As you may have already figured out, I’m not normally a travel blogger. Outside of my dump of photos from previous birthdays spent in Tulum, Mexico, and the Maldives in this post and my flash fiction series inspired by my cruise to Alaska, I very rarely talk about my travels on this blog.

As such, when I take photos and record videos, the sole purpose is to create memories, not content. And sometimes I don’t even think to do that because I’m too busy relishing the moment, enjoying the experience of being in a place where I once could only dream of being. So please excuse the occasional grainy cellphone photo or, in the case of this post, no photo at all.

You see, on this trip, we visited two perfume palaces—one in Cairo and the other in Aswan—and while I’m sure you would’ve loved for me to have at least filmed a reel of all the different fragrances on the shelves or taken a snapshot of the various style of perfume bottles and incense burners or even the lavish furniture we sat on in the private back room, where the sales agent explained to us the difference between perfume and essence.

But if I did that, would I really remember everything that was said? And would I remember enough to come home and tell you just how much those overpriced name-brand perfumes are ripping us off?

Well, ripping y’all off. I’m way too cheap to buy expensive perfume. That is, until Egypt. But here’s why…

Note: I had some technical difficulties posting “C” last night, so if you missed that one, click the link at the end of this post. 🙂

I promise you, posts about the specific places we visited in Egypt are coming, eventually, but first we must discuss just how difficult it was to get there.

As I said in “Arrival,” we faced many obstacles. I had no idea what to wear, my visa was denied, we missed the window to book the direct flight, our bags were overweight…

And to top it all off, every single one of our flights was delayed. And they were delayed for the most bizarre of reasons. Let me explain…

The majority of our nine-day tour of Egypt was spent cruisin’ up the Nile.

By the way, did you know that the river Nile flows north? So going up the river actually means going south.

The itinerary began with an early morning domestic flight from Cairo to Luxor, and our cruise was from Luxor to Aswan.

To backtrack just a little bit, we arrived in Cairo at around 12AM Sunday morning. We checked into our hotel at 2AM, squeezed in a few hours of sleep, and got up again at 7AM to begin a long Day 1 of sightseeing in Giza, Saqqara, and Memphis (future posts). Day 1 ended with a trip to Mall of Arabia, where Mama bought an extra suitcase so we wouldn’t have an issue with overweight bags coming back home. When we returned to the hotel at the end of the day, it was again late, and our flight to Luxor was scheduled for 7AM Monday, which meant we had to be ready to leave the hotel by 5AM.

It was starting to look like we wouldn’t get any sleep this trip.

When I was in high school, I traveled to Spain with my Spanish class for spring break. It was my first time out of the country and also my Sweet Sixteen. In that week, I saw a bullfight, swam in the Mediterranean, watched a flamenco show, partied the night away on a riverboat cruise on the río Guadalquivir in Seville, and toured many sights in Madrid and Andalusia. It was truly a birthday to remember, and I bought A LOT of souvenirs—some for myself but most of them for family and friends.

I bought so much stuff that when I came across a beautiful flamenco dress while browsing in a souvenir shop in Costa Del Sol, I decided not to spend the €80 to purchase it because I didn’t think I had enough money. When I returned home, Mom, who was monitoring my bank account, confirmed that I had in fact overdrawn it but assured me she would have deposited more money, so I could’ve bought the dress.

It was crushing to hear, but from that moment forward, I decided in my heart that whenever I traveled somewhere, if I saw something that I really wanted, particularly if it was something unique to that culture, such as an item of clothing, I was gonna buy it and worry about the money later.

However, there still should be a limit on how much money that is…

It’s finally April, and I’ve returned from my month-long hiatus to tell you all about what I’ve been up to while away.

So where did I go? Well, it may be April Fool’s Day, but I’m not playing you for a fool. As the title of this blog post implies, I did in fact go to Egypt, and it was an incredible experience!

However, it started off kind of rocky…or should I say turbulent.