Hindsight Is 20/20
Dear Mike and Katie 2 Days Ago,
When you get to Cairo, whatever you do…DO NOT, we repeat, DO NOT rent a car from Budget and drive to your hotel as planned. Not only will the Budget guy be the shadiest character you have ever encountered, but your “2008 car” will actually be a 2003 Daewoo with stained seats, broken windows, a large crack in the windshield, a non-functioning radio and nothing but zip-ties in the glove compartment that were probably used for previous kidnappings. Also, since the Budget “office” is actually a 3 ft-by-3 ft glass box filled to the brim with cigarette ashes and broken dreams and absolutely no maps of the city of Cairo, you will be forced to drive 15 miles with two forty-year-old Egyptian men ( in your one remaining back seat not occupied by your luggage) instructing you which roads to take to your hotel. After you drop these random men off in the middle of the “highway” and watch them run across 8 lanes of traffic, you will then have to drive an additional 35 miles to your Le Meridien Hotel Motel 6 while surviving and/or avoiding camels, horses, everyone driving in-between marked lanes, long stretches of road without marked lanes and men hoisting 10-foot tables over “highway” medians.
Long story short…DO NOT rent the car. Take a cab. Take a bus. Heck, take a camel for all we care. The car is a BAD IDEA. Trust us.
xoxo,
Katie & Mike Today
June 2nd, 2009 at 19:19
I should have warned you about Cairo. I can’t believe you tried to drive there! There are no “rules of the road” whatsoever and crossing the street is a definite death wish. Cairo is like no place I’ve ever been – it is overwhelming, fascinating, disturbing, disgusting, beautiful. I was terrified and exhilerated all at once. I stayed at the JW Mariott in Zamalek (home to US and British expats and the swankiest address before WWII). I was originally staying with a friend from Barnard who was completing her Fulbright Scholarship, but she literarlly had a manic episode/psychotic break and tossed me out of her flat in Mohandiseen. Luckily, my mom is a Mariott Rewards Member (yay parents!) and I got to spend my last 3 days in a former palace instead of a shady hostel somewhere.
Good luck!