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Published: November 9th 2011
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WELL, we have finally arrived in Cairo, Egypt and it is nearly 10pm as I sit in our hotel room at the ‘ Le Meridien Pyramid Hotel and Spa’ and we wait for room service to deliver some food because WE ARE FAMISHED!!!!after another crazy day. Anyway I’ll come to that soon
The last two days have really been ‘repositioning’ days as we start the next phase of our ‘journey’.
We said ‘goodbye’ to Positano and our landlady Rosa at 9am yesterday when our driver picked us up to take us to Napoli Centrale railway station. The apartment/studio unit at Positano has been just great and we managed to get around to a lot more places that we originally thought we would once we found the buses and boats weren’t running from this part of the coast. As I said in my last blog, Giovanni has been fabulous in getting us around – he cost a bundle but it worked out well.
Drive into Naples was no hassles apart from the traffic the closer we got to the city and we got our train to Rome at the appointed time of 1150am. European trains are just magic to travel on, especially
the ‘fast trains’ and when you look at the speed indicator board at the end of our first class carriage that reads 303km/h you know you moving along.
We left Naples just as it started to rain and when we arrived in Rome at 1pm it was fine but looking threatening. We got a rather overpriced taxi to our hotel, the Colosseum Hotel, and by the time we got there and checked in etc. it was around 2pm. The hotel was old, after all we were in the centre of old Rome, but very nice all the same and from our bedroom balcony we could see the Colosseum.
We had prebooked a night time tour of Rome with a tour company for 7.30pm so we decided to go for a walk after we had checked into the hotel and figured out how to get to (YES you’ve guessed it) the Hard Rock Café for a meal and the obligatory Tshirt!!!! We took our jackets and an umbrella as it looked like ‘rain’ and t was just as well because no sooner had we set off through the rabbit warren streets than the heavens opened and BOY, did it rain. And
it rained and it rained with no let up for some hours. Needless to say we got wet despite jackets and umbrellas. The streets were awash and to cross a road was like wading through streams!!! However more by good luck than anything else we found Hard Rock and sheltered there while we ate at a very leisurely pace as were in no hurry to get back into the weather. We thought we might take a taxi back but didn’t see one that was empty so just walked it back to the hotel …… in the pouring rain. It wasn’t looking good for our evening tour!!!
However some rest and a dry out had us ready for our driver at 7.30pm for what we thought was an hour long drive. It turned into about 2 and a quarter hours of really interesting driving and sightseeing. The young guy driving, Alberto, was excellent and showed us everything that one would expect and we stopped at several places for a walk around and photos, Trevi Fountain, Piazza Navona (?), a view of Rome from a hill top near Garribaldi’s statue, the Colosseum, St Paul’s square at the Vatican and the list goes
on. It was quite different seeing all these places by night as 3 years ago all our sightseeing was done in the day. 120euro well spent, believe me!!
We had to get to bed because we were being picked up by shuttle to go to the airport at 4.30am in the morning for a 6 am flight to Frankfurt and then on to Cairo (supposedly). The alarm went off at 3.30am and wasn’t all that welcome!!!however we got to the airport and boarded only to be told by the pilot that our destination, Frankfurt, was fogged in and we would have to wait for flight clearance. So we sat on the plane on the tarmac and waited. At least this time we didn’t have a tight connection time frame as we had about 4 hours until our flight to Cairo left. We got into Frankfurt just after 9am, an hour late and had some breakfast at one of the airport restaurants and found our way to the gate our flight to Cairo was leaving from. For those who haven’t been to Frankfurt airport, it is Lufthansa’s ‘hub base’ and is simply massive. We must have walked several kilometres just to get from our arrival terminal to our departure terminal and still couldn’t see more than a few metres through the blanket of fog. It never lifted all day. Our 1205pm flight to Cairo finally got away around 2.30pm which made for a very long sit and read session at the airport.
We finally got away and were on one of Lufthansa’s Airbus 321 which is a very large machine. It was very late boarding and all the pushy Europeans and Americans were champing at the bit while we just chilled out and waited but that meant we were last on the plane. Our seats were right at the very back, row 36, the last row, and by the time we got there NO LOCKER SPACE!!! Our two back packs and Joy’s camera bag had to go at our feet which made for very cramped conditions for a 4.5 hour flight. To add insult to injury, Lufthansa must have the tightest seat spacing on any plane we’ve been on. We’ve flown with them right throughout this trip (apart from ANZ to LA and internally in USA) and it has always been very uncomfortable. This flight was definitely no exception and I was jammed hard up against the seat in front with both of us having bags at our feet as well. I think I might have got a bit grumpy at the start of the flight. Things weren’t made any better when they started serving lunch from the front of the plane and, of course, by the time they got to us at the very back, all that was left was a rather ugly pasta meal. Not happy fliers today.
ANYWAY the flight itself went OK but was fairly lumpy crossing the European Alps. The sights as we came into Cairo were awesome with the spreading city all lit up underneath us and we flew right over the Pyramids.
Our tour rep met us at the airport and the poor man had been waiting for hours as a flight change we notified them about some weeks ago hadn’t been translated to him so he was waiting for us from 3pm until when we arrived around 7.45pm. However he was very obliging, poor chap.
We retrieved our bags, although have to admit started to get a bit worried as we hadn’t seen them since checking them in at Rome at 5am and they didn’t seem to want to come onto the baggage carousel. Of course they were the very last bags to arrive but big sigh of relief all round.
Out to our hotel shuttle and we met our tour company rep, Khallif, who will apparently be with us for our stay, at least in Cairo we think, and we headed right across Cairo for a 1.5 hour drive to our hotel. CRAZY, CRAZY, CRAZY. If Italian drivers are made, Egyptians are straight INSANE!! Actually our driver last night in Rome told us it was called ‘freestyle driving’ and that’s probably a fair description.
The hotel is close to the Giza Pyramids, where we start our tour proper tomorrow at 9am, and is a very lavish affair. Still not all that comfortable with the whole Egyptian thing yet but I dare say we will grow into it. We never arrived at the hotel until close to 10pm and just wanted to eat something and get to bed.
That’s our ‘repositioning’ days. Not too exciting in some ways but still full of great sights and surprises. We are both looking forward, with some trepidation, to the next 12 days in this rather different part of the world.
Will try to keep up to date as internet coverage allows.
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