Planes and Buses and Automobiles.

"There are only two emotions in a plane: boredom and terror." ~Orson Welles

That pretty much sums up the 11 hour flight we took into Cairo. Sleep, boredom, sleep, paralyzing terror, sleep.

I'm updating this from a McDonald's with free WiFi, which is nice, but they are starting to get suspicious that I have purchased nothing, and the water bottle on my table is not the kind they sell. So this will have to be short.

Cairo is huge and crazy and dirty and full of tiny cats who are too skinny and all too often found dead on the side of the road (we call them Cairo cats and feed them when we see them). So much for the Egyptian's love of cats. Or I guess perhaps the fact that there are so many and they are all very friendly means someone is taking care of them.

We have seen a lot of typical Cairo life and very little of ancient Cairo in our 24 hours here, but we will be back for 5 days at the end of our group trip. We leave tomorrow for Daklah Oasis at 6:15 am and are on the bus for 12 hours - which EVERYONE is looking forward to, I'm sure. I will update more substantially with pictures of smoggy city buildings and tiny cats when we reach the Oasis and McDonald-free wifi. That will be nice!

6 Hours to departure

I was sitting in my hotel room in NYC - Fairfield Inn Marriott (actually pretty nice) - watching the Penguins of Madagascar and SpongeBob SquarePants (SIMULTANEOUSLY, coolest TV ever) drinking "American" coffee for the last time for several months when I realized I should probably do something with my time. Like set up my travel blog. So yeah. Here it is, the travel blog of Egyptian/Greek/European adventures.

Prettttty sweet.

Anyway, I thought I would post a link to my flickr page so that if anyone is interested they can also look at many many many many pictures that I am sure will be posted there over the course of the next 4 months. I will post a few pictures here but the majority will find themselves on flickr and facebook.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hillary_sn/

"One of the gladdest moments of human life, methinks, is the departure upon a distant journey into unknown lands. Shaking off with one mighty effort the fetters of habit, the leaden weight of routine, the cloak of many cares and the slavery of home, man feels once more happy."
Sir Richard Francis Burton