This is my travel diary of my trip to Egypt. It contains in detail my memories of what I did and saw. 

Thursday October 22, 2015

Egypt: Day 1 – Leaving Home (Denver, CO)

For a moment I enjoyed being alone and listen to the heavy rain on the window. It had been hard to sleep the night before with Tessa gone. (I had dropped my dog off the night before to my parents house and had also left them copies of my itinerary so they wouldn’t be worried.) It had been already packed for almost a week, but my flight wouldn’t be until later on in the day. Its strange, I so often take flights early in the morning and so have to get up at god awful hours. But not this trip. The Super Shuttle wouldn’t be picking me up until a little after 1PM.

After breakfast I enjoyed taking a nice long bath, but had to remind myself not to use any lotion afterwards. I then lazed around watching Futurama on Netflix before making lunch.  I decided against doing a will (my parents every time we went on a trip would make us write out a single page “will” in case anything happened) as I didn’t want to court bad luck. Instead I continued to clean up my room, house, dishes. I like to come home to a clean home and made bed after a trip.

Not wanting to have a repeat of a “early shuttle” incident I made sure everything I needed was downstairs. I wasn’t sure what to do about the rain though. It was still coming down hard and I didn’t have or want to take with me a bag protector or wear a bulky rain jacket. My bags were already brimming and I likely wouldn’t need much rain gear in Egypt. So I decided to risk it. My porch is covered, so I had my bag outside under that. I stayed inside sitting on my stairs, watching the Uber-like map update with where my van was. I thought it was getting close so I stayed there, sitting on the stairs for what seemed like ages.

When it was turning down my street I grabbed my keys, locked up my doors, and waited under the porch as it rained. The driver past my house a bit, so I ran willy-nilly into the rain with my bag. It seemed like forever for him to hop out, open the back so I could place my two bags there. I then quickly dashed to the side door, wrenching it open myself and hopping into the middle seat where another woman a little younger than me sat playing on her phone. To my surprise we were the only passengers so we made it quickly to the airport before 2.

I groaned a bit. My flight wasn’t going to take off until 5:30. I had a lot of time to kill. I checked in but declined to check any bags. I then went through security. I was happy to notice that I had mobile boarding passes (am I off the list!?!) and so hopped that security would be pretty easy.

Of course it wasn’t! Although I didn’t get the dreaded SSSS, both of my bags triggered the security checks. First, it was my see-through bag of liquids. My goal was to carry everything on and so I had crammed as much as I could into my 3-1-1 liquid bag. But this time I had bought a re-usable bag instead of a baggie. Why? Well because the reusable bags while technically hold the same amount open from what you’d considered the “side” of the baggie, thus allowing you more easily to place more 3oz bottles and other liquids in. In fact I had bought multiple types of these clear cases in an effort to see which one could hold the most. I found this one to actually hold the most, and I had it crammed in tight.

The TSA agents looked at it closely, and asked that I open it. They questioned me on why I needed 3 travel-sized bottles of my contact solution. (The solution I use is hydrogen peroxide based, and so could be used to make a chemical weapon.) I explained I was going to be gone 3 weeks and didn’t know how much I used. (For future reference I went through 2 bottles.) While they were going through everything, I got a secondary pat down and chemical swab test (once again happy I remembered not to use any hand lotion!)

But then my other bag triggered a full search. I was now happy I was absurdly early to the airport. It took the kind woman agent 30 minutes to go through everything in my bag to figure out what was triggering it. If you do have this level of search, it is important to note you are absolutely not allowed to touch your bag or any of your items during the search. I had everything packed so tight, dozens of different size packing cubes and mesh bags, Anything that had internal space was being used. After 30 minutes it turns out that what was triggering it was the reflective metal bar across the top of my snorkel mask…and the fact I had used the extra space in the snorkel mask to be filled with sanitary pads. Apparently the combination of metal plus soft organic material screams “suspicious”.

Once I was given the all clear, it took me another 30 minutes to repack everything. Thank god for arriving to the airport early! I spent over an hour with TSA that day, a new record! After hopping on the train and heading to my terminal I made a beeline to get water. I always travel with 1-3 bottles of water with me. I usually go through 1.5 bottles per plane journey, and there have been numerous times I had trouble finding water after exiting the airport. Since my plan was to arrive in Frankfurt, drop off my bags, and head out sight seeing, I figured getting lots of water now would help make that process faster.

But…now it is just a little after 3. I still have a ton of time to kill. I didn’t want to sit by my gate, as I knew I’d get hungry before the flight took off and would have to come back to the main area. I also didn’t want to shop with my 2 bags, so I looked around for a place to sit down and relax without being in anyones way. I spied the Chophouse restaurant and went over. The hostess asked if I had plenty of time, as it was taking upwards of 45 minutes for all the food to come out. I pondered and said Sure! I would have hate taking up a table without ordering much food, but heck, if they were running slow that actually worked in my favor!

