Categories
Maudlin Planning

Redux: The beginning of Goodbye

About 3 years ago, I posted this

The Beginning of GoodBye

It is happening again.

We were in our favorite place in Egypt, Dahab last month.

We were staying with our dear friends, Nina and Mikas, at their extremely cozy guest house, Dahab Coach House.

We dive with Sinai Divers Backpackers and have loads of friends there: Pritesh, Kasia, Yvonne, Vivienne, Shadi, Khaled, Synthia.

And we realized that, well, we have to start saying good-bye to people. Again.  I am not good at this. I like to just slink off.

There is a Seinfeld episode that goes something like this:

George decides he wants to break up with his girlfriend. He finally works up the courage to sit her down and explain that it just isn’t working out.

He goes through a lot of the cliches: “it’s not you, it’s me” “time to move one” etc.

She stops for a minute and says: “No”.

She does not allow him to break up with her.

As we were attempting to say good-bye, our friends in Dahab said “”No, this isn’t good bye. You must come back one more time before you leave”

I felt like George, in that episode.

And so it goes.

We are trying to figure out how, in the next 8 weeks, we are going to pack everything up, wrap up all the loose ends for both our jobs,  co-ordinate a cross-the-world-relocation, AND sneak in at least another long weekend with our friends in Dahab.

It seems that the dust in my eye here is just as bad as the dust on that street in Vancouver.

Categories
Planning

Elvis is leaving the building!

Well, we will powering down the WAP and tucking it into a suitcase
and heading out for dinner.

After dinner, we drop off the rental car and camp out at the airport
for an OH:Dark:30 flight.

We go to Philly for 90 minutes and a quick plane change, then off
to Frankfurt (for an 8 hour layover) and then Cairo.

We scored “Envoy” class (USCAIR business class) upgrades
(THANK YOU SARA!!) for the Sea->Philly->Frankfurt parts of the trip,
so that will be verra nice.

The last few weeks have been a blurr. It has been exhausting
saying good bye to people several times/day. Sometimes the same
people 🙂

We look forward to our adventures and we look forward to a time
when we can share them with you in person.

Remember: If you want to come visit, let us know. But book early,
we already have 2 sets of ticketed visitors and _we_ want to travel
some too while we are there 🙂

Categories
Planning

Visitors to Cairo take note

I have read that visitors to Egypt are allowed to purchase 4 liters of alcohol duty free withing 48 hours of arrival. I have read conflicting reports on what one is allowed to bring along in personal baggage…
There is a duty free shop in the airport and a few others in Cairo (and other tourist destinations).

I have been instructing friends and family that if they come visit, the “cost” of their lodging at chez jack and kaddee will be 4 liters of alcohol. I’ll meet you at the airport, take you to duty free and I’ll even pay for the booze, but I’ll need your passport.

Today I found a link to the Egypt Free Shops. Not a great selection of single malts, but it is better than nothing and the prices are pretty good.