Day 1 - The Sun Hotel Cairo
Finally arrived at cairo airport around 1am local time. 25 degrees at night (about as hot as our summer days).
Queued up for immigration only to find we needed a visa sticker first to we had to start all over again.
Arrived at the hotel around 3am, took a lift to the 10th floor. The fact that the doors opened whilst we were goin up allowed us to see loads of rubble. rubbish and laundry bags everywhere.
Got into our room finally, which is actually pretty good considering we are in "The Backpacker's Ghetto". Air conditioning unit sounds like a chinook taking off hence i only got about 2hrs sleep.
Woke up about 9. had a "cracking" brekkie - a hard boiled egg and two finger rolls- let the Egypt diet begin!
Got roped into going somewhere by the bloke in the hotel to get a student card - came out with a travel card.
Went back to the hotel with Hannah expressing her displeasure about the banger racing experience around the streets of Cairo. The taxis here are nutters, but s*** hot at driving - didnt't see one crash, how I'll never know.
Finally met Bredan - the guy i've been e-mailing for a while who is on the trip with us. He'd been on walk about for the day (on his own) and so we went and ordered some dinner with great difficulty. But when it came it was a pretty good pizza - had to pick the olives off though! Spent another 45 minutes looking for a shop that sells beer (bare in mind i think alcohol is a no go in an islam country)
Finally got the beer and went back to our room and compared stories and expectations with brendan which was really funny - glad he's gonna be there for the 5mths.
Impressions so far...
Hannah - "I'm not a celebrity, get me out of here! too busy and she hates being harrassed)
Me - "A really chaotic place where coppers can be easily bribed + old men who think they are artists but are actually shopkeepers that sell perfume. Can't deny though that its intriguingly exciting!!!
|
