Cairo - First Day
by JFC AdminArriving in Cairo presented me with my first experience with Egyptian immigration officers and I was not impressed. First of all we were supposed to have been met at arrival by a driver from the hotel. The driver is supposed to meet you before passport control and help you with the immigration procedures.
However, no driver appeared and after spending time looking for the driver it meant a build up of the queue at passport control. First of all you need to buy some stamps at the bank opposite passport control, these stamps are placed in your passport and stamped by the passport official to gain entry. One thing I noticed was that there’s no separate line for Egyptian passport holders so they have to join the same queues as everyone else, also each passport booth has its own queue rather than one centralised queue meaning if you pick the wrong one you could be waiting for ages. Total time in the passport queue was over an hour.
Once through the passport queue the baggage had already been removed from the belt. Before I had a chance to do anything some helpful porter had already brought over a trolley and was asking for baksheesh (small tips paid for providing services), as I expected collection from the hotel I had no Egyptian currency but he was happy with a few Euro coins.
Now with no driver to collect us I had to rely on finding a taxi to the hotel, I negotiated a price, much lower than a taxi would cost in the UK but still a rip-off by Egyptian standards. Despite that the taxi driver was excellent, he showed us all the sites that we passed, as the price was agreed beforehand I didn’t care too much whether or not he was taking a direct route. The taxi was also my first experience of Egyptian driving which was a very nervous experience.
After arriving at the hotel, the Intercontinental Pyramids Park Resort, it was time to sleep. The room was upgraded, as one of the benefits of Intercontinental Ambassador status, to a suite which had a living room area on one floor and the bedrooms upstairs. After waking up the first day was spent relaxing around the resort area. I’ve booked a taxi for tomorrow to the Pyramids.