While visiting friends in Cairo a few weeks ago we took a "relatively" short drive, depending on the often horrible traffic, through Cairo to the Giza Pyramids. As soon as we arrived and parked on the street outside we were met by the first of many sellers of tours, horse and camel rides.

Entry for non-Egyptians was 60 Egyptian Pounds, about 10 U.S. Dollars at the current exchange rate. After passing through a metal detector we started the walk up the hill to the pyramids. Along the ...

During my short trip to Paris I had one day by myself. Having already seen the Eiffel Tower and Louvre Museum in past trips I asked around for another suggested destination. Brian suggested the Catacombs of Paris Museum. The Museum is open 10am to 5pm every day except Monday with the last entry at 4pm as it takes at least 40 minutes to walk the entire museum.

From their website the description of the Catacombs reads:

The Catacombs gather the remainders of approximately six ...

After flying to Paris in Continental's BusinessFirst I spent a few days with friends and visited the Catacombs. The next leg of my Aeroplan award was one segment on EgyptAir (MS) in business class from Paris (CDG) to Cairo. Many of my friends that lived in Europe and Cairo shook their head saying I would not like the flight and thought I should have booked another carrier, but I was pleasantly surprised.

As with checkin, boarding was delayed and ...

After flying to Paris in Continental's BusinessFirst I spent a few days in Paris with friends and visited the Catacombs.  The next leg of my Aeroplan award was an EgyptAir flight from Paris to Cairo. After arriving at CDG I walked through Terminal 1 past the checkin for Swiss, Lufthansa and other airlines. Each checkin desk was relatively calm as most of their flights had departed in the morning. As I rounded the bend to checkin area 1 for EgyptAir I was met with a mass of people queued ...

Since Aeroplan had their recent unannounced "award sale" I transferred some American Express miles to book an Aeroplan award to visit friends in Paris and Cairo. For the first leg I booked a BusinessFirst seat on Continental's United's 757-200 service from Newark (EWR) to Paris (CDG). After visiting the poorly appointed and spartan United Club near gate C71, I boarded my flight and settled into my seat. The flight was lightly loaded, surprisingly not a nonrev in sight, so I had the seat next ...