Here I go again!
A friend said recently that I was like Where’s Waldo?—they never knew where I’d pop up next. (Sorry, I can’t remember who said that, but I loved it!) I’m starting this in the air, and I’m going to try to do better this trip to post contemporaneously with my travels. I was an abject failure at that on my Southern Africa trip. We were so busy and got up so early every day that I fell into bed each night exhausted. Okay, exhausted but also thrilled with everything I saw and did. It was the trip of a lifetime. And I actually finished my pictures from that trip 2 days ago—I really wanted to have them finished before I went anywhere else.
Back to the present! I’m on an Austrian Airlines flight to Vienna, en route to Cairo, with my friend Lynn. We were laughing today, as we waited on our flight at Dulles, at how quickly we arranged this trip. She asked in September if I wanted to go, and within 2–3 days, we had the trip and the flights booked. It’s both of our first times flying this airline, and so far, so good. The female flight attendants are wearing all bright red. And I mean all. They have on red dresses, red tights, and red shoes! (Okay, it’s a little “Handmaid’s Tale” to be honest.) The male attendants are in dark clothes with red vests, so that’s not too bad, but the women are blinding figures in scarlet. Okay, I stole this image from the web:
The only other sort of Austrian oddity was the waltz music that played in a loop on the plane as we waited to leave. After a while, it was driving me a little nuts. Note added later: the waltz started up again as soon as we landed.
But, we’re in the air over the Atlantic now. We’re flying almost due east out of Washington, which is a little odd, as every other time I’ve flown to Europe, we’ve followed the east coast of the US, then across just south of Canada and Greenland. This has happened both directions—I’ve never flown due east. But maybe we’ll turn north soon. The flight map shows us following the route I’m used to. We have about 7.5 hours to Vienna, then after a 2.5 hour layover, a short (~3 hour) flight to Cairo. Note added later: we never did turn north, but it worked out fine, as we got in almost an hour early to Vienna.
We’re doing this trip with Trafalgar, not Gate 1, but it looks like a similar set up. We will be met at the airport tomorrow by someone from the company and be taken to our hotel. We figure we’ll be pretty tired by then, so we’ll probably eat and try to sleep to get acclimated. Cairo is 7 hours ahead of the US, so it’s quite a change. Since we are flying in a day early, Wednesday is a free day for us. Trafalgar offers a couple of optional tours, and I think we’re going to visit the Museum of Civilization. That’s what our guide Mohamed recommended.
We each got an email from Mohamed a few days ago, and he had his Instagram link in the message. I followed him, and got a message from him fairly quickly. Since IG messaging is a pain (and I don’t usually look at it), I told him I had WhatsApp and he was off and running. I think I mentioned that, although we don’t use WhatsApp much in the US, it’s widely used in Europe and Africa (and probably in other places too). Anyway, Mohamed said, “You can’t come all the way and not see the bodies of the pharaohs in the Museum of civilization. It’s a half day tour which is perfect while Alexandria is a long day ( more than 3 hours drive each way ) and not much left in the city to see.” So, we’re taking his advice. It’s possible that he may guide us that day, if he’s free. He also messaged us today to tell us the name of the man who will meet us at the Cairo airport, which I thought was a nice touch.
So, that’s the plan. Have an easy day on Wednesday and meet up with the rest of the group that night. We fly south early the next morning. (I haven’t dared ask Mohamed how early—I don’t want to know if it’s a 3 AM wake up call!). We then board a Nile cruise ship for 4 nights. It looks like a fancy ship. We’ll have excursions off the ship every day.
I do like independent travel, but it is also very nice to know that someone else is taking care of everything for me. Egypt is another of those places that I would not feel comfortable traveling alone. I had felt that way about Southern Africa too, but now I think that I would actually be fine traveling around parts of it on my own. I’d certainly like to rent a car or camper and spend a lot longer at Kruger National Park. I would also like to spend a lot longer in Botswana. My guide there said if I came back, we could travel to the Okavango delta. Who know, I might manage that some day.
