Leaving Egypt

We awoke at 12:30 am, showered, dressed and put the bags out before heading to the lobby of the Intercontinental Citystars Cairo Hotel to meet Mohammed for the short trip in the shuttle van to the Cairo airport. Mohammed gave us a breakfast bag from the hotel for us to eat at the airport. The van driver handed us over to the Road Scholar representative at the airport (also named Mohammed) who took us through the ticketing, bag check in and visa clearance processes, proving translations as necessary. We went through the heavy security at the Cairo airport without problems, at least no more than one would expect in the current times in that part of the world. Our wait for the Alitalia flight from Cairo to Rome wasn’t long, and we enjoyed the sandwiches of spiced feta cheese and processed meat on dense bread and the pastries.

The flight to Rome was fairly full, but it was only 90 minutes. We were fortunate that there was no one in the exit row seats near us, so we volunteered to move which gave the two of us a row of three seats with plenty of legroom. We napped and read on the short flight before landing in Rome.

We noted that we had changed time zones, so that rather than being 6 am as it was in Cairo, it was 5 am. We were fine with the time before we had to board the 12:10 pm flight to New York’s JFK airport. We walked around the airport to get some steps for our fitness bands. Once the need for caffeine kicked in, we stopped at a coffee shop where we saw airport workers getting breakfast, so we knew that it was probably a good place with reasonable prices. Most airport food is incredibly overpriced, especially in Europe so we were happy to find a place where we could get a couple of cups of tea for about 5 Euros (around $6) and would take a US credit card. While we enjoyed the tea, we finished the fruit from the hotel breakfast bag and checked email, did German lessons and talked about out trip. We had a text from Cindy and Mark that they had left Paris and were crammed into seats in a crowded jet for the long flight back.

Mary getting a shoulder rub at Leonardo da Vinci Airport

We did a few more laps in the airport then found the lounge chairs near gate 23. We like these seats because they are perfect for napping and have a nice view of the runways. We read some and napped some before taking one last walk at 10:30 prior to boarding our flight to the US.

Like all of the passengers, we had to go through a screening for coronavirus (COVID-19) before boarding the aircraft. We were surprised that this flight was nearly empty. We were on the right side of the main cabin and were the only passengers on that side. There were eight empty rows (two seats per row) in front of us and ten rows behind us with no passengers. That gave us plenty of room to stretch out and not have to fight for space in the overhead bins.

Our lunch choice was chicken curry with fruit salad, bread and ice cream. We had a glass of Bellini and a glass of white wine then hot tea. We watched the available streaming on the seat screens and did some reading. I watched the most recent Rambo movie, Last Blood then the latest Terminator movie, Dark Fate. I watched most of the Will Smith movie, Ali.  I spent a good deal of time working on the final installments of this travel journal and trying to not nap. I want to be ready for bed when we get home and hopefully back on our schedule soon. We don’t know how the travel across times zones and the “springing forward” to daylight saving time will affect us. We think that the sooner we get back to a normal schedule the happier we will be.

In hindsight we had no idea what changes were taking place in the US and across the world.  While in Egypt, we saw very little news and none from the US.  We had no idea that the coronavirus was having such an impact on life.  We heard about an especially virulent strain of flu that appeared to have originated at a wet market in the megacity of Wuhan in China’s Hubai Provence.  We had been to Wuhan in September and October 2018 and had probably visited the wet market in question, but we never thought that this virus would have such an impact of life around the world.  We were so happy that we did not go to China on this trip. 

That being said, we learned shortly after arriving back in the US, that Italy is an emerging hotspot for COVID-19 and could surpass China in deaths from the virus.  That explained the extensive health screening that we had by US health officials when leaving Rome for New York.  Neither did we know at that time, that New York City would be the most impacted US city by the virus.  We were happy that we returned to the US when we did.  Had we tried to leave Egypt a few days later, our return would have been a much more difficult and protracted process.