Will has always wanted to go to Egypt, like always. And I've always wanted to go too but we've never quite found the right time. Right after we got married the whole Arab Spring happened and Egypt hasn't quite made the news for such position reasons. While we both generally think the media overhypes threats around the world, we also keep in mind that there have been cases when a random photographer or tourist get held as hostages and while the US is trying to bail them out, everyone else is thinking, "You just had to go there, huh?" So yea, we never want to be those people so we've passed on Egypt many times before. However, it didn't look like Egypt was going to be getting any better any time soon and from people I spoke to and the research I did online, it was starting to get less risky to go. In researching all of the destinations we could go to with our credit card miles, we found that a lot of flights from Thailand to London naturally had a layover in Cairo. This seemed like the perfect compromise. While most of the layovers were only about 4 hours, I worked it out with our United/EgyptAir points that we could extend the layover so it would be a full day (6am-6pm) without any additional costs! It was perfect because while we didn't feel quite comfortable staying in Egypt for an extensive time on our own, a full day tour of Cairo was exactly what we needed to last us until that area got better and we could come back for a longer trip. Cairo is small, all of the main destinations are a close proximity of each other, and we could knock out all the big attractions! Since Cairo was a little intimidating, we decided to hire a tour company or something. There were a bunch of companies that specialized in layover tours that picked you up and dropped you off at the airport but ultimately we decided on Egyptian Sidekick. Egyptian Sidekick actual has an amazing premise. Rather than being on a group tour with lots of stops at tourist trap stores you don't even want to go to, you're charged one flat rate for a half day or an entire day and you get to go where you want. We did the full day which was $140 for the both of us and we got picked up at the airport by our private driver. Along with him, we had a local Egyptian University student who spoke perfect English who functioned as our "sidekick": tour guide, negotiator, and general companion for the day. It was amazing because we were able to go wherever we wanted and since we had a driver and a separate guide, the driver was able to just drop us off and we didn't have to worry about parking or waiting or anything of that and then later he would be back to pick us up wherever our guide told him to meet us. While there was a slight debacle in meeting our driver at the airport (the reopening of the Suez Canal caused a ton of traffic and so he wasn't there when we arrived, and that was a mess), we got to see a lot in one day. Here's a picture of Tahrir Square, the main meeting point for all of the demonstrations.
