Days 1 & 2 - Travel Days

We left for Cairo at 5pm on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Our flight had two legs – Salt Lake City to Paris and Paris to Cairo. The first leg of the flight was easily the longest flight I have ever been on. It was 10+ hours in the air. Alison and I both watched a couple of movies and slept for a few hours on our flight. I was pleasantly surprised by the experience. We were sitting in economy seats and they were fine. The food they served us for dinner was pretty good. Even though it was a long flight it didn't feel that long. 

Flying over the French countryside was nice. It was so green. I also saw a few old churches and one building that looked like a castle. I was amazed at how close the open countryside was to the airport. We had a three-hour long layover in Paris. Blake and Debbie flew first class so they were able to get us all into the Air France lounge. It was a much more relaxing place to wait for our next flight. It also had some pretty good snacks. I had a few different types of cheeses that I really enjoyed. We flew on an Air France flight to Cairo. Air France was pretty nice. I watched a couple more movies during the flight. It was about 4.5 hours. The map on the plane was really good. I was able to follow our progress as we flew. The alps were amazing to fly over. I also watched our progress as we flew down the Italian coast and over Greece. When we got to Cairo we could see the Pyramids from the plane. It was dark but they had a light illuminating one side of the pyramids. We arrived in Cairo and we were met by Walid, a member of the tour company. He helped us buy our visas and get our bags through customs. He also arranged our ride to our hotel.

Here were my first impressions of Cairo. It smells like a casino for the most part and is pretty smoggy. Traffic was crazy. Pretty much no one obeys traffic laws. Half the time driving to our hotel our driver had our van in two different lanes at the same time. People were always honking and cutting each other off. Our van was pretty much always inches from running into other vehicles. I was very glad that I am not driving in Egypt. We arrived at the hotel. We stayed at the Sonesta Tower Hotel. There we met our tour operator, Ali, he briefed us on the plan for the next day and checked us into our hotel rooms. The rooms themselves were very nice. By the time we were all checked in it was late and we had to get up early the next morning to catch a flight so we called it a night.

Inside of our hotel in Cairo

Outside the window of our hotel room in Cairo