Day
3: Fly Dubai to Cairo
Back to the Dubai Airport and the marvelous Duty Free
for our Emirates flight to Cairo. The Duty Free area is pretty extensive
with the usual things, but the area that we were most interested
in was a little pen shop. It is always nice to treat yourself to
a well made pen! So we asked the clerk if she could find us two
ball point pens for the amount we had left over in Dubai currency.
And, although this would have been one of the smallest sales she
made that day, she courteously found us a nice Shaeffer and a nice
Parker pen. We tucked those away in our waist packs and went to
wait for the flight. I am still using mine, as I said, it is one
of life's little luxuries to have a nice pen!
500 Movies and So Little Time
The flight over to Cairo was superb. We were on a
new 777 and they had the most amazing entertainment system. You
have a choice of 500 movies and you can choose any one of them and
start them at any time. I watched "The Devil Wore Prada"
and "My Super Ex Girlfriend". On the way over to Dubai
Ken had watched "The World Fastest Indian" (which will
become significant when we board the boat). and on the plane to
Cairo he watched "My Super Ex Girlfriend, but on a different
start time. It was wierd to look over and see the movie being played
a few minutes behind the version I was watching, but It is Excellent!
The food on the Emirates flight was once again excellent.
We landed late in the
day at the old Cairo airport which is ancient concrete and
looks like the abandoned subway station in the Matrix. A
miserable collection of tatty duty free and three money changers.
But the bright spot was that the representative from Holiday
Tours was right there in the pre-immigration area. His name
was Mohammed.... Anyway we started by changing some money which
always involves a nerve racking exchange of passport, travelers
checks and requests for small change. And we were pretty jet
lagged. The representative was very helpful. I changed some
British Pounds and the agent sent me over to get my passport
stuff done.
Ken was left alone on his own devices and presented
some US dollar travelers checks. Well, the exchange rate
is vastly differnt, and he had not noticed
that I had changed pounds. It took a round robin of heated
exchanges between him, the agent and the money man before he
understood, and they understood, that he thought he was getting
a lower exchange rate, much lower. It was a poor start for
Ken...involving money, his passport, and a foreign language.
However the representative spoke English and finally figured
out what was happening.
So as usual for our trips to Egypt, I sailed serenely
through and Ken was caught in the backwater fighting with the language
and different systems. It really was too bad, but all turned out
OK. I think we must have been one of the last planes for that shift
and the new airport arrival bays were closed, so we initially thought,
poor Cairo, they have fallen in a heap, this airport is the same
one we landed in almost 20 years ago. Which, of course, it was!
But there was another airport that we would see the next morning.
After we got luggage, we were met by the guys from Egypt Holiday
Tours, another Mohammed, probably the one who corresponded
with me in the emails. Nice, welcoming and helpful. The driver
gave the traffic controller some baksheesh to get the car right
up to the front of the terminal and we were off for the 5 minute
drive to the Novotel.
By now it is getting dark and we are
feeling pretty disorientated. They went through the itinerary
and told us they would be back at 2:30 AM to get us to the
plane for Aswan and Abu Simbel. All vouchers were handed
over except for Le Meridien which I expect is guaranteed, but
not yet fully paid for by HT. They work on a physical voucher
and stamped receipt system.
At the Hotel we were met by the Yehai El Decken, the son of Mohammed
el Decken, the owner of Holiday Tours. He and I had corresponded
about a website link exchange, and that had started my relationship
with the agency.
It was very thoughtful of him to come to the airport, and it was
good to meet him. In fact, this attention to detail for a forecast
of the beautifully coordinated and well thought out itinerary that
Egypt Holiday Tours had put together for me.
In case I haven't mentioned it, we asked them for a completely
custom tour, with the sites that I specified. In the end they felt
I had over booked myself a little, but they thoroughly briefed all
the guides and coordinators and we pretty much accomplished the
whole itinerary I requeted. And I can't say enough about the guides,
they were superb and well suited to my level of knowledge and interest,
but even they were amazed at the number of sites I had listed. The
guides said I had a "big itinerary".
Not much sleep and up for a very early flight to Abu Simbel on
Egypt Air. Novotel was OK for short stay.
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