Egypt Adventure
March 1999

 Main website

Destinations:

Cairo
Great Pyramids
Saqqara Pyramids
Abu Simbel
Aswan
Nile River
Edfu
Luxor
Valley Queens-Kings
 
  

 

    The Egypt-Jordan trip was a fun packed 15-day vacation.  We arrived in Cairo 10 hours after departing JFK airport in New York City. 

The Egyptian cities we visited were:  Cairo, Abu Simbel, Aswan, Kom Ombo, Edfu, and Luxor.  The picture menu is on the left to show some of the sights we saw at each stop in our trip.  The pictures were scanned from photographs taken on the trip.

Our small group (16 people) was driven in an air-conditioned bus to most sites.  We did have a camel ride to a monastery, boat ride to Philae Island, horse cart to a temple, traditional felucca boat to botanical gardens, and an evening meal on the Nile River aboard a small sail boat watching the Cairo skyline.  Plus, we traveled on a Nile River boat for two days.  In the limited free time that was available, we ventured out in a taxicab to witness the Cairo traffic up close to visit the Coptic Museum.

We had first-class accommodations throughout our trip.  The night before our departure home, our group stayed on the top floor of the Marriott Hotel in anticipation of Hillary and Chelsea Clinton’s arrival the next day.  We were told that only Americans were allowed on that floor for security reasons.

Our itinerary is roughly on the map below, but the order of our trip is with the menu on the left.

When we finally arrived back at the Cairo airport (from Jordan) to return home, there was a delay of about three hours.  The Cairo airport only has plastic seats and no carpeting on the floors.  Our group had to wait for a 3 a.m. take-off time.  This put everyone on edge since most had connecting flights from JFK.  Thank goodness Kirsten and John would take that same flight to LAX.  But because of the delay they too missed their fight home to Tucson.  But they caught the next flight and arrived home safely.  The cause of the delay was the first night of the (Belgrade) Yugoslavia bombing (Kosovo War) – the original flight plan was to fly north along the eastern Italian coast.  NATO aircraft were using northern Italy as a staging area for the bombing flights.

 

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