Cairo: Day 0

So you've all heard the tale of our adventure getting out of Saudi Arabia, and now it's time for the rest of our fantastic trip.  Rather than throw it all out there in one epic saga that honestly I don't have the time or inclination to produce in one big blog post, I'll go day by day for all of you.  We also have way more pictures than is reasonably feasible for the blog, so I'll probably post the excess on my facebook for you all to check out at your leisure.  Because I know prying into our lives is really high on your list of things to do today, and really who doesn't like a good time suck like facebook?

So Day 0 as I will call it pretty much represents our late night flight and arrival into Cairo at 2am.  We had a heck of a time finding flights to Cairo, and it turns out the first one we were actually able to find and purchase, resulted in a 12:30 am flight out of Jeddah.  After our interesting experience getting through the Jeddah airport, we left late, and finally got to Cairo. We bought our entry visas and romped our way through customs.  We also admired the kitties that were hanging around in the Cairo airport.  Little did we know that Cairo is swarming with stray kitties and cats so this was not our last encounter with the little creatures.

After making it though customs, which didn't really take too long, we proceeded to the exit to find our driver.  One of the benefits of the hostel we stayed at was that they would pick you up from the airport.  This was greatly appreciated given our late arrival and my lack of desire to try and navigate taxis at 3am.  Let me now sing the praises of traveling with no checked luggage.  Glorious.  It greatly reduces waiting around in the airport after you arrive, and normally it speeds up your check in process too.  We had a small rolling suitcase (part of an amazing set of luggage we got for the wedding), Steve's backpack, and my London tote.  We packed clothes for six days, and this was a pretty good amount for a nine day trip.

The staff at our hostel was pretty easy to work with; they even managed to fix our reservation after I forgot to book us a room for the first night of our trip (whoops).  We ended up getting to the hostel around 3:30 or 4 am, and we were quickly shown to our room. The building the hostel was in had an amazing old fashioned elevator:

We had a pretty interesting view from our room.  We were right next door to a mosque and  the minaret made for a lovely view.  The giant chicken mural/advertisement was also pretty amusing.

They let us know that breakfast was normally served until 11 am, but they'd serve us later since we weren't likely to be up that early the next day.  This was greatly appreciated!  Overall the hostel was decent, it got really good reviews and ratings online, but I would say it didn't quite live up to its online reputation.  We ended up buy some air freshener the next day because the room had a bit of funk, and the bathrooms were in a general state of patched up working throughout the trip.  They did have amazing hot water though, so it could have been worse.

With our arrival in Cairo a success, we hit the sack and eagerly awaited our first opportunity to explore the city.