Category Archives: Egypt 2006

Information about my trip to Egypt. I’m keeping a separate site but with some extra Egypt stuff/widgets. It’s at http://MyTripToEgypt.com/

Two Continents

Posted on May 3, 2006 | 1 comment

Egypt map from wikipediaDid you know that Egypt is actually on two different continents. If you look on a map it makes sense but I never really thought about it being in both Africa and Asia. I was in the Africa part, we pretty much traveled between Cairo and Aswan along the Nile.

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My 11 hour nap!

Posted on May 2, 2006 | Leave a comment

So I had taken the day off to recover from the flight from Egypt, pick up my mail, go to two doctor’s appointments that would be needed after the trip (allergy shot and to get my neck/back worked on) and other stuff. Since I got trapped in NY I had to move the allergy appointment but the other was later so that was okay. So I set the alarm clock for three hours later and took a nap. I ended up sleeping 11 hours, missing the appointment and now I’ve been wide awake for the last three hours. Although I did get the laundry done and watched a little TiVo, I hadn’t turned a TV on in weeks…

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I’m Home from Egypt!

Posted on May 1, 2006 | 1 comment

So I’m finally back in Michigan! I will be posting more entries and photos over the next few weeks as I think of more things, finish thoughts I’ve started and mange to sort some photos.

I didn’t sleep well last night, so I made it to the airport on time. Although they did hit me with a $25 fee since my luggage weighed too much, I tried to sweet talk them out of that with the all the flight problems but no such luck. It was a tiny little plane and had a lot of tired familiar faces on it from last night.

I’m off to take a nap…

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So Delta completely failed us.

Posted on April 30, 2006 | Leave a comment

It took them over three hours to decide to finally cancel our flight. That’s three hours after it was scheduled to depart, that’s not even factoring in that they had to have some idea there would be problems before the flight was even supposed to leave . We had a plane but no pilots, you’d think that wouldn’t be so hard to keep track of and keep us informed. I know I’m a little crabby from traveling but I’ve definitely been treated better than I was with the way the system worked tonight. If they would have canceled it hours before that I’d have been fine with it but I should have been home two hours ago and I’m just finally in a hotel. They’ve got free WiFi in the lobbys/resturants which is a bonus, but I’d rather have the A/C working…

Please let me clarify: I understand things can be beyond their control, but at 7:30 when they are telling us at when the pilots land at LaGuadia around 7:45 they’ll taxi over and it takes until 10 PM to tell us they can’t get pilots they don’t really care about the customers. All they have to do was keep us informed. If they would have told me at 8 I would have gladly went over to the hotel, ate and gone to bed. They just dragged it out and the story they gave us doesn’t make sense.

We didn’t get anything but a hotel room and a $7.00 voucher for dinner (that’s about 1/2 a burger at the hotel, everything at the airport was closed). Anyone have a good number or address at Delta for me to complain to? Please let me know. (Delta, if I misheard and there’s a free round-trip ticket in the mail for me, I’ll gladly correct this post…)

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Waiting for Delta Flight 5220

Posted on April 30, 2006 | 1 comment

So my 7:00 PM flight hasn’t boarded yet. The time on the display has jumped from 7 PM to 8 PM to 10 PM and none of the five employees currently standing at the counter knows why. They didn’t even notice it jumped to 10 PM until I asked. This was all within 10 minutes of them telling us we’d be boarding in five minutes…

They aren’t even sure if the pilots have left St. Louis (the plane is here). This doesn’t even factor in the fact that this gate closes at 8 PM so there shouldn’t be any way it’s actually leaving from this gate.

Wait! It just totally fell off the display now, and they can’t tell me why (“it’s okay” they said).

7:35 PM Update: So they just bumped us to another gate. They’ve got pilots going to LaGuardia (I’m at JFK) who will then shuttle over to here to fly us away. Guesstimate is about 9 PM but maybe as late as 10 PM. I’m usually pretty patient with this stuff, but I’ve been up since 9:45 PM Michigan time yesterday and we headed out to the airport at 11 PM Michigan time (maybe I slept 1.5-2 hours) and I’m beat.

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THE Sphinx

Posted on April 30, 2006 | Leave a comment

THE SphinxSo they call the big Sphinx “The Sphinx” since it is so much bigger than all of the other thousands of Sphinxes in the country. I think they said it was carved out of one huge piece of rock. It was big, but it just didn’t do it for me, maybe because it was towards the end of a very long day. There was also a bit of scaffolding in the way that they were using for repairs that didn’t do anything to increase my level of awe.

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Pyramids – Part III

Posted on April 30, 2006 | Leave a comment

So the pyramids were absolutely mind staggering in the size and then I realized it wasn’t even the largest one of the three. Of course there were people all over the place trying to sell you water, soda and trinkets.

One of the best parts was when I walked around one of the big ones and the crowd was dying out. As I rounded the corner one of the smaller ones came into view and there was no one around. It’s was just amazing as the sound dropped and I was able to walk around that side in awe. It was so peaceful as I walked along alone, it really gave me the opportunity to appreciate it more. I think it was the largest of the three at Giza so if you have an opportunity to walk around it give it a try before the sales people and other tourists start to wear you down.

We didn’t go inside. The tour person didn’t recommend it, said the walls were pretty empty and it was a big empty room in the center. It was only $4 or $5 extra for one of them. I asked some people who were coming out and they said it was very hot and and they had to walk about 300 meters bent over pretty far and their wasn’t much too see.

On the other hand I didn’t not go to the laser light show at the Giza sight and I heard it was great. Some people in our group said it was great and so did some others who stayed in the hotel so you might want to see that if you ever get there. It had just been a long day with lots of pyramids and I was too tired…

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Free WiFi at the Cairo Airport

Posted on April 30, 2006 | 2 comments

So I’m at the Cairo Airport ready to head to JFK and they’ve got FREE WiFi! In case you haven’t noticed while things are cheap here, nothing is free. So we’re very early for our flight but I’m ready, two weeks was long enough to be away from home. Egypt was wonderful, but I’m ready for my own bed and to have the ability to drink tap water and not be afraid to accidentally rinse after I brush my teeth.

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