Off to Egypt - Fly Day

After being home for two weeks and getting everything caught up, we decide to be impulsive once again and take another trip before June ended.  We head to the book store and return with books on Egypt and a book of Arabic phrases.  We are set -- ha ha.  We do a little research online and map out an itinerary of sorts listing where we want to go and search out the best ways to travel within the country and decide to go for it.  Once again, we are going without booking anything ahead of time and flying standby -- another adventure has begun!

An early 3 a.m. rising and off to the airport with Cassie to catch the 7:10am flight out to Washington Dulles.  We settle into some comfortable chairs in front of the Jet Blue gate where Cassie is working and relax for awhile just people watching.



We head down to our gate and are able to get seats on the plane.  I overhear the gate agents talking about how the flight crew is not scheduled to arrive at DFW until around 9:30 -- what???  Apparently the plane had arrived late last night and the crew was not able to work the flight this morning due to time restrictions and a new crew was on it's way.  The announcement followed shortly after, so Mister and I head off to some quiet area of the terminal to take naps.  After waking, we go back to the terminal to discover that it is still delayed -- ugh.  After a 3 hour delay, we finally depart for Washington Dulles and settle in to sleep for awhile.  Once again, Mister is way more successful than I am at sleeping on airplanes.  Fortunately, we have a long layover in Washington so the delay isn't a problem.  Upon arrival, we locate the gate for our flight to Frankfurt, Germany and are shocked that it is this tiny, cramped gate at the end of the terminal.  This is an international flight -- where on earth are all the people going to wait?  A group of teenagers heading to Europe sit around us and we are entertained by them while we wait.  We also notice a Middle Eastern family with young girls all decked out in new cowboy hats and smile about it.

I grab a pretzel and munch while the plane starts the boarding process.  The flight is way overbooked and has over 30 people on standby, so we are pretty sure we'll have to try a later flight, but stay and wait anyway.  Watching the screens to see the standby names, I am still pretty sure that we will not make the flight, but --- woohoo!, they call our names and off we go to Frankfurt.  It is 5:30 and we will be arriving at 7 in the morning.



We settle in our seats -- amazing, but they are together on a side of a 2-5-2 seating and in extra legroom space with footrests and individual pop-up televisions.  Within the first hour after we are airborne, dinner is served and then we spend the next couple of hours watching movies before trying to sleep -- Mister succeeds, I watch more movies.  Day one is behind us.