October 29 - Saturday

Finally our dreaded trip home.

We probably got up pretty early for our flight from Cairo to Istanbul it was scheduled for 8:35AM. The guy who checked us in was so thrilled that we had met Dr. Hawass that he said he'd get us good seats. Guess the plane was too full so we had our pre-booked seats. He prioritized our luggage - for no good reason.

A last few pictures and we are off for an uneventful flight to Istanbul.

The problem is we have less then an hour to make our connection from Istanbul to SFO. Norm was a little wound up over this. I think we went through two security lines. When we got on the plane we were among the last to board. This made it so we weren't hassled putting our stuff away. Turns out we are just behind business class. Apparently it's where they put families and children. No big problem.

I had a woman sitting next to me who is a professor going to San Francisco to a conference. I was going to talk with her about SF when she said she had lived in Palo Alto for two years and knew her way around. She never got up to pee and only said about two words the whole trip.

It was a grueling 13 hour flight. We finally went through customs and got our bags. Deb had called Praytap. Luckily he was nearby in Palo Alto so picked us up promptly and got us home  smoothly.

The end of a trip of a lifetime.