Egypt Day 1: Arrive in Cairo - The adventure begins

Sigrid planned the Egypt portion of the trip through Sayeed at Oriental Tours Egypt. We love the itinerary and have great expectations.

As usual, I am going to try and maintain a photo journal throughout the trip on this blog. We'll see how it goes.

Itinerary Day 1:  Arrive in Cairo 

"Arrive at Cairo International Airport, where you will be met and assisted with customs and visa formalities. You will be transferred to your hotel – overnight in Cairo. Sleep and relax at the hotel."

Journal:

Almost 30 hours of elapsed time door to door. The long London  layover and connection from Gatwick to Heathrow was a mistake. Should've stayed overnight to relax between flights.

Heathrow is a big beautiful Airport. The airport rivals shopping malls in the US. Our thinking was that - between the stores, restaurants and frequent flyer lounge - we would have plenty to entertain ourselves between flights. Problem being, all that stuff is behind security and EgyptAir does not show up at the departure terminal until a few hours hours before flight time. We had no way to get behind security to enjoy the Heathrow amenities. 

We were both feeling beat up by the time we got on the flight to Cairo. To make matters worse they don't serve alcohol on EgyptAir flights.

Landed in the dark around 5:00 AM.  Ramadan, our representative from Oriental Tours Egypt, was the to greet us with our prepaid visas and escorted us through customs.

I don't know if it was the time of day or Ramadan's expediting services, but getting through customs was a breeze. Probably the easiest Transit into a country I've never experienced. no lines, in the car and heading to the hotel within minutes.

Didn't spend much time enjoying the view from the terrace of our room...

... as we crashed as soon as we got to the room.

It's a Marriott today but was originally a palace back in the day. After recovering we spent some time in the evening exploring the grounds and enjoying a drink in the Billiard Room Bar.

Sigrid is ready to move into her living room

Editors Note: I intend to pre-load and schedule automated blog posts with the daily itinerary for our Egypt and Jordan adventure. For those interested, this may be an easy way to follow along. Internet access is always a crapshoot. My hope is that by pre-loading the itinerary it will be easier to add some pics and journal commentary as time and the internet permits. If there are no pics or commentary, you'll just have to wait until we get back. Further!