Well, the day has come to leave Saudi Arabia. We’ve spent almost a month here (with a detour to Bahrain), but we think we’ve managed our time well to see very different regions of the country. Not a bad trip at all! But we can’t just leave without having our last stroll. Remember how my partner went out for a stroll before leaving Manama and didn’t take me? Well, that won’t happen again, hehe. So we both head out to get our last glimpses of Jeddah/Al Balad, get a few last second souvenirs, and share our last pictures of Historic Jeddah.

But that’s it. We head back to the hotel and my partner loads our bags and we head out through Al Balad. Leaving early actually let us take a picture of a place we’d walked through multiple times every day we were in Jeddah, but we never took a picture of the whole thing because it was always filled with people.

This is a little square between shops and malls where people seem to come together late in the evenings. You can find people selling many things in the shops, but also from carpets on the floor (including a scale to weigh yourself). You always find women with little carts that are selling French fries (and other things). And a strange thing (but good) that we saw was that every night we were here the “health authority” (not sure what it’s actually called) was here giving out free vaccinations to people. And just to finish off this public square, there are those boxes with prayer rugs at the end (from where we are) and we always saw people praying on them when we passed by in the evening. And, this is the last part of Al Balad that we walk through as the bus station is just on the other side of the street that you see in the distance. 

There were only a few men outside of the bus station this time. Must be too early for many travellers to other cities. We cross the street, tell the men we’re going to the airport, and they ignore us. 

We enter the station to see if we can pay inside or if they have any information, and they do not. Everything to do with the bus to the airport is handled directly on the bus. Must be because it is a local transport bus while inside they deal with intercity busses. Either way, we took a look inside.

So… this is the downside of public transit. We didn’t catch the bus to the airport that must have left a few minutes before we arrive, so we have to just sit and wait. And wait we did. My partner even started to get a bit nervous as he calculated the time it would take the bus to get to the airport, for us to cross security, and get to the gate. The time was getting really close. He even looked up how much it would cost and how long it would take to take an Uber to the airport. He finally decided to take the Uber if the bus didn’t arrive in 20 minutes. In about 10 minutes, it showed up. So pleaaaase leave soon! 

We get on the bus, pay, and get comfortable. We’re the only ones on the bus. At least we’re sitting comfortably, with our bag safely stowed, and there’s air conditioning.

But, the bus never leaves. We wait what seems like an eternity because we thought we would be late to the airport, and then the doors close and we’re on our way! Hooray! (In actuality we waited 10 minutes on the bus, I timed it). At the end of the day we waited 50 minutes from the time we arrived to the bus station to when the bus left. This is the most that anyone should theoretically wait while waiting for the bus. Lucky us!

Well, we get going and say goodbye to all the men waiting to whisk you off to faraway cities. Again, the drive was fine, easy, and relatively straight forward. There wasn’t much traffic on the streets. And from our last trip to the airport we learned what side to sit to catch glimpses of the city (in reality no one was on the bus so we could easily move around from seat to seat).

You knew we couldn’t leave construction off of our drive, hehe. We love it! Who knows if we will ever see so many construction sites ever again, haha. Soon enough we’re arriving at the airport, and we think that that’s the Haramain train station at the Jeddah Airport that you can see. The shape seems right at least!

We get out and my partner takes his sweet ol’ time taking pictures of where we get the bus.

And, of course, of the aquarium. You knew he wouldn’t walk by that without taking yet another picture of it.

Well, well, well… his peaceful demeanour would soon be broken. Ha. He had checked the airline before going to the airport, of course, and it all seemed fine. The airport wasn’t too big, so of course it had to be there. And the terminal said that it had flights by this airline and that our destination also flew out of this terminal. We asked the helpful information staff where we had to go and they told us that it was not this terminal at all. We had to go to the other terminal. What……… They asked us when our flight was… when we told them their eyes got big and they told us to hurry, we may not make it. Uh oh. We asked what to do and they said that the shuttle would be the cheapest and fastest, so we went to buy a ticket for that (23 SAR = ~$8). We get to the counter which is right beside the aquarium and the attendant asks us when our flight is. We tell them and they also make eyes that say “uh oh, you may not get there”. They sell us the ticket and we go out to the bus. The driver also asks us, and he makes the same eyes. He finished his cigarette and immediately drives us to the next terminal without anyone else on the bus. 

We make it to the other terminal (quite far) and it is very, very different. This really seems like it must be the low cost terminal or the “not Saudia airlines” terminal or something, because it is much smaller and definitely not as nice as the first terminal we were in.

