HEADING HOME

Aswan, Egypt - Cairo, Egypt
(Saturday, May 21st and Sunday, May 22nd)

We awoke early (again) in order to catch the sunrise and our flight back to Cairo, but we had an unexpected “surprise” welcome us in our hotel bathroom. Shoeless Miriam discovered we had giant roaches running around the bathroom, which completely grossed us out and we refused to use the bathroom for anything. Skipped the face washing, the teeth brushing, the EVERYTHING. Gross!

We made sure our bags were packed and headed down to breakfast, only to find an empty restaurant. Finally we found someone to help us who told us our breakfast was a fixed menu. He brought out the plates, and we realized it wasn’t much better than the breakfast box from the day before. Oh well! Time to play with the food!

(My little man-face sandwich)

(Miriam with the plate of bread they served for breakfast...)

At least the view was spectacular—we were dining on the deck right next to the Nile and watching the sun coming up and the locals starting their days. A couple of fishermen floated past us, bringing up their long rope with hooks on it. It was fascinating to watch.

We met our driver, headed to the airport, and boarded our plane back to Cairo. We met a few older American women on our flight—the third group of Americans we had seen the whole trip! Miriam told them how we had won our trip, and they were so excited they started telling everyone. It was pretty hilarious hearing little conversations start up all around the luggage carousel about us.

Eslam, our Cairo travel agent, met us at the airport and brought us back to the Oasis Hotel in Giza, where my plans were to sit by the pool and relax for the rest of our time in Egypt. We ordered some hummus and my strawberry juice (I’m obsessed!) and some ice cream desserts for fun and swam and relaxed for the afternoon. We discovered a TON of Americans staying at the hotel this go around—everyone had been German or Australian earlier in the week. It was very interesting to see so many Americans!

Miriam was all worried because she hadn’t finished shopping for gifts and was trying to convince herself to take a car into Cairo to visit Khan al-Khalil again, the busy souq in Islamic Cairo, but decided to wait until we got to the airport the next day. Fingers crossed the airport would have shops with what we wanted—we were leaving Egypt with little in purchases since the shopping was so difficult for us.

Once the pool closed we headed back to the room and treated ourselves to room service, packed up our bags, showered (yay! A clean shower!), skyped with my mom (who was relieved to see we were still alive), and passed out.

Our alarm went off at 4am (this whole early morning thing has got to stop!), and we rolled out of bed, grabbed our bags, had breakfast in the hotel lobby, and headed to the airport, waving goodbye to the Pyramids and the Nile as we passed them by.

Once we were checked in at the airport we noticed a ton of shops with all sorts of little Egyptian souvenirs we had been looking for in the souqs. The difference? These items were real (a lot of the souqs sell fake items or things made in China), had a fixed price, and were CHEAPER than the souqs! I had bought myself a mother-of-pearl inlaid box for a discount in a price-fixed shop in Aswan and found it for $5 cheaper at the airport! Crazy! Who knew?!

Rule of thumb: Save most of your shopping for the airport when in Cairo!

We realized, though, that Ashraf, our music man, had given us an amazing deal on our purchases. Almost $5 cheaper per item than the airport prices. We love that man!

The airport doesn’t have everything we had looked at in the souqs, but we had so much fun filling up our luggage with the souvenirs we had hoped to buy during our travels but hadn’t.

And now here we are, on the plane, heading back to NYC. The flight is completely different from our flight to Cairo. Our flight to Egypt had been filled mostly with Egyptians—Miriam and I had been amongst a handful of tourists—but this flight is almost all American tourists. Where were all these people before? Ha!

All in all, we had an AMAZING experience—some of it good, some of it not so good, some of it totally crazy, but all amazing nevertheless. I look forward to my next adventure, but for now…

Home, Sweet Home. 

(Miriam and Eslam at departures)

(Bye, Egypt! Thanks for the memories!)