Cairo, Egypt

We had another excellent meal at the New Abu Simbel Hotel. Breakfast was an omelette, cooked and served in a piping hot ceramic dish. Also freshly squeezed mango juice, cheeses, honey crepes, and fresh fruit. Yummy. This was the best chef we’ve had on the trip thus far.

Said goodbye to all the staff and posed in a few pics. Then we zipped off back to Aswan airport for our flight at 2:40pm. I wasn’t sure when I booked if we’d make the flight (there’s a late evening one too) but the very helpful hotel staff had said it was no problem when I was planning back in the summer.

We left at 9am and were at the airport by noon. It was a two-handed drive most of the way, with the wind storm still pretty strong. Sand blew across the road similar to a snow storm, with the occasional sand drift half way across the road. Visibility was poor, but the driver was very familiar with the road and we had no issues.

The Egyptair counter wasn’t yet open, so we grabbed seats in the terminal. The counters opened a couple hours before the flight, we checked in, went through domestic security (water okay, but had to take off our shoes which we hate cause you have to walk in socks).

The EgyptAir agent had said there was a restaurant in the departure area; but it was slim pickings. Had another less than satisfactory airport meal, and waited for our flight.

The flight schedule actually originates in Abu Simbel-Aswan-Cairo. I had read that the Abu Simbel-Aswan leg is often cancelled so we made the three hour drive to Aswan to pick up the flight. Sure enough, the Abu Simbel-Aswan leg was cancelled, likely due to the wind/sand. If I remember, it was also substantially cheaper this way.

We had to use a Cobus (a vintage 2700 model, as opposed to my favourite, the Cobus 3000). We got blasted with sandy wind walking on the tarmac, with us in our cooler weather clothes (it was about 21C, and high of only 19C in Cairo today). Oh well, I needed to launder these clothes anyways.

The plane itself was vintage too, in business class they still had cigarette trays in the armrests!

It took a while for our luggage to show up on the conveyor. We could see it was in Cairo so we weren’t worried.

Then we walked over to the Le Meridien and checked in. We were still full from the amazing meals at the New Abu Simbel, so just had some small bites in the club lounge for dinner.