We get inside of the terminal, and it is PACKED. People absolutely everywhere. The other terminal was so calm!! Wow. We ask for help right away and they point us towards our counter. We get in line, and the line is HUGE. Oh no… I think my partner starts to lose hope that he will make it in time… What do we do?! It’s already 1:50 pm… our flight is at 2:45 pm… and boarding should have started at 1:45 pm…. Nooooooo. And to make things worse… when we say we “get in line” we did just that, it’s just that others didn’t. People just try walking straight up to the counter and passing by everyone in the line. My partner has to be “rude” and stop them so that they wait and we get our chance to get our boarding pass. We finally make it to the front of the line, get our boarding pass, check our luggage, and hurry to security. We have almost no time before the plane takes off. You can imagine my partner’s pulse! He keeps checking online to see if they say “boarding door closed” or something. We cross security, go to the gate, and there’s nothing! Nooooooo. But wait, there isn’t even staff… That’s weird. We then check the departures board… the flight has been delayed by 4 hours. Noooooo (but for a different reason). I mean, good thing that we made it, but it sucks to have our flight delayed that much! But whatever, we have no control over anything, we’re here, and the flight will still take us to our next destination. My partner let’s our next hotel know that we are delayed and our flight number as they will pick us up, and then we’re left alone to just wander.

It is a very small terminal. My partner probably checks the Duty Free store about a million times just to pass the time. Most seats are taken, so there are quite a few people just walking in circles, like my partner. We just wait and wait until it’s finally our time to go. 

Well, we’re finally led out onto the tarmac to get on our plane!  

And now we can show you where we’re going next!

So cool! We are leaving Saudi Arabia and going to Egypt! It will be our first time in Africa, and we’re very excited to see another country in the Arab world. SUPER excited. And it’s Egypt. When you hear that country’s name you immediately start thinking about all of its history, and that will be so cool to just explore it all! At least, we think so. We climb up and take our last breath of Saudi air, haha.

Then it’s time to strap in and get ready for the flight!

Well… here is a confession. We were a bit disappointed to be leaving at this time from Jeddah. There were two Air Cairo flights from Jeddah today, one at 2:45 pm and one later in the evening. The earlier flight was a tiny bit more expensive, but we took it anyway to be able to look outside, see the Red Sea, maybe see all of Egypt as we were coming to touchdown… but since we were taking off so late we wouldn’t be able to see any of that. And, we’re not even by the window… so sad. But whatever, it is what it is. Let’s make sure to correct all of this when we leave Egypt! We already landed in Jeddah by day anyway. It’s not all bad! Hehe. 

We take off and we’re on our way to Cairo! So exciting. The flight is uneventful and quite short, just about 2 hours. We thought that it would be a bit longer. We have just enough time to fill out our declaration form and then land. We include the declaration form cause it already shows Egyptian history, so cool!

It wasn’t the easiest to find out visa information for Egypt, so we will include it here as well. My partner did not have a visa to enter Egypt. Luckily, he is from a country that doesn’t require one beforehand, but everywhere we checked said that it was highly encouraged to get one beforehand. So, we’re going in a bit blind. But that’s fine, as long as we get into the country, haha.

[Note, we are aware that since we were in Egypt the rules have changed and we would have had to get a visa before arrival].

We land at night, and go into the airport. We’re welcome by this statue into Egypt.

Then it’s on to the Bank of Egypt (“Misr” = “Egypt” in Arabic) where you have to pay $25 USD for the visa fee. And that’s that! We’ve got our visa! 

A little note… it has to be exactly $25 USD. The bit of information we did find was that they don’t offer change at this booth. And, as many countries, your bills have to be perfect. Our bank gave us a USD bill with a bit of an ink stain on it and they wouldn’t take it. So, you’ve been warned. (But many countries also only accept perfect foreign currency). We then head to immigration, give them our little visa fee paper, and then we wait. People go by us as we both just stand and wait. We’re not sure why… but then they let us through. Hmmm…. Who knows? But, we’re in Egypt!! We get our bag, and head out! Great!

We pass this artwork and find information. We are now in the arrivals terminal and it is quiet, quiet, quiet. Not what we expected. We ask information for an ATM to get some money out. They point us to where the machines are and we head over there. Two different machines, two different banks/companies, zero cash. Uh oh. Well… we go back to information and he tells us that that happens sometimes, haha. So… “luckily” the hotel prefers USD than their own Egyptian pounds… so we should be okay for now. And the car picking us up was quoted in USD (even though their website said free airport transport…) so we go outside. There we see a guy with my partner’s name on a sign, so fancy! But he’s not happy…. Sweet. He greets us with “FINALLY!!” And says bye to everyone else he was waiting with. We walk to his car and my partner takes a picture of the airport just before leaving.

The driver tells us he’s been waiting this whole time for us, from our initial arrival time. We explain that we sent the information, delay, and flight number to the hotel, so they were the ones to not pass it along. He becomes a bit less annoyed, and then is fine for the rest of the drive. The drive to the hotel was pretty cool! All around the airport everything is adorned with things relating to the Ancient Egyptian civilization, so that’s awesome.

Apart from that, there are a lot of political billboards. Everywhere. We ask if an election is coming up or something and our driver is a bit confused. We tell him we’re asking because of the billboards and he tells us that no, that’s just every day stuff, it’s way more if people are campaigning, haha. 

