This morning we got up at 4.30, packed our bags and headed down stairs. The receptionist called a cab for us, which showed up very quickly, then we got in and headed out to the airport. This airport had a security check before we even got inside the building, which is something I've never seen before, then we went and checked in. We got our boarding passes then looked through a couple of souvenir shops and found a sticker for the guitar, then went through a passport control section and another security check! Once we got through, we went to grab a snack, but the food was too expensive, and we only had a small amount of lira left, so we just headed to our gate. While we were waiting there, we put the new sticker onto the guitar. The sticker came in a pack of two, so after looking around we gave it to a man who had a bag with a doll in it, so we assumed he must have a little daughter or something and asked if he wanted the other sticker. He was very surprised and very thankful too! I also liked this guy, because earlier there was an old Muslim man doing his prayers on the hard ground, and this guy went over and put his jacket down for him to use. So we felt we did a good deed there. When our boarding was called we had to go through ANOTHER passport control (this airport is crazy!) then we finally got to board the plane. It was very comfy and because I don't think Lyle ever claimed this flight, we had a spare seat next to us so had lots of room as well. I got a quick snooze in on the plane before they brought us out a tray of breakfast food. Best airplane food ever, it was so tasty! We got scrambled eggs with mushrooms, a cheese pastry thing, some salad and muesli. Very nice. Go Turkish Airlines! I got another snooze in after breakfast and didn't wake up until the wheels hit the tarmac (very smoothly!) in Cairo, Egypt! As we were walking off the plane, we saw the guy we'd given the sticker to again, and he asked us what our plans were for our time in Egypt, then gave us his number and invited us to dinner at his house when we were back in Cairo the next week! What a nice guy!! At the first gate we met our TopDeck representative Hani, who took us through and helped us with purchasing our visas and filling out our arrival cards then took us through a ridiculous amount of passport checks and took us out to the car for our transfer to our hotel. He was a very funny guy, and he showed us a bunch of Arabic music, including one song that is actually called El Morgeha Song, (search el morge7a on youtube) but we could never remember the name, so we called it "Ben Ten Lifou", which, phonetically, sounds vaguely like the Arabic translation of "from the bottom to the top" which is what the song is about. We drove about 45 minutes or so to the hotel having a good chat and joke around with him, and watching the antics of crazy Egyptian traffic! He showed us a video on his phone of his daughter dancing, then showed us a video of him dancing which was what his daughter was trying to imitate! So funny! We eventually got to the hotel, where he helped check us in, then we said goodbye and headed up to our room for another snooze. A few hours later we got up again and went down to the lobby where we met Ramzy, who would be our tour leader for the next week. We sat down with him where we had a bit of a briefing about the trip. We all got along straight away, he was a very cool guy. We found out we weren't the only ones on the tour the whole time as we'd been told, because they were combining us with the group from a longer tour for most of it, and for the whole time if we bought the upgrade which would mean we would stay on a cruise ship on the Nile for three nights. Then we found out about the local tax... This was a $190 EACH payment that we were supposed to make at the start of the tour. And this was the first we'd heard about it. We booked it through a travel agent, and she hadn't mentioned it to us once. So that was a very unpleasant surprise. So after chatting with Ramzy for a bit, he gave us some advice for what to say while emailing the travel agent, then we spent some time trying to reshuffle our rapidly dwindling budget to see what kind of damage we were looking at, and if we could afford to do the upgrade or not I spent a lot of time talking to dad and Lachie on Facebook trying to see how much off our money dad had to transfer to us, and also spent a lot of time with our Internet banking and a calculator! Crazy. Eventually we decided to do the upgrade, as you almost break even again anyway, as it includes all your meals for three days, then went back upstairs for some more TV and sleep time! (Damn travel days!) We went downstairs again at 7pm where we met the guys from the other tour who we would be joining for the week, Steve from Sydney, Sophie from Hobart, and Nikki and Brittany from Altona. We had a bit of a chat then walked together with Ramzy down to an ATM then to a restaurant up the street. We had a nice dinner, and had a good chat and a laugh with every one. It seemed like a really good group so we were pretty happy with that! We're always a bit nervous now after our weird experience in the Morocco tour! (Thank god for Lindsay and Keith on that tour!) When we were done at the restaurant Ramzy went through the itinerary for the next day, then we paid before heading around to the supermarket. We bought some water (can't drink the tap water here as its highly chlorinated and would make us sick) and some hand sanitizer (for before meals and after handling money, again don't need to get sick!) then went back to the hotel. Nikki and Brittany went up to bed and we stayed in the lobby and had a beer with Steve and Sophie, used the wifi and had a chat and laugh together before heading up shortly after and going to bed as well.