Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Made it to Egypt!

The sunrise as we were flying into Amsterdam was one of the most amazing things I've seen. Like an explosion of red that I suspect I could never quite capture with my camera and if I did people would think that my color balance was all wrong. It looked like the sky was on fire and the reflection in the canals and rivers made them look like they were set ablaze. Absolutely fantastic.

We spent the day in Amsterdam visting a friend of Josh's. It was a much better way of passing a 12 hour layover than sitting in the airport. We got to sleep a bit and then walked around Amsterdam and had lunch (dinner? Who knows which meal that was supposed to be after being up for 24 hours) at a cafe near the Heineken Experience building. I kept looking for the Heineken Platform building but it was nowhere to be seen. We made it back to the airport in plenty of time for our flight to Cairo.

One of the nice things about arriving in Cairo at 1:00 in the morning is that the airport is not nearly as crowded as it could be. We met up with our expediter from the tour group who helped us get the visas and then through customs in pretty good time. He then handed us off to the van driver who ferried us to the hotel.

Some of the highways in Egypt do not have lane markers which is just as well since they are something less than guidelines even when they do exist. Riding in the mini van from the airport to the hotel felt kind of like a high speed river rafting experience. We started by straddling a line for a few miles then all of the cars, trucks, buses just flowed around the road flashing warning lights and honking horns as they got close. I spent most of the time just trying to relax so when the impact came it wouldn't hurt as much. It never did come, though, and we made it safely to our hotel.

Tired. Must... sleep...

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