Egypt and Libya, March 19 - April 2, 2006 / 20060325_LibyaTitle
Ruth Milner, rmilner plus web at bookofmarvels dot net
The second part of
our trip was the
organized tour to Libya to see the total solar eclipse. The flight from
Cairo to Tripoli was itself uneventful, but our arrival was quite
tense. First there was confusion over the kids' grant-on-arrival visa
approval, even with the officially-stamped letter we were given.
Fortunately the immigration officers called over someone
who understood what it was about. Then the representative from the
Libyan travel company did not meet us as we were told he would (actually
we were told we'd be met before going through immigration). After
more than half an hour hanging around waiting for our baggage, I finally
spotted him talking to someone; he had the company sign tucked away under
his arm - not exactly conspicuous.
At any rate, our bags ultimately showed up,
we got some U.S. dollars exchanged for Libyan dinars, and we got into a
brand-new minivan which took us to our first hotel. There is a very fast
multi-lane highway into the city, but downtown has many small streets.
It took a little while for the driver to find the hotel, but we got there
in the end. Another company rep met us there and helped us check in.
Again we had two rooms. A lot of renovation had been done recently
at the Hotel Tebah
(photo #7 in their gallery looks like the room Sarah and I were in).
The rooms were not large, but they were very clean, and pleasantly furnished
with quirky Western touches, e.g.
the TV remote was stored in a pouch with Winnie-the-Pooh on it, and the
bedspreads in Dale & Matthew's room had a teddy-bear pattern. It seemed
to me that someone had put considerable thought into making their
visitors feel at home. We went
to bed immediately as we were all exhausted, not only from
the stressful evening but also the extremely busy schedule in
Egypt with not a lot of sleep (but about which I would not change a
thing, since it allowed us to see so many wonderful places in a very
short time).
