Egypt and Greece Travel Blog
First, a few notes about this Tour Egypt and Greece blog. Our blogs tell our story from our point of view, so you can see what it is like for us to travel the places we go. We give our impressions of places we visit, and tell you fun stuff about what we did.
[cmamad id=”770″ align=”floatleft” tabid=”display-desktop” mobid=”display-desktop”]We include links to other web sites that can give you travel and tourist information about places. In addition, we will show some ads that may be of interest to you from other companies.
In this blog, Carol and JB are visiting Egypt and Greece! At the time, the company we work more or less shut down during the second half of December, and so a few months ago we started looking for a trip to take during this period.
We had two weeks of Marriott hotel certificates left over from earlier mileage point exchanges, and one of them was about to expire if we did not use it. We also had some Marriott mileage points available.
We were thinking of going to New Zealand, but we had no way to use the points and hotel certificates there. We found that there is a Marriott hotel in Cairo, and also in Athens, and so with a few phone calls, we were able to put together our basic itinerary of a week in Cairo, and a week in Athens.
At just about the same time, we found out that Carol’s sisters Jane and Sally, and Sally’s sons Matthew and Michael, were going to Egypt for 10 days in the middle of December.
After some slight adjustments in scheduling, we found we could overlap our visit with theirs in Cairo for one day. It seemed fairly obvious that we should keep the whole thing a secret and surprise them on Jane’s birthday, December 19th, in Cairo!
So, now all of you family members in LA and St. Louis know why we were nebulous about what we were doing during the Christmas vacation, and why we haven’t called anyone! We are on the road, and busier than any of Santa’s elves spreading joy throughout the world.
This is one of the few times we pack ahead of time. Usually we are so busy that we stay up late getting ready the night before we leave. But this time we are partially already on vacation the week before we leave, and we pack our suitcases during that time.
By Thursday night, we are ready to go the next morning. Now, wouldn’t you think such well prepared folks would also leave on time in the morning and get to the airport with time to spare?
We allow ourselves 2 hours and fifteen minutes before the flight, but leave about 20 minutes late. Should be no problem… We get to the airport 90 minutes before the flight. Security line is short. Should be no problem… We wait in the curbside check in about 20 minutes.
Should be no problem… Looks like we can’t check in there – upstairs to the main counter. Security line is getting longer. Should be no problem… The line upstairs is sort of long, should be no problem… We wait 15 minutes or so, and the security line looks like it is now up to maybe 30-45 minutes. The time numbers no longer add up. This is a problem.
I point out to the roaming Delta hand-holder that it looks like we will not make it. He gets the curbside manager who verifies that we were in line downstairs a long time ago, greases all skids to get our bags processed, and receives a $10 tip. Mr. Delta winks at the TSA folks, and we are in the high-class shortcut through security.
We grab a Mac-breakfast to go, and walk to the gate. We note that no one is waiting; they are all on board. We walk directly onto the plane with only 15 minutes to spare. No problem… In the plane, we find that 30 other people are not so fortunate, having become ensnarled in the security line. The plane leaves without them.
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There is a lesson in here we forgot about. For an international flight, leave home so that you will arrive at the airport 2 hours before departure. We cut that down to a little over one hour, and with a hiccough or two, almost did not make our flight.