Settling In

 After landing in Cairo, we bought our visas at the convenient Bank MISR (Bank of Egypt) booth in the terminal and proceeded to the luggage claim area.  I had faint hope that our bags would have made it off the KLM plane in Rome and over to the ITA Airbus during the 40 minutes we were dashing across the terminal.  I had watched as the ground crew began removing luggage from the belly of our plane, then paused to turn their attention to the large cargo containers with serious revenue potential that were being disgorged.  

 Surprisingly, as we watched items appear on the Cairo baggage carousel, two of our three suitcases finally appeared at the end of the run.  We would only have to file a single lost baggage claim.  We recalled that our previous experience with lost baggage in 2018 was not easy. 

Fortunately, ITA had an agent on hand at the carousel to help out.  He helped fill out a form and we looked forward to seeing the distinguished forty-five pound third bag in another day or two.  Fortunately we had both a good description and a "mug shot" of the missing suitcase.

Our good friend and reliable Egypt guide, Roshdy, was waiting outside the baggage hall with transportation across town to our apartment.  Everything was in fine shape at the building.  We turned on the water, electricity and gas.  Surprisingly, this year, when I plugged in the landline telephone, there was dial tone! (a rarity for sure) We might soon even have Internet service.  (search "telephone" on this blog or follow the telephone tag for tales of woe from previous years.) 

Since we arrived at 5:00 pm local time this year, we had time to shop for some basic groceries and unwrap all of our furniture.  I missed taking a picture of the plastic covering everything (and I do mean EVERYTHING!) from sofas and chairs to coffee pots and canisters.  (See the wrapping process here.)  Cairo dust infiltrates everything over the course of a year.

Besides the question we are frequently asked about how long it takes to travel to Cairo, which I pretty well answered in the previous post, we are frequently asked about the winter temperatures when we arrive and about the building in which our apartment is located.

As I posted last night's blog entry around 10:30 pm, the outside temperature that had been at 65 degrees when we arrived had fallen to 58.  The Egyptian goddess Bastet stands watch over our thermometer which barely broke 95 degrees inside the flat over the past summer.

 

 A nice graph of daily temperatures in Cairo is available at weatherspark, here:

 

Egyptian goddess Bastet is not the only cat on premise.  Our building cats from last year reappeared to greet us bringing along a couple of new kittens.  They made themselves at home as we unpacked, even helping to roll out the red carpet.

  

We journeyed down to the "Save Mart" for fruits and vegetables today.  A kilo (2.2 lbs.) of "moze" (bananas), a kilo of farawla (strawberries) and several other fruits and vegetables set us back a total of 80 Egyptian Pounds - $3.20 at current exchange rates.  Just before we left Minnesota, Linda paid $5 for a much, much smaller head of cauliflower at Jerry's in Eden Prairie.  The fresh local fruits and vegetables are a real treat here and their low cost is just an extra bonus. Of course, for that price we do have to wash our own potatoes.

 

On the way back from the market, I paused to take a picture showing the location of our apartment, high above the Ring Road that circles the metropolitan area.