Travel to Cairo

No more perks of Global Services status for air travel. On Alitalia, we are just like everyone else. That is why, when they told us that seat assignments for our flight to Cairo would be handed out at the airport, we followed the “rules” and arrived two hours prior to our flight time. I can’t remember the last time I voluntarily spent 2 hours in an airport. At first glance, I thought this early arrival business was not all that bad. I expected to queue up on a long line waiting to check in for our flight. But, alas…there was no line. I repeat: no line. Was this because we’re in Italy and the Italians are late for everything?

However, despite our “on time” arrival at Fiumicino, the business about getting seat assignments did not go as planned – but rather, as we would have expected for an airline that refuses to assign seats to passengers ahead of time. It turns out, there were no seats together for a family of five. Why? Because, “the flight is full” (no kidding it’s the day before X-mas which is why we were trying to get the seats ahead of time) and many people had already checked in and selected their seats on-line. Oh, all of a sudden, Italy is getting technically proficient with on-line check in? It might have been nice of the agent who informed us that we couldn’t get seats before airport arrival to have mentioned this option.

We moved on to the task of requesting seats for our return trip. Unfortunately, the “check-in” desk is just that -- for checking in. They have no ability to help with future flights. Therefore, we must queue up at the Alitalia ticketing desk, or call a special number. When Josh called the special number, the agent informed him that unfortunately she cannot pull up the requested flight because…the computers are down. Oh well. We tried. Again.

In the end, as one might expect, we kindly asked solo travelers to switch around with our random seat assignments and we did get 4 out of 5 together. I don’t think Charlotte minded at all sitting a few rows back on her own. In fact, when we landed, she said it was the calmest flight she’d taken since Avery was born. It’s true that for the most part, the kids were very well behaved on the flight. A meal and a movie for a three hour ride seemed to do the trick.

Upon arrival in Cairo, our tour representative met us inside of immigration. He directed us in the purchase our Egyptian visas – from one of many travel agencies or banks –an interesting process (who actually gets the money?), and then navigated us through immigration.

Once we received our luggage, we walked to a van where a driver and another, more senior representative from Egypt Highlights were waiting for us. The ride through Cairo was an experience unto itself. It was explained to us that the traffic on Thursday evenings was particularly bad because Friday is the day of rest in Muslim countries, so Thursday is like Friday night traffic in other parts of the world. The cars came within millimeters of one another – seriously. There was a lot of honking. Then there were people running across the highway, darting between the cars to get across. Besides the congestion and pollution, there were the tenement-type looking buildings all around. We were told that if a building is finished, the owners must pay taxes. To avoid this, they just never “complete” the project. In any case, the first impression is of a dirty, sprawling, uncivilized city.

We checked in to our hotel where everyone greeted us with “Merry Christmas.” Then, as soon as we sat down with our tour organizer to go over the schedule and receive the train tickets, hotel vouchers, etc. the lobby band burst out with a very LOUD rendition of Jingle Bells. So, we decided to pick up our complimentary glut-wine and move to the pool area. Whatever it was, the temperature was perfect.

We went to dinner at a restaurant called Felfela just down the road from our hotel that had been recommended by our tour organizer. The food was amazing. We had a “sampling” of Egyptian food – which included all of our middle-eastern favorites. The interesting part was that they brought everything out so quickly, one plate after another before they even cleared the plates that were empty and taking up room on the table. The dessert was thrown down a second after the main course plates were cleared. In less than 25 minutes, we’d ordered, and eaten a four-course meal. I guess with kids, that’s a good thing, but we all felt stuffed.

I don’t know if it was the excitement of being in Egypt, being on vacation or just a bad omen for the next two weeks, but it was not easy settling the kids in for the night.