I’m going to stop now, and I’ll try to finish this when I get to Vienna, or, if not then, tomorrow night in Cairo. Since I’m offline (no WiFi on this plane), I’m writing in Pages and I’ll have to move everything over and add maps or pictures. BTW, we are still heading pretty much due east, though we’re a little further north than we were when we started across the Atlantic. Definitely a different flight path.
Well, it's the next night (Wednesday). I'm going to get this finished and posted, so I'll be caught up.
Flying into Vienna was fun! I saw the Danube River for the first time (albeit, at a distance) and I was surprised at all the planted fields and wind turbines that surround Vienna. Also, the sun came up right before we landed and the sun hitting the wing was surprisingly beautiful.
You can even see the curve of the earth.
We had a couple of hours to kill, so we walked from one end of the terminal to the other. It felt good to walk! We wandered in the gift shops, which were amusing! I didn't buy anything, but there's no guarantee I won't buy anything on the way home. These little liqueur bottles were cute, as was the giant Lego tourist outside a store that sold Lego.
We had a cappuccino, then waited for the flight. Unfortunately, the plane didn't have screens, and I really missed following the flight map. I don't remember if I wrote this earlier, but Lynn and I both like window seats, so we have seats on all the flights at the opposite ends of the rows (i.e., I'm in A and she's in F). Austrian Air had trouble understanding how we were traveling together but not sitting together. We don't think it's that complicated. We are grownups and can fly alone...and we both like window seats. No problemo!
This was a short flight, only about 3.5 hours. We flew down over land until Aegean Sea, then we were over water until we made it to the Egyptian coast. There were so many islands below that we were both mesmerized. Lynn saw a volcanic island, and we figured out later that it was Nisyros. When we flew over northern Egypt, I saw what looked like rice paddies, and I just googled and found out that they indeed were rice paddies. We circled around Cairo and I couldn't believe how big the city is! There are apartment buildings everywhere! When I asked, I found out that there are over 20 million people living in Cairo and its immediate area.
We got off the plane and were met almost immediately by a Trafalgar rep. It surprised me, as we hadn't gone through immigration yet. But Osama handled everything for us, through customs and baggage claim, and then to our hotel. (There was a van with a driver waiting.) By this time, we were both pretty tired, as we didn't get over a couple of hours sleep in the flight to Vienna, if that. We got to our room, then explored the hotel. We were surprised again when it got dark at 5 PM! Very short days here! We had some Thai food at one of the hotel restaurants, then crashed till this morning.
We had breakfast at the hotel, and it was the typical over-the-top buffet that I've gotten used to. I was surprised that the yogurt was in containers—I've gotten used to spooning out of a big bowl and adding fruit. We had decided to take Mohamed's advice and see the pharaohs, so at 10 we met him (and a third member of our tour group) and headed off to the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization. It was perhaps a 20 minute drive, but there was so much to see. There was an enormous cemetery that ran beside the road for about 12 km, full of mosques, tombs, and mausoleaums. We saw so many mosques and minarets, markets, and just interesting stuff. I could have walked the entire distance looking at everything and been happy.
The museum was special, though. The pharaohs and their accoutrement were moved to this museum in 2021. It was quite the show. Remember that it was during Covid, and many Egyptians were at home. This gave them something to watch and to be proud of. The video is on You Tube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kaf0LxcVV4
Here's a gallery of some of what we saw:
The galleries with the mummified pharaohs and their sarcophagi were the highlight though. It was very well done (as was the whole museum) with good lighting and information. The mummies were fascinating. No photography was allowed, however, so you'll just have to take my word for it. Mohamed said it should be a quiet experience for all, which I would have liked, but there were many schoolchildren streaming though, so it was rarely quiet.
As we prepared to leave, I saw a new bird, and it was a pretty one!
I'm about to call it a night, as the wake up call for the flight south is indeed at 3 AM. On the bright side, we will beat the other tourists and the schoolchildren to our first stops. On the plus side, our whole group is just 10 people, which is great for us! Apparently about half that had signed up for the trip canceled due to the war in Israel and Gaza. Oh, and the other woman who joined up for the tour is one of the 10, and we like her! She joined us for dinner tonight.
When I write next, it will be from a boat on the Nile!
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