Off We Go Into the Wild Blue Yonder . . .or to Egypt, anyway!

October 8, 2024 - Cline Charter Bus arrives in Trinity UMC parking lot and we begin to load at 2:00 and head to Atlanta at 2:30. International flights are better out of Atlanta. I think there were 44 on the bus. We had 49 travelers from Trinity and we were meeting up with smaller groups from three other local churches. I think there were 107 total people from Birmingham.

To get to Cairo, we had to go to Istanbul first. Have you ever been in the Istanbul airport? Oh my goodness - first of all, it is massive. It is a VERY large high end mall (Gucci, Hermes, etc.) with a massive airport attached.

Here we are in the airport after a 2+ hour bus ride to ATL and an 11 1/2 hour flight to IST. We were waiting on our connecting flight to Cairo which was another 2 hour flight. We were still in good spirits!

We landed in Cairo and were picked up by our Educational Opportunities rep. The pictures below are slightly out of order so bear with me. I've tried to rearrange. Why do the pictures not populate in the order with which they were chosen??

The picture above and the last two photos were taken on another day. It was actually dark when we arrived in Cairo. The point of the picture is the traffic. I have never experienced traffic and drivers like those in Egypt. There are no lanes on the interstate. There are no traffic lights. There are speed bumps on the interstate. A road that should be three lanes becomes as many lanes as possible. The white van taxis are stationed along the way ON THE SIDE OF THE INTERSTATE, so there are people walking on the interstate. OH MY GOODNESS.

We made it to our hotel (picture taken the next day). Egypt has very poor people and very rich people and no middle class (according to my seatmate on the flight). We stayed at a gorgeous resort.

This was actually my plate at breakfast the next morning. JUST FYI - you can't drink the water, brush your teeth with the water, nor open your mouth in the shower. DON'T DO IT. You also can't eat the fresh fruits and vegetables if they are raw.

The grounds of the hotel were amazing.

We were assigned a room in the back 40 which required a walk to the main hotel for meals and bus pick up.

This was the door into the building where our room was located.

The room was lovely! I quickly covered the sink faucet with kleenex and placed a bottle of water right by the faucet.

The room was nice and spacious.

The pools were amazing. They had several designated kid's areas plus areas for adults.

We wondered if the water was chlorinated or if the same rules would apply to swimming as to drinking and brushing teeth.

Back to the real world - after breakfast, we boarded our buses for a full day. We were still amazed at the traffic. Pick your spot -- no orderly lanes of traffic. People on the interstate.

Are there other places in the world where traffic is this crazy?

We traveled for 12 days so y'all may get very tired of hearing about the trip. If so, I understand. I want to document for my own memories. I've actually been considering making an old-fashioned scrapbook about this trip. Too bad, I can't blog about it and then have a book made of just those pages.

More to come . . .stay tuned!