Cairo, Egypt

I was up at 4am jetlagged so just worked on my lede for yesterday. We didn’t have much to do today - another transit day to get to Cairo.

Breakfast was pretty good, mostly traditional Turkish, including really fresh halloumi and bagels similar to Montreal bagels.

Cause we have Istanbul as a base, we only need to take whatever clothing is needed for each leg. However the forecast for Egypt over the ten days we’re there ranges from a high of 20C when we arrive in Cairo and then a high of 40C five days later in Aswan. So we don’t really know what to take to Egypt.

The flight from Istanbul to Cairo is just over two hours, but door to door it took us nine hours. Immigration was no problem leaving Turkey, although they stamped on my Observation page :( Heather also got pulled over for a random search going through security.

Our departure changed gates four times before we boarded and then our plane waited an hour in line to take off. Hopefully Istanbul will have more capacity at their new airport.

Cairo International was strangely empty, maybe all the big planes arrive at a different time of day. Also most of the gates were available but we still parked on the tarmac (maybe the airport fees for using a gate are too high?).

Egypt immigration was a bit confusing, but no issues. Got our luggage and looked around for our driver after exiting the luggage area. A few minutes later we figured out that the hotel drivers aren’t allowed to enter the terminal and so we had to meet them outside. The drive from the airport to downtown took about 90 minutes, which is about normal.

My credit card got flagged for a fraud alert cause I tried to pay for the hotel and then our excursion in quick succession, even though both were chip and PIN. CIBC really has to work on their fraud triggers. So had to call CIBC to un-hold.

We had no motivation to head out for food so just ate at the hotel restaurant. It was okay.

Two days in and I haven’t even taken out my camera yet! Anyways tomorrow we’re going to the pyramids so I’ll finally have pics to post :)