Cairo Egypt.

Chris: We upgraded our Egyptair flight to business class which gave us access to the Turkish business class lounge. It's supposed to be one of the best airport lounges in the world and I can see how that could be the case, later in the day. It's three AM here and they were not spooled up at all, although there were a fair number of people in the lounge. No hot food, just coffee, tea, juice, veggies and cheese and some watery weak lentil soup. Oh, and a few cake slices and some cookies. But we picked at some of it and had coffee, I had a glass of white wine which I'm sure will serve me well as we spend thirteen hours in Cairo and the fly to Aswan before we see another bed.

Then it was time to hike what had to be a mile or a mile and a half to our gate. And by the way, the McDonalds we past right after coming out of the fancy lounge looked pretty good but we didn't know how far we had to hike so we didn't want to take the time. The Istanbul Airport is new, and beautiful and huge. I mean massive and the walks in thru security and to the gate and out thru immigration and baggage clams are ridiculous. We can do it but there has to be tons of people who can't. It's actually fascinating though, you see and hear people from all over the world. Turkish Airlines is headquartered here and they dominate the airport.

Rhonda. The flight was very nice in business. I told Chris I wanted to buy some smiles since the flight attendants are friendlier in business than they are in economy. The seats and food were good and we got a little much needed sleep since they picked us up at 1245a for a 430am flight. 😝 The Cairo airport was not much but so easy on customs and immigration that we were shocked. They just waived us through. I guess Chris and Rhonda from Garland Texas just don't cause suspicion. But man we saw someone get busted. He went through the "nothing to declare" line. And they opened his suitcases and whoa. It was full of electronics. Busted!

Chris: Egypt is the worst for money scams and hassling for tips we have ever seen. They want a tip for every thing and if you give them one they flat out say it's not enough. At the Cairo airport a guy wanted a tip for helping us get our bags on the belt thru the x-ray machine. We are perfectly capable of doing it ourselves, we just thought he was keep the line moving. He put out his hand and he had a bill wadded up in his palm and he whispers, can you give me something ? I just said, loudly, I'm not f@&!"ng tipping to going thru security !! Then in the lobby waiting for our tour guide we had a guy who would not leave us alone sayings our guide was not going to show up and he would take us everywhere for a hundred and twenty five dollars and let's go now, your guide you reserved is a scam and he's not showing up. We absolutely couldn't get rid of him. So when our guide did show up Rhonda wouldn't say who we were until he said our names. We were afraid the other guy had sent his buddy in to say he was our guide !

Rhonda: Our tour guide's name was Sam English hahaha. Sam was the best! He was so passionate about history that at times it was like he was in a one man play. He was also very caring about us and catered to our every need. Our driver was also great. They drive like maniacs in Cairo. There is no adherence to any lane and the cars move like dancers in a complicated ballet.

We learned about Egyptian history, the significance of the Nile River and how they lived on the west side and the east side was for grave sites. So that's why the pyramids and the important tombs are on east side where Giza is. The high priest did the mummy process when the kings and queens died. They took all the organs and brains out and let them dry out a few days before wrapping them. The whole point of that was that they really really believed ( religion hmph) that they need the body when they came back in another life. So they also got buried with their jewels and gold and some mummified chickens ( no lie).

Our overall impression of Cairo was that you would expect it to be an oasis of color in the middle of the Sahara but instead they went with trying to blend it in to the terrain. Every building is sand colored. There is no color anywhere but the story palm tree. A little paint would go a long way.

We started with Saqquara. And because it was so early we were the first ones in. It consist of many many tombs and small pyramids. We got to go inside one and it was a tough climb down 20 meters to see the hieroglyphs on the walls. It was so fascinating though and so glad we did it. It was the beginning of our appreciation of the origins of language.

Then we went to an open air museum in Giza to see the Ramses 2 statue. He was one of the most important Kings ( ?? Whatever, I am calling him a king) because he ordered all these other beautiful pieces of art all over the country. We will see many more in Aswan and Luxor Sam tells us.

Sam explained the importance of catoosh to us. It is a hieroglyphic interpretation of your name on a pendant. He had one with his name on one side and his wife's name on the other. So he took us to a shop so we could see how they are made. The interpretation of both of our names was so spot on it was like going to a palm reader. Of course we orderd them for us both. With a chain made of evil eye design to ward off harm to either of us. They are beautiful and were finished by the end of the day so we can bring them home. Happy 40th anniversary to us!

We had lunch with Sam and it was a bbq grilled chicken with lots of little bites of hummus etc.

this post got too long so we will tell you about the pyramids in another post

Love y'all.