Last Day. Worst Day.

Sunday was our last day in Egypt and since we had to leave for the airport at noon there was not enough time to do anything significant, so we wandered around Cairo soaking in the sun and avoiding the skeevy boys who jeered at us. Near the Nile was a cute little garden that we tried to go in, but the guard kicked us out because you needed a ticket. I took a picture of the square near the exclusive garden because it had that statue in it. Most of the squares had a statue of a man in a fez in the center.

We walked to a little park near out hostel and were going to try to go into the mosque, but it was closed.So we sat on a bench and took pictures and wrote the hostel a little note which mentioned something about us being indebted to them because without their affordable tours we would have been lost in the desert somewhere. Which is completely true, they saved us with their tours.



We wandered some more and came across a Catholic church, which seemed very out of place especially since it was right across the street from a mosque. When it got closer to 12 we walked back to the hostel to get our things and wait for our driver. Only, the elevator is shut down from 8AM to 3PM so we had to walk up 9 floors.


So the morning was fun, the trouble began when we got to the airport. The driver tried to drop us off at Terminal 1 which was domestic arrivals, but some airport people yelled at him and eventually we pointed him in the direction of Terminal 3 which was our international departures. Once there, the security guard would not let us through and showed us the flight register which our names were not on. At this point I began to panic. He walked us over to the counter where we were told that our flight was not scheduled until Wednesday. I don't know how it happened but somehow we completely overlooked the return flight dates on our confirmation. We were directed to another counter where, since our original tickets were non-transferable we had to purchase whole new tickets to leave on Sunday, which we had to do because we had no place to go and no more money. (My bankcard doesn't seem to work outside of European Union countries, joy!) So we agreed. It was very painful, but we had too much work to do when we got back and couldn't miss 3 days of classes on top of it all. I wish I could say April Fool's!, but sadly this is a true story. Lesson learned: the airlines send you a confirmation for a reason, check the dates before you leave the country where you have food and a place to sleep.