Israel/Egypt/Jordan 2023 - Day #6 - To Cairo

A long, odd travel day. After four nights in Jerusalem, we are jumping to Cairo for three nights. The Larkins and Leclaires will be joining us there.

We had breakfast at the hotel with the Gainsleys. Afterwards, we got cleaned up and packed up the room. We dropped the bags with the bellman.

The Gainsleys, Rochlins, Sharon and I headed back towards the old city. We stopped at the Garden of the Tomb. This is a site that several Protestant religions believe is the actual site of the crucifixion, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. We explored the site including entering the tomb.

From there, we continued to the Damascus Gate of the Old City of Jesusalem. We wandered through the market in the Muslim section of the city. Sharon did some shopping. She ended up buyinng a pair of camel pants that she had seen on Saturday.

Looking for somewhere to have lunch, we ended at Versavee Restaurant Bar & Cafe. I had a nice Mediterranean salad.

Heading back to the hotel, we boarded the bus to the airport about 3:30 pm. In the traffic, it ended up being more than an hour and twenty minutes to airport.

Going through the airport security was an odd experience. We took several people out of the group, including Sharon and asked them a series of questions. Eventually, we asked each of us a couple of questions and passed us to a line for the airline agent.

After everyone in the group was ticketed, we headed to security. Somehow, they had missed putting a security sticker on my passport. I had to backtrack and go through another line to get a security sticker.

The flight was scheduled for 7:50 pm. It was delayed. We eventually boarded after 9 pm and didn't take off until after 9:30 pm. As we were on approach, the captain came on and said that the Cairo airport was busy and that we would be delayed in landing. We were on the ground until almost 11 pm.

At this point, there weren't any buses available to take us to the terminal. It took us almost an hour and half to get to the terminal, meet the Viking representative, get a visa, go through passport control, collect our luggage and go through customs. It was about 12:30 am by the time that we were sitting on the bus.

It took about forty minutes to get to the hotel. We are staying three nights at the Sheraton Hotel & Casino in Cairo. After a quick tour highlighting where to go for breakfast and the initial kickoff meeting, it was 2 am by the time we got to our room and crashed.