In planning for this month-long trip from September 26 to October 26, I decided to start a week before, and after the 15-day Intrepid Tours of Egypt and Jordan. The cost of the round-trip Turkish air flight was about $900 and I used 72,000 Capital One points to pay for the flight, and I used another 380,000 points to pay for my $3,800 tour with Intrepid Tours.
My Gossamer Gear utility pack weighed just 8 1/2 lbs and included: clothing, toiletries, camera, and electronics gear, along with my guidebooks for Egypt and Jordan and 3 pocketbooks. (This is from my South America trip.)
The plane left right on time And flew over the northern ice cap to Istanbul in about 12 hours.
With a short layover at the Istanbul Airport where I had a roast beef sandwich, and some muddy Turkish coffee— the first of many.
At the Cairo airport, I first had to get an on-arrival visa for $25. It seems like many countries want you to pay for the visas in US dollars rather than the local currencies. By then the lines were really long to go through the visa process, but the closest line was very short, so I got in that it turned out to be the diplomatic line, but they went ahead and took it anyway so it was a quick, passage through immigration and customs.
The Holy Sheet Hostel driver was waiting for me outside the arrival hall with my name on his sign for the 45-minute drive to the Hostel.
A Hostel was in the downtown area and it was on the second floor of a large building. They quickly checked me in my room was clean and quiet with good air-conditioning, the bathrooms were clean and the hot water shower was refreshing after my 16-hour journey.
Since I would be touring Cairo with Intrepid Tours, I didn’t check out any of the tourist spots and instead walked to the Misra train station to get my ticket to Alexandria where I would stay for four days. Along the walk, everything was dusty and dirty, with garbage strung about everywhere. The cars, taxis, and other vehicles seem to use their horns as much as their brakes to make their way along the crowded streets.
I got a 10 AM first-class passage to Alexandria for the following day at a cost of $26. It would be a three-hour journey passed truck gardens and dusty towns.
Since it was so hot, I decided to take the subway back to the hostel at a cost of 5 pounds— $0.16.
The receptionist recommended that I have dinner at the Abou Tarek Restaurant. It was a busy five-story, well-lighted restaurant. When I asked for the menu, the server said there was only one dish served and it was a vegetarian dish called kashary. It was a bowl filled with small noodles, lentils, and chickpeas, and then the server added fried dried onions, tomato chili sauce, and garlic oil. The hostel receptionist had told me this was the best kashary in all of Egypt. It was very tasty and only cost 58 pounds including bottled water— $2 USD.
In the morning, I was on my way to Alexandria via the subway and train.
Alexandria Train Station
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