Egypt 2008: Arrival

This is all so depressing ... now snow to top it all off. :-( Time to post something cheering. Like ... some of my 2600 pictures from Egypt. I really am not kidding when I say that we took an enormous number of photos. Those 2600 are just my pictures. There are more. :-o

Anyway ... I can't post any cool pictures yet, because I want to write up the whole trip chronologically. Which, knowing me, will take about four months. ;-) But there you go ... you'll just have to suffer through it. I hope I can make it entertaining enough to be interesting to someone other than just me ... :-)

First, an important piece of background info: when I say 'we' in the following, I'm generally talking about me and my travelling companion; my friend CH who is also my makebelieve twin. Is that a concept that exists outside of Norway? I've never heard any foreigner use it. It's a term that children use in this country to denote someone who is just a friend but has the exact same date of birth as themselves. Ie, if we were sisters, we'd be twins ... but we're not, so we're just makebelieve twins. :-D Actually CH and I don't have the same date of birth - she was born on October 13th, at 11pm, and I on October 14th, at 12:15am. In the same night at the same hospital - and with the same very rare hip defect (now fixed). We also have the same first name, just spelled slightly differently. <-- Actually all true. Pretty weird when we met at university 20 years later and discovered all this. :-)

Anyway! Five years ago CH and I went to China together. We were there for three weeks and it was the best vacation ever. Now we've spent two weeks in Egypt and I have to say that this was actually probably even better. I'll explain why by and by. It was a fantastic trip and I hope that blogging about it here will be one way I can keep the memories fresh in my mind, as well as sharing it with all of you. :-)

To start at the beginning. We left on an early flight on Friday, October 10th. And yes, early flight does mean early - takeoff to Vienna at 7:05am, so we had to be there at 5am to check in. CH is kind of OCD about things like that, she gets really stressed about it. So the earlier the better. :-) Getting there might have been tricky if it hadn't been for CH's parents - her father especially, he drove her to the airport (and they all live in Vestby, on the other side of the city and kind of out in the boondocks - sorry - so that was really a bit of effort on his part) and they picked me up on the way. Which I so appreciated. :-) I met them outside the mall close to my house at about 4:15am. I'd only slept for about 3 hours but I felt surprisingly awake & alert. Must have been the cold air.

We got to the airport, stood in line, checked in, then said goodbye to CH's parents and went through the security check. Yawn. Then we whiled away the time until boarding by looking around the duty free shops and sitting around.

CH in the perfume & makeup section of the main departure duty free ... she's so high maintenance, only the best brands will do. ;-)

Me passing the time ... looking at books, what a surprise.

The stopover in Vienna was brief and boring. Then the next flight on to Cairo. I managed to sleep for most of it, although in uncomfortable positions. Arriving in Cairo was ... slightly surreal. It's so strange to just suddenly be in such a different place. But we were very excited about everything we knew we would see. :-)