Day 126: Flying from Cairo to Aswan for More Touring
Felt glorious to sleep in til 8:30 this morning after the touring grind. All we had to do today was catch a flight from Cairo to Aswan, which is in the south of the country close to the Sudan border.
While Teddy and I packed up, we noticed the kids playing a funny make-believe game. Back home it would have been playing house or school. Here? Playing airport. They’d created stations for security, immigration and duty free. There was air traffic control and plenty of overhead announcements about gates. Too funny. I didn’t even know they knew what Duty Free was.
Honestly we feel a little unsatisfied leaving Cairo — like we need to go back. We spent so much time touring sites that we didn’t get to just explore the city and wander neighborhoods and go to any non-tourist restaurants. There is so much energy here, it really feels like a place to return to? One day….
In the meantime, the plan for the next few days: Temples, temples, tombs and, driving north to Luxor with a guide, more temples and tombs.
We were already feeling drained from Amman/Petra/Cairo/pyramids…and were not certain how the remaining days of wall-to-wall sightseeing in the sun would go over with the kids.
One bit of drama came at the empty Cairo airport (more on general Egypt emptiness below). Our local tour operator Abercrombie & Kent accidentally booked our tickets under Ted Sullivan instead of Edward Sullivan, so when the passport name didn’t match up, Egypt Air wouldn’t check Teddy in.
He had to scramble to buy a brand new ticket while the rest of us went ahead through security and to the plane.
He made it in time. Phew!
But then more drama! As we were boarding, dad realized he’d left his laptop back at security and had to run back to get it.
He made it in time. Phew!
We landed in hot, dusty Aswan in the afternoon, and rode in our transfer van to another Movenpick resort. The resort’s on an island in the Nile. It’s a massive place, with just about no one in it. Emptiness has started to be a theme in this country: Feels like a combination of it being the end of the winter high season and residual slowness leftover from the tourism hit Egypt suffered after the 2011 revolution.
The hotel’s island location means you have to take a hotel ferry boat back and forth to the city on mainland.
After all the high-intensity hand-holding we experienced in Cairo, the same tour operator’s team in Aswan was way more hands-off and unchatty. A downright surley host picked us up at the airport (it was welcome!), and then our guide, Romani, would ultimately prove happy to let us go off on our own. More on him tomorrow.
We ate a delicious 4 pm lunch at the giant, empty hotel restaurant, then had the rest of the afternoon free for swimming and a little school (we really haven’t been doing school beyond reading time on this leg – no time).
Our accommodations are nice here. My parents are in a corner room overlooking the Nile and we’re in a two-bedroom standalone cottage with a living room.
We decided to catch up on/bank sleep while we could, and so put the kids to sleep at 7 pm.
Misc:
Teddy’s sister Claire has a dog named Lucky that she and her husband Harlow adopted when they were living in Istanbul back in 2012-2013. He was a street dog puppy who’s since grown to be a massive and very regal-looking beast. Willa and James know the dog well, but didn’t know his history. Today we explained that Lucky had been a street dog in a big faraway city like Cairo — they’ve seen so many of these this year. This new context and understanding made the story super exciting to them. You mean, Lucky, that prince living the good life in Washington DC was one of THESE dogs once?? They loved, loved, loved the story. “Do you have more stories like that??”
