Adios Cairo

This morning we left Cairo and I have to admit that while we both had a very nice visit and thoroughly enjoyed all the sites we visited; we were ready to leave Egypt. We were exhausted and ready to go to Europe where things would be a little “more normal”. I had become somewhat ill overnight and must have had something bad to eat. I am also developing sinus issues and my throat is killing me (probably due to the sinus issues). But I am taking care of my self and was smart to bring a host of medication for all the problems and hope to be 100% by tomorrow. Not going to let a runny nose mess up this amazing trip.

We left our hotel in Cairo around 7 am to make a 10:30 am flight to Athens. Seems early right? Well not really. It only took us about 30 mins to get to the airport but about 90 mins to check in and go through many security check points that were worthless in my opinion. But we finally got to our gate area but would not let us pass through our final security check point until the boarding time…which doesn’t make any sense. Once we finally got through, it showed that our flight was delayed, but not for how long. So we took a seat and waited for an announcement. But after awhile I started to notice that people were leaving our seating area. I went up to the desk and asked and they told me that they moved the gate across that airport! Nice. So we have 30 mins to make it across the airport to our new gate to sit there for another 45 mins to find out that they put our bags on the wrong plane and had to move them and also- we were setting at gate G9 but come to find out that the walkway to the place said G8 and vice versa with G8 gate…At this point I doubted that we would get our luggage when we arrived in Athens.

We boarded our flight on Egypt Air and luckily the flight wasn’t full. It was roughly a 2 hour flight and it went pretty smoothly- I only felt like I was losing my life 1 time for some bad turbulence and we did not have the freaky voice from the movie “the mummy” give the flight announcements this time, so that was nice.

We arrived in Athens unsure if our baggage was going to be there or if our transfer was still waiting for us with a sign. Luckily both were there. We had our transfer via Mercedes taxi service…we felt fancy. It was raining when we arrived and 66 degrees! We were in heaven. It took about 45 mins to get to our hotel and when we check in, things just started to go well. We got a very nice room (non-smoking this time) and a big packet of very useful information. We had about 30 mins before we had to me our Hotel Guide that would give us an orientation of what was going to happen and when. I was excited to see that things are a lot easier on the other side of the sea. We met with Anna and she is a guide that stays in the hotel and books all your excursions and is like a personal concierge. At first it seemed like her role was somewhat unnecessary, but she has been very helpful thus far.

After our meeting and welcome drink, we decided to hit up a hotel restaurant to take it easy tonight. I still was feeling awful, and my sinus issues were bad from the flight so we ate in. Brad had a steak with some au gratin potatoes and I have chicken stuffed with basil, cheese, olives and pancetta. It was delicious. They brought this bread to the table that had olives baked into it and three spreads for the bread; sun dried tomato paste, butter, and an olive spread. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. I love Greek food!

After dinner, I took a bunch more medicine, checked in on the computer, posted some pictures and we went to bed. Tomorrow we get out tour of the city!