Well, our last journal entry mentioned our excitement at checking out Alexandria. How quickly things can change. The day of our last entry was also the day that Israel and the US initiated a military operation against Iran and the serious reaction from Iran that affected the full Middle East region. Here is how it all played out.

Sunday was our monthly office day. It’s cooler in Alexandria than we expected with highs right around 60 degrees. The apartment is cold by our standards and Salma and her mom have been awesome. They think we are crazy because we are cold (they don’t use heat in the winter), but they brought us a space heater and it is really nice to have. There is a mall across the street, so we walked over to the food court to get lunch – it has been a while since we had McDonald’s and it was our choice. It was good enough. After our work was finished for the day, we walked the corniche along the Mediterranean Sea to have dinner at a restaurant called Napton because our first choice was closed. Napton turned out to not have the food we were looking for (pizza) and so we had a couple of beers there and shared a Greek salad and then we walked to Pizza Hut. We were trying to think of the last time we had Pizza Hut and we are pretty sure it was in Mongolia. And once again, it was really good pizza. Back at the apartment, I watched the St. Pete Indy Car race and then we watched Frasier before going to bed.

Monday, Sandy got our laundry done (which took all day because the shortest wash cycle on this machine was 2.5 hours) and then we went across to the grocery store in the mall. What a nice store. It is called Fresh Food Market. Lots of space and great food options. It reminded me of a mix between Whole Foods Market/Fresh Market/Trader Joe’s, but a little more space and not quite as big. We were very excited to have that option right across from the apartment. We always check our receipts as sometimes errors are made and the cashier put in the wrong price for our cherry tomatoes. It didn’t take too long to get the refund of about $7 processed. I worked on our 2025 taxes on Monday and managed to get them completed by the end of the day. For dinner, we cooked steaks, baked potatoes, and spinach and then shared one of the delicious chocolate chip cookies from the grocery store’s bakery and the store’s brand French Dark Chocolate ice cream.

And then yesterday came along and things changed quickly. Suffice to say that yesterday and today have been a crazy couple of days.  We are signed up for the STEP (Smart Traveler Enrollment Program) through the US travel department, so we get notifications for whatever country we’ve indicated we are in.  We also use WhatsApp and follow the US travel department on it, so we see notices about areas of concern around the world.  

We were planning to stay in Alexandria for 12 nights.  Soon after arriving, we knew that Alexandria was going to be the favorite place we stayed in Egypt.  Our apartment was beautiful. 

The Airbnb hosts (a mother and her 24-year-old daughter) were incredible!  We bonded immediately with them and made plans with them for the next week.  We had a great gym a five-minute walk away, a mall/entertainment and Fresh Food Market across the street, as well as a nine-mile long corniche across the road along the Mediterranean Sea for walking/running.  The air quality was much better than the other cities.  It was going to be comfortable, inexpensive, and extremely convenient. Of course we were watching the news and staying cautious about how things were feeling in Egypt.  We talked with locals and none of them felt concerned that something would happen in Egypt.  We hadn’t received any notices of concern from STEP, so we put together a great itinerary for the next 12 days to see the sights in the area.  

We woke up yesterday to a WhatsApp alert that indicated Americans should depart now via commercial means due to serious safety risks for 14 countries.  Egypt was one of the countries listed. 

We called the phone number in the message, but they didn’t have any additional information to share. We began figuring out our plan. We had flights purchased to depart Cairo on March 15^th and our layover for that flight was going to be in Abu Dhabi.  Since the Abu Dhabi airport had been closed, we knew it was a possibility the airport wouldn’t be open on the 15th and we would need to make an adjustment.  We decided to fly to Amsterdam as it was direct from Cairo and would provide us with options to get to our next planned destination. Plus, we didn’t need to deal with Visa requirements. We canceled the lodging we had booked in Cairo for 3/12 – 3/14 and we were able to get our money refunded for those three nights. We booked a hotel room in Cairo for the evening. We packed our belongings (Sandy was grateful all the clothes had air dried overnight as we didn’t have a clothes dryer), had a Greek salad since we had already bought all of our weekly groceries, and then Salma and mom came to visit with us for about an hour before we left. We hope that Salma and mom were able to eat the groceries we bought. We took an Uber from Alexandria, 3 hours (only cost $40 USD – crazy…it was cheaper than taking the train), to Cairo. We checked into our hotel and then walked across the street to have dinner at one of the restaurants inside the Renaissance Hotel. We had chicken shawarmas for our last dinner in Egypt for this trip.

This morning, we woke up to messages from the US State Department that Egypt was listed on the alert Tuesday with the 14 countries to evacuate in error and that Egypt remains a level 2 risk (which it has been for months). 

It was 36 hours of sadness and frustration.  We were so sad to leave Alexandria early but wanted to ensure we were safe.  We were frustrated about the error, if we didn’t need to leave early. We had already purchased our flights to Amsterdam, and we were already in Cairo, so we stuck with this new plan. In the big picture, we have an inconvenience and we’ll lose some money, but those things pale in comparison to what many people in the region are going through. The hotel provided breakfast and then we took an Uber to the airport. Check-in was fine. We are usually successful at using any cash we have in a country before we leave. Since we were leaving so abruptly, we had unused Egyptian pounds. We tried to convert them to Euros, but the currency exchange desk didn’t have the correct amount of Euros, so we ended up getting US dollars. Everything felt very normal in the airport. There were a few flights on the board that were canceled but most were on schedule. We each had a turkey sandwich at Starbucks and then our Transavia flight left right on time at 2:10pm. We moved our time back an hour and landed in Amsterdam at 5:50pm. We collected our bags and cleared passport control and then sat down to search for a place to stay for the night on our phones. We decided on Hotel Van Gelder, which is right by the Central Station. Great location. We took the train to Central Station, checked into the hotel room – up four flights of narrow stairs – and then walked the area to find dinner. We decided on Grizzly because they serve Guinness (which I was very much in the mood for) and food. I had a burger and Sandy had a chicken salad. Her beer of choice was Affligem Dubbel.

That’s the recap of our big pivot and early departure from Egypt. We loved our time there and we both said that we thought we would like it but it surprised us how much more we liked it than we expected. It’s a bummer to have left early when we likely didn’t need to, but we’ll make the best of it and see what we come up with while we are in this part of the world.