Egypt - Part 1: Orders

Part 1: Orders

The plane tickets are booked!
Egypt Air happens to be the only airline that flies to Cairo nonstop. I think Delta will have a route later this year. The flight is going to be 12 hours. April 19 - April 26. I'll arrive at Cairo at 11:30AM on Sunday 4/26. Gim booked the tickets by calling the airline direct. Apparently their website was buggy (according to the sales guy on the phone). He called because I didn't have my passport number with me; it was required by the website. He had to fax his credit card, signature and id to them after ordering - no passport numbers needed.

The travel books are here!
After an afternoon of test driving travel books, we decided on "Lonely Planet Egypt". I have a bunch of books from Lonely Planet and find them pretty useful. Naturally, I ordered from amazon.com, since it was cheaper. What sucks is that the new edition is coming out in May 2008. So I'm stuck with the 2-3 year old edition.

I also picked up the "Lonely Planet Egyptian Arabic Phasebook".
Arabic doesn't sound like European languages which I'm semi familiar with from taking Spanish for 6 years (I'm horrible at it). I also read somewhere on the interweb that they didn't speak a lot of English there. Better be safe than sorry. I don't want to be caught pointing and motioning when the diarrhea hits.



Now starts the planning...