I like the dude in the flight safety video. He is so cool in the face of calamity. He actually manages to find the life vest under the seat (my furtive groupes have perpetually failed to locate the life saving device), manages to get the clasps in the right hoops as the aeroplane lands on water, and jumps on to the raft knowing fully well that the vest will self-inflate when it comes in contact with water and in case it does not, he is confident of his ability to find the inlet on his shoukder and blow enough air into the rubber tube to displace his own weight while he effortlessly navigates choppy seas. I guess he should simply rip off his clothes to display the large yellow S on the blue background and fly off
The little LCD displaying a map embedded in the back of the headrest in front of you in the airplane is a great invention especially with kids around. The ususal "Are we there yet?" can be met with " Sweety, when this lil airplane goes across all this blue and over the green and brown and meets this triangle, we will be there." That is way too much ionformation for Rhea and I can see her go goggle-eyed. I guess not being able to say AWTY takes away half her pleasure of travelling. The other half depends on how many surprises Gayatri and I have managed to secret away in our little carry-on.
Tracking the lil aeroplane on the LCD over Europe is exhilirating as exotic places like Dusseldorf, Cologne, Hague, Naples, Geneva, Luxemborg, Dortmund all seem just a (parachute) drop away.
Rhea travels well. Comfortable, self assured, goes with the blow, does not resist, takes as it comes, sleeps easily. Good for her.
We change from United to Luftansa at Frankfurt and the difference in the flying experience is immediately apparent. The Luftansa aircraft, with its typical german design manage to make the seating more ergonomic with a little knob to hang a purse, a little glass holder etc
We land in Cairo after 15 hours of flying.Not sure if it was the thick draft of warm air or various smell and odours simultaneously invading the nostrils or the multilingual no holds barred loud hubub or the explosion of brown faces, Rhea's first words as she walkedout of the airport were, "Papi, I am pretending this is India...". She did steal my thought.
The hotel is situated on the Giza plateau right next to the pyramids. The hotel has 5 restaurants and not one of them, to our disappointment, authentic egytian. The hotel had a high profile garish wedding in it foyer attended by local gliterati and a loud singing band. We stepped out for a small walk and discovered the limestone clad Khafre on the horizon. Khufu's silhouette soon became apparent and an excited Rhea wanted to walk to it immediately.
We stumbled upon a egyptian hole in the wall next door where we had our first cups of bitter and muddy turkish coffee.
We also ran into our first egyptian smooth talking salesman who tried to sell us perfumes made using recipes found in king tut's tomb. Frankly we all liked the perfume though the thought of shelling out egyptian pounds without looking around did not appeal to our senses. We came back with promices to return and suddenly Ashref was no longer smooth.