It
took all day to get from Helsinki to Cairo, thanks to the inconvenient
routing of our One World RTW ticket. We were routed through Barcelona
for an 8 hour layover, and the Barcelona airport is not the one I'd
pick for a long layover. We tried to speak with the Iberia Airlines
ticketing office to get some assistance changing the time and dates of
our Barcelona to Madrid flight that was scheduled for several weeks
later, but the Iberia staff here at the airport is pretty useless with
any tickets issued by One World. The benefit of the One World Alliance
is that ticket holders should be able to go to any Alliance member
airline ticketing desk, and get prompt service to change or amend any
part of the ticket. Here at Iberia airport ticketing office, they have
no clue how the ticket works, or how to make changes. Or perhaps the
agent was just grumpy and annoyed with my minimal comprehension of her
ramblings in muy rapido Espanol, and didn't want to deal with me.
So
with our 8 hour layover, we tried to mooch a free internet signal, but
none were to be found, so we hit up the big airport bookstore, hoping
to scam off the Lonely Planet guides there for Morocco and Portugal...
do some quick reading and research in the store while we waiting for
our flight to board. The store had a fabulous selection of guides -
Lonely Planet, Eye Witness, Rough Guides, on every country you could
ever imagine wanting to go to. However, slight problem, they were all
in Spanish, and our Spanish language immersion program doesn't start
until we hit Guatemala in September. So there would be no productive
planning done during our layover either. So we found an aisle of
available seats with no arm rests in an empty departure game, and we
slept for several hours. I wake up with plastic seat creases
permanently imbedded in my face, wondering where I am, which country,
which guest house, and why are all these strange people staring at me.
Typical
to our European trips, we sleep, eat and drink our way through each
country, and this day is no different. After our naps, we have a meal,
a drink, and finish up some duty free purchase of wine and port for our
friends in Egypt - a precious supply that they can't get locally in
mostly "dry" Egypt. We arrive in Cairo just after 12:30 a.m. the next
morning, and my friend Kim (former NCR housemate from Dayton) is
waiting for us with a big smile at the airport. She's even packed
beverages and snacks galore for our 2.5 hour drive north to their home
in Mansoura, in the Nile Delta Area. I haven't seen Kim in probably 10
years, and seeing her again is just like we left off the last time we
saw each other on a San Diego visit she had made. It's going to be
great spending time with her, meeting her husband Dennis and her
daughter Ella.
