It’s hard for me to get over the fact that I’m sitting back in my apartment after the whirlwind that’s been the past couple of weeks over in Egypt (Update: actually I’m in a hotel room in San Diego now). One blog post wouldn’t nearly do the trip justice, so I’ll be posting several over the course of the next few days. I’d also like to give a shout out to the other travelers from around the world that we met who made the trip that much more memorable.
Egypt was everything I expected and much more. My trip consisted of seven days on a Nile cruise and three days in the city of Cairo. My family flew out of JFK airport in New York on New Year’s Eve direct to Cairo on Egypt Air. I’ll be honest, I have no idea why I didn’t expect much from Egypt Air, but I was happily surprised to find that it was one of the nicest airlines I’ve ever flown. The seats were comfortable, spacious, and had the biggest TV screens on the backs of the headrests that I’ve seen on any airline. Seriously, the screen had to have been a foot by a foot (bigger than my laptop screen). And the media offerings were extensive. The food was excellent (the dinner consisted of chicken, farfalle, grilled veggies, chocolate cake, and salad. The breakfast offering was scrambled eggs, sausage, tomatoes, fruit salad, a large croissant, and tater tots. The tater tots were crunchy too) and the staff treated us like kings (or pharaohs I guess would be more appropriate).
Once we landed in Cairo, we took a quick flight to Luxor and met up with our guide Remon or Re, who took us to our boat. Now when I heard we were doing a river cruise, I pictured that we’d be the only ones on the water. I was sorely mistaken. Our boat, The Crocodillo, was one of about 400 river boats that travel up and down the Nile. I don’t know why I should have expected otherwise on one of the world’s oldest water ways.
All the boats dock along side one another in a way that requires you to walk through several boats to get to yours. It sounds confusing, and believe me, after traveling for an entire day it was in person as well. Each boat has double doors on it’s lower deck that goes into each boat’s lobby area. So in order to get to the Crocodillo, we walked through like 4 or 5 lobbies (and I was thoroughly confused as to what was going on, thinking that the boat had like 4 lobbies on it).
Once we got checked in, our room was small for three people. But from what we’ve heard about the other rooms, it was the largest on the boat so we were able to make due. We weren’t going to be spending much time in it anyways because the boat had a great top deck for sunbathing, swimming, and lounging around. They had a afternoon tea on deck every day and provided breakfast, lunch, and dinner in the dining room on the lowest deck.
So while our boat was old (I’m going to nerd out here for a moment and make a Battlestar Galactica reference. Our boat had a sister ship that most of the passengers on our boat also had originally tried to get on called the “Carnival”. Essentially the Carnival was the Pegasus and ours was Galactica), our boat had character and a really fun group of passengers that made the next few days very enjoyable.
Here and There 