We've sent your bags on ahead sir. Where are you staying? : Almost-Daily Diary : http://www.chainreactionblogs.com/diary

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We've sent your bags on ahead sir. Where are you staying?

I've always wanted to use that line (from an old Firesign Theater piece). That's kinda how this morning has felt so far, as we're handed off from one representative of STI Travel to another, and you're not absolutely certain whether you're in the right car headed to the airport or if you're going to make the news back home as an American couple kidnapped in the middle east.

We left one bag back at the hotel for when we return from our Nile River cruise in a few days, but even then you're wondering if that's the last time you'll see that bag. It's a strange feeling; they speak English pretty well but you're left wondering if it's well enough to be helpful but completely misunderstood.

Probably because of the number of airport transfers involved, you're never seeing the same face (of the tour company) for very long. You just go through the airport and hotel lobbys looking for the guys in the white shirts with orange ties. So far, it's worked! Navigating a country via orange ties. Who knew?

Right now we're back at Cairo's airport, 8:10am, no more than six hours after we left the place last night, er, I mean earlier this morning. Security is a bit less tight than we're used to; you go through a metal detector that beeps and they don't even look up. And for an inter-Egypt flight, you don't even need to show any ID.

OK, the board now shows our flight to Aswan as delayed, like every other flight here, due to weather (fog). It doesn't say for how long, but curiously the guy responsible for picking us up from the airport last night and delivering us here this morning knew details about our flight long before anything posted to the departure boards. And that's the thing about Egypt so far. Everybody knows the secret. But you. ;)

<4 hours later>

We are finally in the air; we could have gotten a whole lot more than 3 hours of sleep had we known our flight would run so late. Hopefully our Nile boat will still be waiting for us. We had heard references to Egypt Air's schedules as being not carved in stone and that's an understatement. "Fly casual" comes to mind. It's like living in the country with a dose of inappropriate formality. Why pretend to be formal in the first place?

Also, why have monitors at the gate when the info displayed is always wrong?

We've made it to our Nile cruise ship, a different one than originally planned since that one was scheduled to sail away just as we landed, which would mean not seeing anything in Aswan. Now, I'll confess to knowing nothing about what there is to see in Aswan, but guess we'll find out what we didn't miss shortly.

It is warm here, probably low 80s. Just a tad bit warmer than it's going to be in London next week!

Post date: 2010-12-01 05:56:40
Post date GMT: 2010-12-01 12:56:40
Post modified date: 2011-02-12 01:24:49
Post modified date GMT: 2011-02-12 08:24:49