Both Dad and I flew back via Madrid. He continued on to Cairo, but I held back in Madrid. Why, you ask? I was on a mission, straight from the top. After Luke's two-week stint in Segovia, he also wanted to go to Cairo with Dad and I. Only one issue, Mom and Dad didn't want him flying by himself. It fell to yours truly here to meet up with him in Madrid and shepherd him to Egypt. I arrived on the 26th, and I wasn't meeting him in the airport (the whole group went together to the airport) the next day. I had booked a hotel right near the airport and I knew what I was doing: Takin' it easy.
Well, you can't take it easy on an empty stomach. I found out there was a big mall ten minutes walk from my hotel. I went there and grabbed a quick dinner of that old classic: Mcdonalds. They didn't put the the Big Mac sauce on my Big Mac though. I was thinking, we should invade this country. I let it slide though, the cashier was pretty cute, and had a killer smile. I couldn't argue with that.
I met Luke the next day and the airport at eight in the morning. The rest of the students had an eleven o'clock flight. Our flight wasn't until three-thirty unfortunately. That meant a long day of waiting around in Madrid-Barajas airport.
The four-hour flight to Cairo combined with the one-hour time difference meant that we didn't arrive in Cairo until after ten at night. Dad, who you will remember arrived a day earlier, came with the hotel shuttle to meet us.
This was my first time on the African continent. Although I didn't come to look for Doctor Livingstone, I was understandably pretty stoked about this leg of the adventure. The night-time drive to the hotel was interesting, the driver from the hotel chatted with me in broken English and complimented my Arabic, which consisted of the words for "hello" and "thank-you". Unfortunately I found out his friendliness came with some conditions. Upon our arrival at the hotel he insisted on a large tip from Dad. We gave him twenty pounds, which is a little less than four dollars. He was pretty pushy though. Bastard. Before leaving the US, we learned from a neighbor who is Egyptian that it is commonplace for Egyptians to expect little tips for whatever they do. How true that would turn out to be.
The hotel, the Baron Palace Hotel, was close to the airport, meaning it was far from pretty much everything else. I for one definitely don't look for fancy hotels, as long as they are clean ( I once stayed at a hotel in Shanghai that had bugs crawling across the floor every now and then; didn't make for a comfortable stay). The Baron passed on cleanliness, so I wasn't gonna argue. We would, however, need to take a taxi whenever venturing out.
Saving Private Luke went off without a hitch. Five days in Africa's most populous city awaited us.
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