Day 1: Travel & Tour of Zamalek

So right now I'm sitting in the upstairs of a Cinabon, relaxing after 2 1/2 days (including a 7 hour time change) of travel and adventures so far in Egypt. We left Logan at 4ish on Wednesday (US time), and arrived in Frankfurt Germany at 5:30am (11:30 US time). We had a four hour layover, and although we had both dinner and breakfast on our 7 hour plane ride, we got more food. I was so messed up with what time it was, because to me it was 12:30am (still night) when I ordered a couple cheeseburgers at McDonalds. It wasn't until after Sean told me that it was morning in Germany that I realized why the lady looked at me weird when I didn't order breakfast. After a 4 hour layover in Frankfurt, we had another 4 hour flight to Cairo. We finally made it to Hotel Flamenco in Zamalek at 5 pm Thursday (Cairo time). Just arriving in Cairo and driving to the Hotel was a complete culture shock. The flight into the Cairo airport was my first time arriving to an airport in the middle of the desert. It was amazing to see Cairo from the airplane. The city of Cairo, as well as the surrounding city's are in the middle of the desert, and there is a distinct line where the city starts, which was interesting to see from the plane.

During the drive to the hotel I noticed that on the roofs of houses (if they were finished) were two things: satellites and garbage. It seemed like almost every building was under construction, with scaffolding everywhere. But the roofs that were finished had garbage all over them. Not necessarily trash, but just junk. Also, I couldn't get over how many satellites they had up. It seemed like there were 2-3 satellites for every floor.

After arriving we unpacked and settled for an hour before taking a tour around our neighborhood. We ate at a nice pizza place on our first night (Maison Thomas) - I guess we were hesitant to jump right into Egyptian food. On the tour I came to notice more things like the lack of traffic lights (I've seen one so far), and stop signs (I've haven't seen one yet). It is a free-for-all when driving. I will never complain about city driving again (until I get back and get stuck in traffic most likely). In addition to the roads being a free-for-all, and the beeping every 2 seconds, which I assume is to just let people know you are there; there is a ton of people that just walk/run through the streets. I saw one person jump out of the bus while it was still moving and run through the main street, which I wasn't accustomed to, obviously. I also saw cabs that had 8 people in them, with some people on others' laps. I'm not sure how common that is but I thought it was pretty funny. Finally after exploring the area and being up for 30 hours except for a quick nap on the second plane ride, it felt nice to pass out for the night.