The trip to Cairo via Abu Dhabi and our hotel

The Trip to Cairo

Sunday 25 December 2011



Jarrah taking advantage of a free game while we killed 7 hours waiting at Abu Dhabi Airport.

We’ve made it to Cairo after travelling about 25 hours. Our flights on Etihad Airways took us from Melbourne, Australia to Abu Dhabi, UAE to Cairo. Both flights were in Airbus planes. This was our first time on a Middle Eastern airline. The plane and the service were good but next time travelling this way I would fly another airline for comparison. The rows of seats were fairly close together, the seat back pockets, which I rely on to hold my various books, needlework and water bottle for the trip barely stretched open so I wasn’t able to put much there. The underseat storage also wasn’t commodious and having recently flown Qantas, Air New Zealand and V Australia which all have large underseat storage I was underwhelmed by this. The food was very nice though.



Detail of the ceiling in the Abu Dhabi terminal.

What did surprise us was the behavior of our fellow passengers, though. On both flights, there were about a dozen young children each and they all behaved terribly. Crying, screaming, refusing to sit in their seats for take off (and the parents supporting them with this). On the way to Abu Dhabi one child behind us was crying saying they wanted to go home. At least one or two were vomiting. One was coughing loudly and disgustingly with phlegm. On the flight to Cairo there were two kids behind Jarrah & Jade kicking the seats, letting their tray tables fall and bounce, pulling the plane remote controls out of the seat back and once even touching Jade’s head. At least 3 parents on that flight were holding screaming crying kids in their laps and refusing to place the kids in their seats for take off. They also refused to follow the instructions of several flight attendants. One kid age 3 worked herself up into such a state that she peed on her mother’s lap. I’ve never heard so much noise from such a small number of kids behaving badly on a flight before. One woman was talking on her phone after the plane doors closed—ignoring normal flight procedure to switch phones off. Her son was playing a console game at the same time and I could hear the sound effects of the game three rows back as he wasn’t using headphones. No one said anything to him at all. Our flight from Abu Dhabi to Cairo was delayed by about an hour and a quarter due to firstly an alarm going off after we left the gate so the plane had to go back to the gate and shut the engines down. And then they announced that there needed to be a change in catering. The flight went smoothly but on landing everyone burst out into loud applause and cheering. I’ve never had this before. Then while we were still taxiing a number of people unbuckled their seats, stood up and started getting their bags down from the overhead lockers. The poor flight attendants who didn’t appear to be enjoying their jobs were going up and down the aisles trying to get people back into their seats. We heard text messages pinging also while we were taxiing. As I left the flight I asked the attendant if people normally cheer when they land but she said their reaction depends on the location but they don’t normally do it. Walking through the plane door for some reason I had assumed that we were at the terminal so I was surprised when I stepped onto stairs and a breeze told me I was outside. There was a bus waiting to take us to the terminal at the bottom of the stairs.

The Cairo arrivals building is a step back in time to the 1960s or thereabouts. As we got off the bus there were a number of people holding signs waiting to meet people. I was surprised about this because we hadn’t cleared immigration yet. Our guide Mohammad was among them and he guided us into the immigration hall where we cut across at least 4 lines to get to the line on the far side of the hall. There were no signs for various passport holders to line up anywhere in particular so it was just totally disordered. The lines stretched the length of the smallish outdated room. When it came our time to go up to the immigration desk we were allowed to go up together. The official didn’t say anything to us when he was processing our papers. He probably didn’t speak any English. He spoke Arabic to two other officials also in his booth who were entering details on their computers. I thank Paul for getting Egyptian visas for us in Melbourne as this made everything go smoothly.

After we completed immigration we met Mohammad at the baggage carousel. He had already collected two of our bags which he identified by the Peregrine tags and we found the last two and headed outside. The parking area for the airport is just a ground level car park. Amazing for a city of 20 million people! Mohammad called our van and we loaded in for the trip to the hotel which was on the opposite side of Cairo.

My impression of Cairo gleaned in the dark during that trip is that it is similar to Bangkok in terms of chaotic crowded driving conditions. There are a lot of unfinished concrete medium rise apartment buildings. The streets are dirty with broken concrete and rubbish on the edges. There are some beautiful mosques which were well lit up as we passed them.

Our hotel, the Oasis, is nice, set in a garden area. We have two separate but attached bungalows which are well appointed with two double beds each. The beds are comfortable and they allowed us to spread out a lot. We were all pretty tired after 25 hours of travel and slept well.

Today (Christmas Day) we are relaxing at the hotel prior to meeting our guide Ahmed this afternoon. Tomorrow we have a big day visiting both the Cairo Museum and the Giza plateau with the three pyramids and the Sphinx. We can’t wait!