KITTIES GALORE

Cairo, Egypt - Giza, Egypt
(Written May 12th)

Touch down in Africa!

Our flight landed with no problems, and our seat neighbor hurriedly gave us more tips and restaurant recommendations before we left. We exited the plane, bought our visa, exchanged our money, and made our way through customs, at which point we met Eeslam, our Sunny Land Tours representative.

We collected our bags and got into the van to head to the hotel, Eeslam giving us advice and pointing out different things along the way. He was very impressed with our accents when asked if we knew any Arabic. Miriam shared the one word she knows—shukran (thank you)—and I spouted off a few phrases and he made me count to ten, which amused our driver very much. The traffic was unreal, and we haven’t even been in the thick of it yet. Men in suits riding in truck beds converted into seats, vans packed so full of people they looked like clown cars, open truck beds carrying boxes piled so high that I have no idea how they kept from falling over. There seem to be no street lights, no stop signs, nothing. The drivers simply communicate with horn honking and weaving in and out of lanes. It’s organized chaos that I would never be able to navigate on my own!

The highways were littered with garbage and rubble—not like a couple pieces of trash you see on the sides of the road in the US—these were literally giant piles of garbage. And in between the cars would be carts pulled by donkeys, and even a random couple on a camel!

Crossing the street as a pedestrian is like playing a game of Frogger! Not sure how we will manage to do it ourselves—we’ll have to find a nice Egyptian to help us cross the street!

Eeslam was very happy to show us the first glimpse of what we came to Egypt for—the Pyramids! It was amazing! The city of Giza has been built up around them, and as we drove along the city streets of Giza, we kept seeing them over roof tops. So cool! We’ll be touring the Pyramids tomorrow and can’t wait to get up close!!

We finally arrived at the Oasis Hotel in Giza, and Eeslam let us know our tour schedule for tomorrow and left us to our own devices. Giza to Cairo is the equivalent of White Plains to NYC but without the ease of public transportation, so we decided to keep this day simple and stay in the hotel and rest up.

The Oasis really is an oasis. Very beautiful grounds, lots of restaurants, a huge outdoor pool, but first things first…naptime. We headed to our room and promptly fell asleep. When we woke up we headed over to the pool and took advantage of some remaining sunlight, where we discovered something else the hotel offers—lots of stray cats. Yay! I get my cat fix while on vacation. The cats are extremely friendly and very cute…yet very needy. One followed us all the way back to our bungalow and wanted to come in. She is so sweet, pregnant, and only about 6 months old.

We stuck to the hotel for dinner, having three restaurants to choose from. We opted to dine at the outdoor poolside restaurant as it was a nice, cool evening. The one thing we didn’t expect with our poolside dining was the begging cats. Should have seen that coming! As soon as our food came out, so did the cats, surrounding our table, and that cute little pregnant girl was extremely persistent and brave! I was, literally, fighting her off from the table! The wait staff kept coming by to shoo her away. If she wasn’t so dang cute I would have been annoyed…

We were also soothed by the sweet smell of all the sheesha pipes being smoked around us. Sheesha pipes are the same as hooka pipes, where the tobacco is steamed instead of burned. Everyone around us was smoking different flavors, the most prominent was chocolate. Smelled yummy!

Our dinner was okay. We opted for the European main course, but they don’t do steak fillet very well. I think we’ll stick with Egyptian fare for the next meal.

We then headed back to our room where Miriam promptly fell asleep and I prepared myself for our Pyramids adventure tomorrow!

I still can’t believe we are in Egypt! Eek!

I'll leave you with the view from our room...