No Other Way – You Have To Land In The Middle Of The Night, Cairo Egypt

Getting there is half the battle and in this case it’s true.  I am of course being US centric.  From Europe, say Amsterdam, the flight is a little over 4 hours to Cairo.  However, from the US, and for us from the West Coast, it takes forever.  It takes nearly 10 hours flying time from SFO to Amsterdam.  And if you are not spending time in Amsterdam, you are looking at 8 hours or so of layover at the airport before boarding a flight in the evening to Cairo.  (And if you are spending time in Amsterdam, which I recommend, like we did on our most recent trip, check out my earlier posts on Amsterdam under January and February 2010.)

There are other flights to Cairo besides KLM.  Both times that we have traveled to Egypt, KLM flying out of San Francisco, offered the lowest airfare to Cairo.  KLM also offered the lowest airfare from NY to Cairo.  British Airways is another good choice to Egypt, again we went with the lowest fare available.

KLM is very kid friendly.  It offers baby bassinets that attach in front of the bulk head seats.  At the beginning of the flight, all the kids receive little goodie bags containing colored pencils, origami, card games etc…The flight attendants are also laid back, friendly and helpful.  Snacks are plentiful.

The downside of course is the ten hour layover in Amsterdam!  Our solution on our first trip was to get a room at the airport hotel for the day.  The Hotel Mercure, although conveniently located inside the airport, is a bare bones operation.  Our room was a windowless, dark, back packer standard room.  However, we all slept for about 6 hours, showered and ventured out to central Amsterdam which was about 15 minutes by train.  The more civilized solution is to schedule a stay in Amsterdam.

Flights to and from Egypt land and depart at ungodly hours.  Our KLM flight left at 8:45pm from Amsterdam and arrived in Cairo at 1am – yes that’s right, 1:00 in the morning.  On the return flight we left our hotel in Cairo at midnight (we woke our girls up and left them in their pajamas on the drive to the airport) to catch a flight to Amsterdam which left Cairo at 3am – yes, this is not a mistake, 3:00 in the morning.  Yikes!

October 2007, August 2009