The Adventure to Aswan

After a few days in Cairo, we opted to head to Upper Egypt. The name is counter intuitive since we actually headed south to Aswan, but since the Nile flows north, the northern part of Egypt from Cairo down to Memphis is deemed Lower Egypt (represented by papyrus), while Lower Egypt include Luxor, the Valley of the Kings and Aswan are considered Upper Egypt (represented by the lotus flower). Here's where the adventure begins... We purchased tickets for the sleeper train from Cairo to arrive Saturday morning in Aswan. Unfortunately, we didn't look at the tickets, but based on the recommendation of the ticket agent, we planned to arrive at the train station by 8:45 p.m. (or at least, that's what we recalled being said). We spent the day at the pyramids and then returned to our hotel around 7 p.m. With some time to kill, we sat around and had a nice cold soft drink and recapped our stay in Cairo. Scott pulled out the tickets around 8 p.m. to double check the time (for the first time) and noticed the tickets said the train departed at 8:10 p.m.! Needless to say, we left in a whirlwind to catch a taxi in the hopes that maybe the tickets were misprinted! Thankfully, we had one of the crazy Cairenne taxi drivers who got us to the Giza station in record time. Naturally, we argued over a reasonable price as we were trying to rush to the station. Luckily, the train was still in the station when we arrived at 8:40 p.m....but all the doors were already closed and the train started to pull away as we watched from the platform! Following Scott's instruction, we both ran ahead to a car with an open door and jumped in! We found ourselves surrounded by Egyptian soldiers yelling "no, no, no" to us, (note: as a tourist in Egypt you can't travel anywhere without being in an armed convoy) but there was no way we were getting off the train. Of course, we ended up being the obnoxious Americans who ended up stopping the train in the station so we could board the regular sleeper train car and then had to proceed to walk through 9 cars until we reached our own cabin...did I mention we had huge hiking packs and were trying to squeeze by the attendents who were already serving dinner to the other passengers on the train?!? This is how the adventure to Aswan began...