en route

First, kudos to Eileen for flying me into and out of Newark. It probably is the most convenient New York-area airport in the end. Easy train service to/from Penn Street Station in Manhattan, and the Newark Airport itself is obviously less crazy than JFK (I’ve never been to LuGuardia).

The best way to fly across the Atlantic is to be so tired that you immediately fall asleep. Usually that doesn’t happen for me, but it did this time. My two German rowmates also happened to be the sedentary type, so they never disturbed my sleep, and other than once when I had to get up and stretch my legs, I went from Newark to London as if by magic.

Heathrow Terminal 5 isn’t actually that horrible in its own right. The bad part is that getting there is one of the most stressful things in any world airport. First you have that long line to get your boarding pass checked, and then you have the most stressful metal detector routine in the world, where it feels like the machine will suck your containers underrground before you clear them out. I know they won’t, but it always feels like they will.

Time to get back to normal life in Cairo, which I will do shortly. Great two weeks in New York, though.