We’ve only just arrived and we get a completely different feeling from Cairo than most other places we’ve visited this trip. The only comparison so far would be Riyadh. Why? How? Well… you tell us:

There are A LOT of cars, and the driving reminds us of Riyadh, haha. But… we’re also not dumb. We recognize that Cairo proper likely has over 10 million people in it (9.54 million in 2017) and the Cairo metro area has over 22 million people. That’s a lot of people, so of course they’re going to have traffic. Impossible to compare it with places we’ve visited that just cross the one million people mark, or Musandam with its 31,000 people, haha. 

We keep driving and the driver points out a few landmarks to us, but these are the only ones we’re able to take pictures of in this light and through the traffic.

But it’s important to loop back to the difference between Cairo proper and its metro area because we skip right past Cairo and head to Giza! Who knows the real population of Giza… some sources said 5 million, others 8 million, our driver guessed 6 million, and other sources say it’s not actually counted separately from Cairo. Either way, it’s wayyyyy less busy than around Cairo “proper,” but still busy. And then we see them! The pyramids off in the distance! (But not even that far!!). That’s probably why you’ve heard the name Giza before, it’s where the “most famous” pyramids are and the Sphynx. So excited!!

We cross a few police checkpoints where they check the driver and then we’re at the hotel. The driver pulls up, tells us that we’re here, and then reminds us of how long he had to wait for us and everything. We say we’re sorry, but again remind him that we let the hotel know. We ask if we pay him or inside, and he says inside but, if we want, we can give him a little something since he waited so long for us. We say we don’t have any Egyptian money like we had told him in the car, so we couldn’t sorry. Little did we know that this would be a main stay for us while in Egypt. You’ll see.

We’re welcomed to the hotel and they immediately tell us that we are late. We tell them that we sent them a message through the app and they saw it… and the receptionist (who is also an owner) says that their partner must have read it and not told them… Well, whatever, we’re here. We drop off our things and they immediately take us up to the roof of the hotel. Amazing. We’re just sitting above Giza looking all over the neighbourhood. Super, super cool. AND!!!

WOW. WHAT. A. VIEW.

And then we’re welcomed in the Egyptian way with hot tea. The only problem? My partner doesn’t drink tea or coffee. Uh oh. He doesn’t want to seem rude because we both know that in this region of the world (Northern Africa) receiving someone with tea is a sign of respect, and we can’t be rude. My partner loads the tea with sugar and drinks it slowly. The receptionist/owner goes on to explain all of the tours that we can do through the hotel. Some are week long tours, others a few days, others just the single day. He asks us like 5 times if we would like to do any, but we keep telling him that we don’t have plans yet, so we would think about it. He finally accepts and then we go back downstairs. We ask where we can take cash out, if it’s safe to walk around, and where we can get food. The receptionist/owner calls over a worker to accompany us. Great! Off we go!

The neighbourhood we’re in is very interesting. There are a bunch of low rise buildings everywhere and most of them have little hotels in them, like ours. In the mix is a police station right outside of our hotel, and then a bunch of little shops. This is clearly a tourist area. We wouldn’t fully realize it until we explored the area tomorrow, but we’re wayyyy closer to the pyramids than we even imagined. Our “guide” takes us to the ATM and then takes us to a souvenir shop… We had asked for food, but he told us we had to go there first…

We enter the shop and we’re enthusiastically greeted by the owner who tries to welcome us with tea and show us his papyrus that he sells and is made by his family. We stayed like 10-15 minutes as he tried to sell us papyrus or statues until he realized that we’d been in Egypt less than 3 hours and weren’t going to buy anything. Then he told us that he has better tours than our hotel, but under no circumstances should we go to the pyramids alone because we will be hounded by all of the Egyptians inside trying to sell us things. If we go with an Egyptian tour guide that won’t happen. We say thank you very much, but we need some food and leave.

Our “guide” asks us what food we want, and we say “not sure, something Egyptian”. He didn’t know what that could be… weird… So we say a shawarma. Okay, that he knows and he takes us to get shawarma. Except… it’s getting late out, we’re tired from all the traveling, and we’re walking and walking and walking. Where are we going…? Weird to have so many little hotels and no where to eat nearby? We keep walking. Eventually we start asking where we are going, and he tells us it’s not much further. Eventually we make it to a… car garage…? What….? 

We enter the garage, and they have a little kitchen there. Our “guide” again asks us what we’d like and we say shawarma. He tells the kitchen, but won’t let us talk to them… And when it’s time to pay he pays for us. Strange, but thank you. As we wait for the food to be ready two little children come out. We would guess that the little boy is 4 and the little girl is 8. They start speaking English to my travel partner. The little girl’s English is pretty much perfect. They get to talking a lot, and my travel partner shows them the pictures of Real Madrid against Valencia in Riyadh because they are Real Madrid fans. They talked about school and what they want to be when they grow up. It was super nice! To top it all off, apparently this is a famous place! They showed us some pictures and videos of a singer than came from here. (At least that’s what we understood, haha).

Then the food is ready, and we take off back to the hotel. We get to our room and relax. The wifi is hit or miss, but enough to communicate that we’re safely in Egypt and getting ready to sleep. So excited to be in a new city, new country, and a new continent!! Good night from Cairo!!