Return to Cairo, 2023

We packed up three suitcases for the annual winter trip to Cairo.  After a pleasant New Year's Eve party we took down our Christmas decorations and prepared for a January 7th departure.  Curiously enough, we then arrived on Christmas Day in Egypt to be greeted by this tree and Santa Claus in the Cairo airport just ahead of the line to go through passport control.

The Coptic Church in Egypt celebrates Christmas on January 7th along with other branches of Orthodox Christianity - but that date fell on Sunday, a normal "day off" so the official government holiday was deferred to the 8th.

This year's trip was a bit shorter than usual.  We flew Delta and their partner airlines with stops in Amsterdam and Rome.  The trip took the usual 8 hours to cross the Atlantic, a bit over two hours from Amsterdam to Rome and a bit over three hours for the last leg across the Mediterranean to Egypt.

Our only concern was a scheduled 45 minutes between planes in Rome's Fiumicino Airport.  We were hoping that the two gates were near each other.  It turned out to be just about a mile between the gates and with a bonus stop for passport control to boot.  I was lagging well behind the younger and fitness conscious Linda as I approached the ITA (Italia Trasporto Aereo S.p.A) gate and the attendant called out "Senior Sawyer?"  "We are holding the bus for you!"

ITA is a bit of a budget operation and buses passengers out to the planes where they climb the old fashioned boarding stairs onto their jumbo Airbus planes with exceedingly closely spaced seats.  I joined four other lagging passengers but didn't see Linda - her twice-weekly workouts with weights and a trainer must have gotten her onto an earlier bus.

A few minutes later, Linda jumped up onto the bus.  It seems I had beaten her through passport control and gained a good minute or more in the race.  With the gate attendant satisfied that he had collected all the laggards, we began the drive out to the flight line. 

This final leg of the flight provided me a window seat!  The long leg over the Atlantic had the two of us seated in the middle two of eight seats in the rear of our plane. 

The Fiumicino airport is on the west coast of Italy and departures offer an excellent view of the ocean-side properties looking to the north.

 

It was overcast across almost the entire Mediterranean leg of the trip providing only a brief glimpse of what is presumably a Greek island midway across.  (ITA has no onboard position tracking - or movies.) 

 

Approaching Cairo from the northeast, we passed over The Tenth of Ramadan City about thirty miles from the center of Cairo.  This is one of the cities in the desert created to relieve congestion in the great metropolis.  

If the layout of the town intrigues you, you can find more information on the city here.  Some background on the date of Tenth of Ramadan and its equally prominent equivalent Sixth of October can be found here.  Those of a certain age may well remember the occasion and some of the players involved.