Cairo to Rome, Friday, March 10, 2023 to Monday, March 13, 2023
We stayed at the Cairo Intercontinental Hotel. This is a huge hotel right in downtown Cairo near the airport. Lots of marble and noise. We were assigned room 1609. There are two different elevator banks. One for rooms between floors 1 and 39 and the other for floors 40-60. We’ve been in a lot of elevators, but none like this one! We went to our appointed elevator bank where there are three elevators. You punch in 16, which is the floor, then a letter comes up A, B, or C and you are to take that elevator. We were given elevator A. In we go, where there are no number buttons in the elevator, just an emergency button and a close the door button. We waited until the elevator door opened and out we went. Right there, next to the Shogun restaurant. Hmmm. I asked a nice man what floor we were on and he said “negative 2.” Sure. So we went back to the elevators and tried our “16” again, got in elevator A and met some other people from our group who were “riding the elevators” also. After much up and down, we finally got to floor 16 and found our room.
After our Cairo outing to the Coptic Church and resting a bit, we decided to go have a cocktail. It was so noisy in the hotel lobby, so we found a quiet bar. They had outdoor seating and it was heaven! We were looking over the huge pool area, with fancy lights, perfect weather, nice servers and scotch and wine. Dinner later was a buffet and you know large buffets. Too many people and lots of food that wasn’t all that good. Dear me, we may waste away to a ton.... ha! Fat chance. Hey, see what I did there?!
The next morning we had an easy time of getting to and through check in and customs in Cairo. Mostly due to the fact that Viking provided us with a gentleman who knew where to go, what to do and when call bull on an errant X-ray guy. Nice. While we were waiting in line at Egypt Air there was this lady in the line next to us. She spent a lot of time convincing the airline people of something. I’m not sure that she could even fit in on entire row!
We found our gate, sat and waited, then got on the plane. We were up very close in row 24. This will be important later. There were about 3 or 4 rows of first class which were mostly empty, then the next rows started with number 23 and we were 24. Doesn’t make much sense, but I guess rows 5-22 were given to some other plane. In any case, they wait til the last minute to board then yell at us to hurry up. We are all in and ready to go when the guy comes on the speaker and says “We need you to disembark the plane immediately. Please take all your belongings.” Ok. Bob stepped out into the walkway to gather our bags and nearly was trampled. We got off the plane and heard rumors that we were going to get a different plane. There are no loudspeakers to listen for. Someone kind of yells something and hopefully enough people hear it will share the news with others. Works well for us since we are so fluent in Arabic Egyptian. We are told to go to gate B-22 which is downstairs. We sit around wondering what is going on as there is no plane nearby and this section of the airport is completely empty of other people. Eventually we hear rumors that there will be a bus. Sure enough, we get on the standing room only bus, hanging on for dear life as the bus goes all over the airport and finally stops at another plane where we get out and climb the stairs, with our luggage to our new seats in row 24. Believe it or not they came on and yelled at us to hurry again! We took off and a lady in row 24 on the other side of us had a hissy fit because the security officer is required to sit next to her. She had a melt down and they moved her up to first class which is what she wanted in the first place. You can’t make this stuff up.
We got to Rome and the customs guy literally threw my passport at me with a disgusted look! Too funny. The taxi service Bob arranged for us flaked out. So we went to the taxi station and found a nice man who took us to our hotel. QC Termeroma Spa and Hotel was so nice! After all that toting and lifting of luggage up and downstairs we needed a light meal and a drink. Our waiter was so nice. He found the perfect scotch for Bob and a lovely red wine for me. We shared a large meat and cheese platter with yummy bread. We were so tired!
The next day, March 11, 2023 was our 40th wedding anniversary! We are still marveling that we’ve been married for 40 years. Talk about a blink of the eye.
We went outside to look around the spa and were amazed at all the people walking around in white terry cloth robes and lavender jelly flip flops. It was surreal! They were drinking wine, eating a buffet of some sort of food that was filled with sauces and something else. We felt very over dressed in our street clothes. We tried to find a place to have lunch, but if you were not wearing the tribe costume there wasn’t much chance of sitting somewhere quiet. We asked a guy who seemed to be in charge if we could buy a glass of white wine and and he said sure and handed us one each. Ok... we went back to our room and ate the crackers with our wine they had given us in our breakfast basket that morning.
Our dinner that night was so lovely. Excellent food, wine service. We forgot to have the waiter take our picture. Bob has snapped this one of me.
No comments:
Post a Comment