Travel Travails

AUC buys our tickets to Cairo. They say that we can make a stop over where ever
we want, and we just pay the difference between the direct fare and the fare for
our itinerary. Fair enough.

We notified them that we wanted to stop over in Europe for 2 weeks.
It is meant to be our sanity break. 2 weeks with nothing left to
pack, no deadlines. Just hanging out. Ahhh, pure bliss.

The plan is to fly into Paris or Amsterdam. Those 2 were chosen
because the goal of this trip is to go to Belgium and tour
a few of the monastery breweries and in general drink some
of the best beer in the world, near or at where it is produced.

Flying into Brussels is prohibitive in both price and scheduling.
For instance, it would add approx $1k to EACH ticket AND require
a flight from Brussels to somewhere else, with a 6 hour layover
and then a flight into Cairo that arrives around 3am. Blech.

But flying into Amsterdam or Paris is cheap, they have decent
connections to Cairo, and are a relatively quick train ride
to Brussels.

Anyway, we have been communicating with the nice folks at AUC
and they told us we could do this if we want, but that luggage
rules will work against us.

If we fly “direct” from the US to Cairo, we fly under international
rules for luggage and weight restrictions.

That means that we are each allowed 2 bags with at 50lbs (each) for a
total of 200lbs. [Note, that sounds like a lot, but we have to
live out of those suitcases for up to a month until our shipment
arrives from Seattle.]

If we do a layover in Europe, we have to fly from our European
airport to Cairo under “European” rules. Which limit us to
1 bag of checked luggage and 40 lbs, for a total of 80lbs.

If they allow us to check 2 bags each, there is an additional
bag fee (not sure what that is) and a ~$4/lb fee.

So that is potentially 112lb * $4 = $448.

On top of the extra cost of the ticket, train fares, car rental,
hotels, food, beer (mmmm beer).

It is starting to get expensive.

Then there is the recommendation of the nice man from AUC that
said “You might want to consider going to Europe from Cairo
during one of your many AUC holidays….”

Which is fine if I can get the time off my job. (Assuming
I have a job).

Many decisions to make, too many unknowns.