Christmas trip to Cairo

24.12.2021

I knew I had to go somewhere. Far away from Alexandria. First of all, I don’t like the winter in Alexandria. It’s raining so much and the streets are all muddy, the sewers aren’t working, so all the streets are underwater. Plus, when the sea get rough and it’s pouring out, then it’s really horrible.

Secondly, it’s Christmas. I honestly haven’t celebrated Christmas in 10 years but it’s still a difficult time for me. I used to really love Christmas, and even though it’s been such a long time, I still can’t seem to deal with it inside myself. My solace are always only Christmas movies and candy.

Thank God my husband also got a holiday from work at this time. So we were really able to go somewhere and I didn’t have to think about Christmas at all. We thought for a long time where to go but then it occurred to us that our daughter Asiya hadn’t seen the pyramids yet. To my surprise when my daughter heard the name “pyramid”, she fiercely and enthusiastically wanted to go there. So it was decided. We would spend two days in Cairo and one of those days we would visit the pyramids.

I was happy about it, too, because I don’t have a video from the pyramids, and so it was a great chance for me to make amends. What I noticed about my daughter is that she loves Egypt as much as I do. Which I found quite and genuinely amusing. On the other hand, I have a great life partner. For which I am truly grateful.

In short, my husband booked us a hotel with a view of the pyramids and bought train tickets. Then all we had to do was pack up and we could head for Cairo.

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Arrival in Cairo and Hotel accommodation

We left home at 7am. We hailed a cab that took us all the way to the train station. Amazingly, there was no traffic and we went through everything in 15 minutes! which was incredible. I believe that if I wanted to get there any other day in such a short time, it would definitely not work.

Of course, my first question when we got to the station was, “Are there toilets?” Unfortunately, I’m a person who has a big travel fever and I need to make sure there are toilets everywhere. Thank God time has changed and at the moment I find toilets everywhere in Egypt. I remember 8 years ago it was really much more complicated than that.

Then we waited for about another half hour, but the train luckily arrived early and we were able to sit inside the train because it was much warmer than the station. So we sat comfortably because we were in first class and then we just waited when the train goes to Cairo. By the way, a single person ticket for first class cost us 115 LE.

The trip to Cairo was a pleasant one, and quite quick, at least by my feeling. Though not quickly in time. The journey took three hours overall. The bus would be quicker but I don’t have that comfrot on the bus and I always get sick, but on the train I have the toilets and I can buy a snacks and drinks and especially it has lots of space and air.

I was practically playing with Asiya, all the time and my husband sitting in a different seat but near to us, he slept the whole time. Towards the end, he woke up, and we all ate the sandwiches (with cheese and ham) I’d made the day before, and then we’d finally reached Cairo.

We were quite lucky in Cairo because the first person we ran into was a taxi driver. As always, my husband befriended him right away so in the end he wasn’t even that expensive and drove us straight to the hotel in Giza. It was fun because the hotel was very badly marked from the road and neither the taxi driver nor my husband could see it. and so they had to ask passersby. The funny thing was they saw the first sign that led to the hotel but they missed the second sign. I saw it and so I told my husband what I saw but he didn’t believe me. Until he was probably going around the block for the third time so just then he admited I was right. Sometimes it’s really funny here with men.

We finally arrived, thank God, in front of the hotel. I was struck that the hotel was in a very poor neighborhood but yet the hotel itself was completely luxurious. The name was Nine Pyramid Views, and I really highly recommend it. Plus, they speak perfect English so a foreigner has nothing to worry about.

So we checked in with the receptionist at the hotel. We had to show our passports and also our marriage certificate. And then the receptionist gave us the keys. But when we got to our room, as soon as I opened the door, I closed it again. There was a terrible mess everywhere and some people had their things there as well. So we immediately went back to the reception upset and asked What does it mean?! However, the receptionist was really professional, she excused herself by saying that we had arrived an hour earlier, so they hadn’t had time to clean everything up but she immediately gave us the keys to another room which was already ready and before she handed us the keys she called the cleaner to check that everything was perfect. In the end, it was. Our new room was one floor down than the previous one, and it was prettier and luxuriously tidy. We even had our refrigerator and kettle and teas and nescafe available.

Five minutes later, the receptionist called directly to our room and told us to go to the terrace of the hotel where the welcome cocktail would be served. Which I was pleasantly surprised to hear, and she also gave us the passwords from the Internet.

We didn’t even unpack, there wasn’t time for that. We just turned right around and went to the terrace. We took the elevator up to the 5th floor, right up to the very top where the terrace was. And we just walked inside and we all stopped in amazement. The view… the beautiful view took our breath away. Directly in front of us were the pyramids themselves. They stood there so majestically! that we forgot to even breath from the beautiful view.

We immediately started taking pictures and I was shooting a video and since we were all alone there I saw some of the employees laughing at us. I don’t blame them, I think everyone probably reacted in exactly the same way. Then we sat for a while directly opposite the pyramids and presently they brought us a welcome drink. It was 3 large mango juices. We drank it all quickly because we had to rush to the pyramids. It was already 1:30 p.m. and the pyramids were closing at 4:00 p.m. So we were really in a hurry…