I sat down and looked over the menu. I realized 2 things. I’ve been stuck at an airport before with only the Chophouse open…and I don’t like the majority of their food…and its very expensive. I ordered a hard cider while I looked the menu over. Normally I don’t like to drink anything before a flight, but I had 2 hours before I needed to board, and Egypt wouldn’t have hard cider. I decided to order just a side salad (again because it was not recommend in Egypt to eat vegetables if they had been washed with local water) and an order of fries. The waiter was a bit bewildered by this off menu request, but I’m glad I did so. I wasn’t hungry enough for their full meals, and it was much cheaper. I felt a bit awkward as there wasn’t a good place for my two bags. Either I had no room under my chair for my feet, or I had to place them in the chair opposite me making it hard for the person on the other side to slide out from their own table.

I ate very slowly (but not many people were coming in, so I didn’t feel bad about taking the table for so long) while I attempted to play Ingress from my table. (Its a location based game, trying to find works of art in real life and through the game power it up as a portal for your team.) But alas the wifi and cell signals at DIA make it hard for GPS to recognize where you are, so I wasn’t doing too well at the game. So I switched over to continue reading The Martian for a while.

After an hour I decide I cannot keep camping out at the Chophouse (mainly because they had no power outlets) and so I decide to head to my gate. Except I walked along the entire wrong side of the terminal, and had to turn around. When I made it to my gate, there were no open seats and no open charging stations. I knew there was a row of phone banks (with chargers) at the far end of this side of the terminal, and so I headed there. I don’t like not sitting near my gate. I always fear missing an important announcement. But nevertheless I found a chair right next to the last charging plug, plugged in and started watching more Futurama on my tablet. It was also at this time I found out that my phone and tablet hadn’t synced properly and hadn’t downloaded the needed videos, games, and music I had so diligently picked for this trip. DIA has wifi, but its not that fast. I just hoped they could download more before I had to board.

After an hour, I went to the bathroom and headed to my gate. Due to my bad ankles I wear leg braces when I travel after too many incidents occurred, and the gate agents usually let me board a little early because of the braces. It was good, because the pathway between seats was so narrow, I kept bumping into seats and having a hard time walking. I made it to the back of the plane where my seat was, and bearly managed to hoist my main bag into the overhead compartment. I hadn’t counted on having huge compartments, so I also took off my sweatshirt, and took out the essentials I needed for the flight before stowing my smaller carry on on top of my main bag.

I lucked out and no one sat in my entire row. And I found that it was one of the newest Lufthansa planes, and so had a USB charger next to the screen in front of me. This is a nice feature to be able to charge your devices during the flight! However, the screen didn’t turn on for me, it was frozen. For the first hour I couldn’t get it to work until I finally flagged down a flight attendant and they told me how to reboot the screen. It took 3 tries but it finally worked. I watched Jurassic World (even through I had watched it a few days earlier!) while eating dinner. Dinner was asian stir-fry and was pretty good.

I then took a sleeping pill. I’ve taken sleeping pills for a little less than 10 years now, and so am well aware of how they work. But I have never taken one on an airplane, mainly because I feared that I wouldn’t fall asleep and so the medicine would backfire and I’d feel bad from it. But…I really wanted to sleep so I could have a full day in Frankfurt.

I had it all planned out. I’d drop my bags off at the baggage hold in the Frankfurt terminal, buy the day pass that includes discount tickets to museums, take the train to the main station, and then subway to the Senckenberg Natural History Museum. I had already mapped out good food near the museum, and if hungry would eat first. After viewing the world renowned dinosaur exhibit I’d take the subway to Altstadt (old town square), walk across the pedestrian bridge (or take a cap) to the Old Sachsenhausen or Ebbelwei district to take in the fall leaves. I had some recommendations in that area for food at various Apple Wineries. After dinner I’d get back on the subway to the main train station, then take a train to the airport. Pickup my baggage, check in, go through customs, and fly to Egypt.

As you probably have guessed…that didn’t happen at all. Instead I fitfully tried to sleep, but just couldn’t get comfortable. I was starting to feel unwell (damn sleeping pills! Why did I take you on the plane!) and instead watched Jurassic Park. I just felt so hot. One negative of the new Lufthansa planes, is individual seats do not have control of air like you’d find in other planes. So there was no way to get myself colder or get fresh air on my face to feel better. When breakfast came, it was omelettes. Hating eggs, and not feeling well I picked at it before giving up. This wasn’t an auspicious start to my 2nd day of my trip.