I am writing this from room 404 in the Pearl Hotel in the Maadi section of the city of Cairo. It is currently 11:56 pm in Egypt which makes it 4:56 pm back home in New York. I'm rooming with Mike "Gravy" Armstrong and we just returned from dinner at this place called Mermaid on the other side of the Metro tracks from our hotel. We all got here and agreed that we all needed to get some food...and then promptly return and fall out, but I haven't fallen out just yet.
Working backwards I was the first one to arrive in Paris out of the group as a result of getting moved up to the earlier flight leaving out of JFK. That flight didn't really end up being that much earlier, in fact it left New York around 6pm when my original flight was supposed to leave anyway. I didn't make a big fuss about getting bumped up because the man that took me offline told me that I would get 150 euros for doing it. Of course when I landed in Paris I got this huge run around and was sent from Air France ticketing to Delta ticketing, because technically everything was booked through Delta, then back to AF, back to Delta etc. Long story short, I do not have my 150 euros, but I will be yelling at someone when I get back to JFK in June.
The one blessing out of taking an earlier flight was that I got a chance to take the train into Paris. I took the RER line B3 from Charles de Gaulle terminal 2 to the only stop in Paris that looked familiar to me, Notre Dame. My goodness, what a beautiful city Paris is to walk around, at least from what I experienced walking around the area of Notre Dame for an hour. Of course I took pictures and a few videos, they will all be on facebook but here are a few of them.
Yes Mom, I was able to get back to the airport in time for my flight and we arrived in Cairo around 7:30pm Egypt time. I must say that flying an international flag carrier, Air France in this case, is a really nice experience because it was the first time I felt like I was being treated as an adult. It might be miniscule but being served wine without a second thought is a really nice experience. I see people who are 21 in the states who are forever questioned and harassed for ID when they try to obtain alcohol. It is just interesting and nice to see how the Europeans do it.
Drinking wine aside being in Cairo for this first night has been quite an experience so far. Our bus ride from the airport to Maadi took like 45 minutes, and it was through some crazy and intense traffic that was straight out of Frogger. I thought Saudi traffic was bad because they go super fast and sometimes ignore the lanes. In Egypt, I couldn't even make out lane markers if I wanted to. Absolutely insane, and yet all the New Yorkers on the trip instantly said that we would love to try our hands at it...of course that won't happen.
All in all, I am really looking forward to what lies ahead. Tomorrow we do placement tests and orientation and I will try and blog about how boring that is when I get back to the hotel tomorrow afternoon or night.
Well that's all for now, thanks for reading!
-Diggs
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