Afternoon bus to the airport as we begin our Cairo jaunt. Dougie, the regular bus driver, is about to take a holiday himself. After years, he claims, of never winning anything, he has won two separate holidays, and is about to take the first of them in Athens. For the second he has some choice and is thinking of going to Rome. The airport has been undergoing renovations and has, accordingly, acquired much less general seating space and more things to buy at not especially attractive prices. The duty free shop in generous mode, though, so we sample single malts and chocolates, marking the former down for later purchase.
The flight itself is on Egyptair - about an hour and a quarter to Cairo. Minimalist safety instructions, not including any info on the life jackets, although this is one of the few flights on which a life jacket might be of some use if the plane went down - mostly over water and that water with temperatures above the mid-teens. We do get a fairly nice lunch though, and the best landing cards we've ever seen. They're bright little booklets with the immigration info on a tear-out page, the rest being a souvenir with basic information like useful Arabic phrases (all right, some of them not all that useful, like Merry Christmas) and even a map of the Cairo subway.
We're met on arrival and after visa purchase we're handed to Abdoul, who finds our driver and comes with us to the hotel, the Delta Pyramids. We have room 1001 - shades of Arabian nights. The room isn't large, but it does have a fridge and satellite tv (BBC World, Nile TV, a movie chanel, TV Monde plus Arabic chanels). Bathroom with tub and shower, bidet and middle east water hose as option to toilet paper if desired, as well as a large sink with soap dish artfully tilted to drip onto the floor not the sink. The drama comes, though, when we open the bedroom drapes for a stunning view of the pyramids dramatically backlit for evening.
JAWORSKI TRAVELS