Monday, April 12, 2004

How to get back to Cairo?

We didn't anticipated that the train to Cairo will be full, although we had knew that it's a public holiday here. We still slowly enjoyed the night scene of Alexandria, and by the time we reached the Masr train station and unable to get even third class train ticket, we panicked, as we didn't prepared anything to overnight there.

Here, we met with a young pretty Egyptian lady who taught us how to get to the bus station after helped us to ask again that the train ticket was fully booked. She suggested we took a taxi there, as it's quite a distance from Masr train station, and told us that locals usually pay EGP 3.5 only. Ended up, we paid EGP 8 tourist price.

The bus station should be near the Sidi Gaber train station, but I was not sure. Anyway, we managed to get the bus ticket to Cairo at 12.30 am, and it costs EGP 35 each. But the bus (supposedly from Superjet company) was very clean and well maintained.


At bus station, we met with 4 Palestinian students who studied in University in Cairo. Here 2 of them. With them, I was not got lost again when bus reached Cairo, because the bus made not just one, but several stops to alight passengers. The last one supposed to be at Turgoman Garage, but they helped us to alight at Cairo downtown, where was closer to our hotel.

We reached Cairo at 3.30 am. The street in Downtown Cairo was completely empty. By the time we got back to the Safari Hotel, it was already curfew time. We had to shout and woke up the warden to open the door for us. Luckily he just slept at the lobby.

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