We set off to Heathrow Long Stay carpark (seemed cheaper than Purple Parking this time) putting the Post Code in the Sat Nav. Why? I have no idea. I never usually use Post Codes on Sat Navs. I thought it was taking me a strange way, a way I would not have driven under my own steam. Never mind, the location was where I anticipated the car park to be, so Google knew best, and there was a faster way with the present road conditions. (No holdups on the M40 / M25, as usual, these roads can be fast moving.) Near to the carpark, Google announced we were to turn left up a road but it had an unmovable barrier. Hummph, back to manual control and drove to where I knew the carpark really was, yes, we had attempted to drive into the carpark from the wrong side. Soon parked and on the airport bus to Terminal 2. Immediately on entrance, we were spotted by the Noble Caledonia representative (Sheila), who took our booking details and retrieved our EgyptAir boarding passes for us, pointing the way to the bag drop. A snack lunch at ‘EAT’ and then we were soon boarding the flight for Cairo. We were seated amongst other Noble Caledonia passengers at the back of the plane along with Sheila. We thought most of the passengers were a smidge older or so than us.

The EgyptAir flight was 4 hours 30 minutes with lunch and snack, no alcoholic drinks were served as this was a ‘dry’ flight. Apparently, in business class, they would open your duty free and pour it for you. At Cairo, we were issued with our visas (tourist tax) and passed quickly through customs. A long wait for our baggage, which was all collected together. Delay waiting for the coaches and the police escort (oh yes, indeed) to arrive, then we were off to the boat with our escort. The coach journey took us on to the Cairo Inner Ring Road. Just before we crossed the Nile on the Southern side of Cario, we left the motorway and headed to the moored boat. I was following this on Google Maps until I realised I had left data “on”! Thankfully I used only 500K of data, so my bill was not too bad. Six pounds a MegaByte is definitely usury.

On the journey around Cairo, we spotted lots of new flats being erected, large shopping malls, and an IKEA and of course McDonald’s and Burger King.

At the boat, the SS Misr, we were thrown slightly by the huge wooden staircase. We were shown to our cabins, where there was a rather large late-night snack waiting for us. We were also issued with the itinerary for the next day, including the time of the early morning start. Alarm calls for everybody were set for 6.00am. We managed to be in bed just before midnight.