My stay in Luxor was brief. I arrived at noon and had to catch a flight to Cairo that night at midnight. I wouldn’t have time to see the Valley of the Kings, which was disappointing, but managed to see the Luxor Temple just outside of town. It has the largest ancient columned hall in the world, or so I was told. With 85 foot tall (26m) columns it was impressive. About a dozen different kings remodeled/added on to the temple making it both massive and diverse in styles. If it had not been oppressively hot and I had more time I would have enjoyed it more.
I bought a couple Anubis statues, t-shirts, and some food and then headed to the airport to start my long trip back to Vancouver, Washington. When I was in the middle of the line at the check-in counter, a woman with a cart full of odd shaped boxes pulled up close along side of me. I was suspicious. Just as I suspected, as I moved forward she kept edging it further in front of me trying to nonchalantly cut into line. No way this has happening lady. Just try it. I held my ground as best I could without actually pushing her cart. She wouldn't look at me and pretended to merely be standing there, but her game was not too subtle. She made her move just as I was to be the next person helped, she surged forward shoving her cart up to the counter to block me but her rash move came with an unexpected cost. Several of her boxes tumbled onto the floor and as she reached to save them I stretched my long arm over her and her pitiful cart to hand my passport to the clerk. Ha! I felt her angry glare bounce fruitlessly of my back as I walked away with my boarding pass in hand and a smug smile on my face. Of course, my plane was delayed, luckily only half an hour. As I killed time looking at displays in the terminal, I noticed that pushy cart-lady was having trouble checking in her boxes and it took her about 10 minutes to convince Alitalia to take them. I was really glad that I didn’t wait for her. Ha ha! Sweet victory.
A couple hours later I was in the Cairo airport parking negotiating a price for a taxi to my hostel. I was told there was a bus, but at 3am it wasn’t running. The guy at my hostel had arranged for a taxi to the airport so I knew what it should cost. The problem was that I was a tourist at the airport in the middle of the night and the taxi drivers knew that I was at a disadvantage. Fortunately, another passenger came to my aid to help convince a taxi driver to grudgingly take me for the local’s price. He was not thrilled about it. I was not thrilled about the ancient death trap he called a taxi, yet relieved to be going to get some sleep.
I was only at the hostel for 5 hours though, because I had to go back to the airport to wait for 2 hours to catch a flight to Rome. So back in a cab and back to the airport I went to wait some more. The flight to Rome was 4 hours with a 4 hour layover until my connection to Madrid where I had a 5.5 hour layover (attempting to sleeping in an uncomfortable chair) for a 2.5 hour flight to London with a 7 hour layover for a 9.5 hour flight to Seattle where I waited 6 hours for a 4 hour bus to Portland where I waited 2 hours to be picked up at 2am.
Doing the math from Luxor, I took five planes and 53.5 hours to get to my Mom’s house. This was the worst trip so far. In my sleep deprived and physically abused state, my bond with reality was wavering dangerously at that point. Thank God that I had a week to rest before taking Eric to Hawaii.
