. I was still rather woozy on my feet and had to be dragged along.

Our first stop was Saqqara. Our guide explained the construction of ...

... by calling him a cheat. Then he gave us our train tickets, which were hand written on scraps of cardboard. We were convinced that we were definitely getting cheated.

We found a taxi to take us to the station for 25 LE. So ha Atef! We thought the train station would be much further away, so we arrived at the Giza train station almost two hours earlier than our train. The Giza train station is a dump. There are people on the platform with all manner of animals and other goods ...

... sightseeing tours including tour guide

Entrance fees to all mentioned sites

All taxes & service charges

Exclusions:

Any other optional tours if required

Tickets for sleeper train (Cairo/Luxor & Aswan/Cairo)

Tips to the driver, guide, company representative

Contact us
info@goegypt-travel.com
Tel: 00202 24052246-7-8
Fax: 00202 24052249

... chillies and carrots. We then headed back to the hotel had a nap and then met for the group meeting downstairs. Went for a quick bite with the group with some great fast food Egyptian style with Katherine having Falafels and I had a Chicken Swarama (Chicken Kebab meat in a pita). After that it was off to bed for an early start to see the Pyramids!

Day 2 - We were up early (soon to be common practice for most of the trip) had some Egyptian breakfast ...

... hushed room containing the carefully preserved Royal Mummies was well worth it. I had imagined just seeing the vague outline of bodies wrapped in white cloth, but the eleven corpses here were so much more life-like than that. It was nothing short of spooky to look at their intricate features – hair, ears, eyelids, noses, teeth, fingers, arms, legs and toes – and remind myself I was looking at pharaohs and queens who been dead for three thousand years. They looked so ...