Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

So it’s Wednesday, November 2, about 10 in the am.  I only have about 20 minutes of battery power left, so this will be quick.  Sitting here in Rome airport waiting for a noon-ish flight to Cairo.  A shame that on my first trip to Rome, I don’t have time to go out and explore the City.  From the airport, it appears to be an interesting cross of the modern with the classical – there’s the train that takes you from terminal to terminal, but the customs check like you have in Asia, where even though you’re switching flights and haven’t gone out of the airport you still need to go through the security scan.  Lots of priests on the flight over, lots of kids, and lots of interesting, character-filled faces.  As a rule, I don’t take pics in airport, because it’s generally not allowed, but I would LOVE to take pics here.  The faces are just so full of character!

The flight over was uneventful.  At JFK, I met an Italian family who’d been to NYC in February 2001 as part of their around-the-world tour when they just got married.  Ten years later, with a 9 year old and a 7 year old, he wanted to show his family American excess.  So they stayed at the Waldorf-Astoria (he’d stayed there with his dad when he was a kid), and he rented a limo for them when they got out of the airplane.  Apparently the stretch limo is a uniquely American indulgence. 

But our whole conversation revolved around how incredibly expensive NYC is.  $5.00 for a bottle of water, they paid upwards of 37.00 for like pizza and sodas.  Speaking of food, the flight over was uneventful.  The in-flight food was some chicken patty with marinara sauce over a bed of pureed either sweet potatoes or butternut squash – something orange – and remarkably good green beans. And a roll and salad and cheese and crackers and a brownie and soda/water/juice/coffee/tea.  I’m always amazed at airline food.  There’s always soooo much of it!

In-flight, I watched Big Bang Theory, How I Met Your Mother, and fell asleep on Planet of the Apes and Zookeeper.  Like I posted on FB, the coolest thing was the USB charger at your seat.  I boarded the plane with an iphone at 76%, and left the plane with a 100% charged iPhone.

Really nothing to write about here in the Rome airport, or maybe I’m just jaded.  It’s an airport, and I’m just making a connection.  I could go see if they’d accept dollars instead of Euros for the breakfast food, but I still have half a sandwich in my pocket.  On the plane, they woke us up to feed us something like an egg McMuffin, but with some kind of weird cheesy spread with green stuff in it instead of the processed cheese we usually eat.  I just had the egg part and some juice.  I am a little hungry, but doubt I’m hungry enough to go change money….

We’ll see.  More after I’m settled in Cairo.

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It’s 10 pm here (4 pm in the States), and I am EXHAUSTED.  Happy, but EXHAUSTED.  I left JFK on Tuesday night. Flew to Rome.  The Alitalia flight from Rome to Cairo was also uneventful.  We had tuna salad, some kind of salad with turkey slices carrots, a tomato, 1 piece of arugula and something that may have been lotus root – it was some whit tuberous veggie.  We had bread, cheese and crackers, and a fruit salad for dessert.

Some people were served shrimp instead of tuna, and they got their bread from a basket that was passed around instead of the individually wrapped pieces we got.  I don’t know if they were some kind of special tour or if maybe the difference between shrimp and tuna was the difference between business and economy classes. 

But the coolest thing about the flight was that the two people who were spozed to sit next to me didn’t show, so I GOT THREE SEATS TO MYSELF.  Oh, God, My God!!!  I just stretched out and had a good ole’ time.  Didn’t care what I looked like – I’m TIDE, tired, and when I got the opportunity to rest, I did it.

Oh.  And Europeans still don’t drink their sodas with ice.  And I don’t like warm soda.

Once I got off the plane in Cairo, a guide named Mohammed was there to meet me.  He took me through getting the Egyptian visa and through customs.  There weren’t a whole lot of people, and very few tourists.  While he went to get the rest of the group, I went over to Vodaphone to buy a sim card for my iphone.  My iphone is jailbroken, so I’ma see if it’s cheaper to use the vodaphone sim card than to use my iphone. I paid a total of 25 Egyptian pounds for the card and 45 MB of data.  That’s less than $4.00.  And I can recharge it.  They say I can use it in the US, so if it works, that might be an alternative to ATT’s prices.  Only problem, of course, is that it has a different phone number.  So I’ll forward my cellphone to my Google Voice number, and use it online. 

We all got to the hotel, and we sat down with Peter.  There’s another single woman, a preacher from a United Methodist Church in Maine.  There’s a couple from Tennessee, and a couple (the husband is a Presbyterian preacher) from Minnesota.  And that’s our group.  It’s gonna be fun.  We have decided we will attempt to climb at least part of Mt. Sinai on Sunday.  That’s all we’re gonna do, and we’ll start at 8:30 in the am.  If I make it, I make it; if I don’t, I will have given it my best shot.

Dinner was a typical Egyptian hotel buffet – there were a bunch of salads, then hot buffet stations with roasted chicken, roasted potatoes, a veggie mix, rice, and fish.  There was a delightful dessert bar, and with the breads was a loaf in the shape of a crocodile (we’re on the Nile).

I’ll post pictures here.

This is Eid Al-something, the time Muslims celebrate Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Ishmael (think about it.  We Christians and Jews come from the line of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but Ishmael was the outside kid who was put out.  That’s the line the Muslims come from.  It does make sense that we believe Isaac was the sacrifice, and they believe Ishmael was the sacrifice.  It also speaks to the fact that religious stories get re-told, and sacred scriptures get re-written.  Just sayin….).  ANYway, so there’s lots of people here.  Normally it would be fairly empty; tourism has dropped off a lot since the revolution, though Cairo traffic is as crazy as ever. 

I didn’t get a picture of it, but saw some women dressed in white in a car that was decorated with flowers.  “Oh,” I said, “a wedding!”  The guide told me no, these were people on their way to make Hajj, the mandatory pilgrimage to Mecca that all good Muslims have to make.  I think there’s a lot to be said for visiting the sacred places of your faith tradition.  That’s why I scrimp and save and sacrifice every year to come here.  It’s outside of my comfort zone, yes, but it’s soooo worth it!

Let me figure out how to jailbreak my phone, get some internet service, and upload my pics and blog.  Tomorrow we go to the Pyramids, so that should be fun.  I’m told there’s not a lot of people there now, so it should be a lot easier to see everything.  I also learned today that I was, indeed, in Tahrir Square.  That’s where the Egyptian Museum is.  I’ve got a big picture of me out front.  We’ll go there again before the week is over, and I’ll take more.

Of course, this hotel doesn’t have any internet access, so I’m either gonna have to tether my iphone to att or I’m going to have to keep using the internet in the office like I’m doing to upload this….

Oh, well. Beats a blank.

Blessings, everyone!