Day 6: Cinque Terre to Cairo

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Olly Murs blasts through the room singing Troublemaker at 7.15am this morning! The only song that gets me up in the morning! We thought wed better switch it off so we didnt wake everyone in the building so unfortunately didn't get the full wake up experience necessary for me in the mornings! But even so, we got us cos Ivo had told us last night that we needed to get a train to Levanto before 9am when the trains were beginning their strike for the day, and the last train out of Vernazza before 9 was 8.15am. So up we got and struggled a bit with our packs going down the ridiculously steep flights of stairs out of Ivo's but made it and even found some coffee and croissants to take with us to the station. A few people had the same idea as us by the look of things but not many! We imagine it being chaos there today with no trains running! As, when we asked Ivo if there was any other way we could get to Levanto other than train he just laughed at us and said something in Italian!

We got on the 8.15am train no problem and walked into Levanto station crossing our fingers that our train from Levanto to Milan that we were booked on at 11.01am was still running even though they were striking. We heaved a massive sigh of relief as she informed us that ours was one of the few trains that was running today! Thank goodness cos so many were listed as being cancelled! So thankfully, a day that could have turned out as a slight disaster was completely plain sailing even though it began early! We had a 2 and a half hour wait in Levanto train station to kill, so typed up fun facts for the trip so far, organised photos and sorted 5 panorama pics of the diff villages which we are going to get blown up and framed when back in Brisbane. That killed a fair amount of time and before we knew it we were on board our train to Milan in a cubicle with a swiss or german (we couldnt quite decide) family who ate amazing food throughout the trip making us jealous and hungry, and an old italian lady who clearly just didnt understand that none of us understood italian and continued to try and talk to us and babble about whatever she was talking about, on and off for the 3 hour trip! We all smiled and laughed along with her but whew! Ben completed about 50 sudokus claiming after one that he was 'awesomeville – population 1.' And I got 70% through my new book! And again before we knew it we were in Milan.

We grabbed some lunch on the go and given it was almost 3pm we got on an airport bus. This took about 45mins to be dropped off and we both a had a wee siesta. Lucky we checked which terminal we needed to get off at cos turns out 1 & 2 are about 15mins apart by bus! We had some time to kill at the airport so wandered round looking for something to send our Cinque terre souvineers home in but the post office was shut, had some average pizza from a ridiculously rude and grumpy lady near our gate an boarded our EgyptAir flight to Cairo. Alan and Dawn had sent an email recently saying they had a terrible experience on this airline, howevere we found it great! Enough leg room, good food (we didnt need the pizza) and the plane was half empty so we got a third seat to ourselves too so I could lounge out as we got up to date with Game of Thrones!

We arrived at about 10.15pm into Cairo and thankfully Ahmeed from our hostel (Cairo Paradise Hotel) was there waiting for us with a lil sign with our names on it! Cos it was just like Lima when El and I arrived 2 years ago! People everywhere trying to grab us and take us into their taxi! Ah just the beginning of our Egypt experience! We got in the car and the traffic and driving was ridiculous! There was a number of times I thought our car was done for as motorbikes and other cars came in from the side! No lanes, no rules, just chaos! He took us to his 'hotel' where we got put in a crickety old lift that I really cant even do justice, and taken up to our room. It was meant to be a superior doiuble room but had 3 king single beds and our 'private bathroom' was a cubicle with no roof in the corner of the room with a giant step up to get into it! We had one towel between us and a shower with nothing but the base! No curtains, no walls nothing! But we were just there for the night so it was fine. Had to seriously plunge the earplugs in deeply cos the traffic and honking was SO loud as we were on the main street!! Hope we have an ok sleep!

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