Cairo - Day 3

The last day, we slept in and then went to see some mosques.  We were flying out that night so we decided to take it easy.  We walked around, took some pictures, tried to go in a mosque but they wouldn't let us because of Ramadan, and enjoyed the day overall.  That evening we once again got a free Ramadan meal on the street.  This time it was rice, tomato based sauce, meatballs, potatoes, celery, and flat bread.  We were so worried we would get sick from it, because the conditions were anything but sanitary, but sometimes you just have to do it anyway to experience the culture I guess.

 Our 2nd Ramadan meal on the street

 A few pictures of the Marriott... It used to be a palace, then Marriott bought it and turned it into a hotel so it is kind of a famous building in the area

 This is what the streets of Cairo actually look like once you get off the main road, although there is generally even more garbage than this on the ground

It is hard to see, but the little green guy in this picture is running.  It was really funny.  He would start at a walking pace, then go faster and faster until he was running.  It was legitimate too, because if you don't run to get out of the way on these streets, you will get hit. It's like Frogger, but with real people.

We caught a taxi to the airport and got ready for our 1:00am flight that was completely open with plenty of business class seats left.  Yay! Well almost, anyway.  It' s time to board and all 25 of us non-revs are waiting for them to call our names to get on the plane, when an agent comes over and announces that NOONE will be getting on the plane.  Delta had taken a load of cargo, so they had as much weight as they could carry.  I wanted to cry. I was so done with Cairo and ready to leave.  Luckily, Brett was amazing as always, and had bought some Lufthansa ZED fares (standby on another airline) to Frankfurt before we left, just in case.

We shortly found out that our Lufthansa flight was in another terminal.  As we attempted to exit the security area of the current terminal we were in, we ran into some more problems.  They had apparently escorted the group of standbys out of the terminal that didn't get on the plane, but we had stuck around just to make sure they weren't taking anybody (occassionally they miscalculate something and end up taking a few still). After realizing they really weren't taking any of us, we tried to exit and they wouldn't let us.  We were then told we would have to pay some fee, etc... We were getting the run around again! Catherine finally found an employee who told us to come with him and he would get us out.  We followed him through a back employee door, through the back of the terminal, around where a bunch of employees were working in a warehouse, and finally out to the street! It was crazy! This trip just wasn't ending.  We finally found out which terminal our flight was going to be in and found a bus that would take us there.

Once we arrived in the other terminal we got checked in and waited for the flight that was supposed to leave at 5:00am.  We were told there were no seats, but that we could wait anyway to see.  As everyone else boarded the flight, we just waited and finally a supervisor approached us and asked if we were getting on the flight.  We told him we were standbys. He then told us there were no seats, but then asked what we did for the airlines, Brett told them he is a ticketing agent for Delta.  The supervisor then told us he would ask the Pilot if we could fly in the jumpseats and he left.  5 minutes later, he came back and told us we had approval to fly in the jumpseats if we wanted to. We told him that would be fine (we would do anything to get out of Cairo), thanked him a hundred times and proceeded to board.  The flight attendants started showing us how to unlock the cargo doors, etc... all the safety stuff we needed to know since we would be sitting in the jumpseats that blocked the doors.  We actually ended up getting real seats due to some passengers not showing up and arrived in Frankfurt, Germany a few hours later. Finally.