Day 12 - Cairo to Nantwich - March 20, 2023

We have made it back to Nantwich after quite a long day. It started with our 6 am pick up at the hotel for the trip to the airport. It was early so the traffic was not that bad and the driver was nice enough to stop a couple of times for us to take pictures.

The trip did really emphasise how far out of Cairo we really were. We passed over the Nile and right by the Egyptian Museum on our way out the other side of the city to the airport, arriving just before 7 am, nice and early for our flight to Brussels leaving at 9:45.

For some reason I had it in my head that I wanted to visit Burger King, partly to see what it was like here and partly to use up a bunch of the Egyptian pounds that we still had. With inflation the way it is, it makes little sense to keep it though, as a collector, I made sure to have a nice example of each bill for my collection. As we had been told, Burger King (and McDonalds) is out of the reach of most Egyptians as it is simply too expensive. The food held no surprises though did take quite a time to prepare and the staff did not seem to be in too much of a hurry.

Believe it or not Burger King was not the exception as far as food offerings were concerned, there was also a branch of “The Pasty Shop” and “Costa”, both from the UK. This was not a place where you could find a cultural meal, evidently.

I reluctantly watched Egypt fall behind us as the plane took us on the first leg of our journey home. Brussels was fairly uneventful when we arrived at about 1:30 pm. We had some time before our connecting flight to Heathrow at 4:50 pm and the gate was not even announced yet so we had some chips, French fries as we were in a country where these are a national dish. At €22.50 for chips with a chunky chicken gravy I am not sure our example was worth it but it did manage to fill some of the time for us.

As it turns out we had to walk quite some way for our flight. To our delight the Brussels Airlines plane was painted with figures from another famous icon of Belgium, the Smurfs! Even inside there were Smurfs painted on the walls: “The Smurf crew wishes you a Smurfy trip”.

We arrived at Heathrow on time and had no problems getting through customs and security with my new British passport. Less than an hour after arriving, the car was retrieved by the staff at the multi-story car park in a lot less time then we had to wait when we dropped it off. Our trip back home to Nantwich was uneventful though we did make sure to take our time and stop for something to eat along the way.

The cat is happy to see us and looks like she doesn't want us to use our luggage again any time soon.

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