The "First Class" Train

April 24th
We have a gentle day today and at night time we head out to the night train to Aswan. We are told that there are First class seats which recline back and there are also sleeper cabins, but the sleeper cabins are $120 per person. So we decide on the First class seats....Don’t be fooled people...’First Class’ and ‘Reclining’ are very loose terms here. These are pretty filthy trains which bathrooms are never cleaned and the reclining part of the program means that 4 inches later you are kind of leaning back a little. Our cabin consisted of David, a guy from our hostel named Joseph, and two Egyptian men. The rest of the train was filled with teenage French girls who were running around laughing and talking for most of the night. Before the train started moving Joseph got relocated, evidently the number we thought was on the ticket was a different number. (It was in Arabic so we just kind of had to trust who ever told us.) As Joseph was whisked away a very nice Mexican couple came to sit across from us. Mario and Adriana. It was the fourth day of their world journey. We could tell because their backpacks were very clean and shiny still. They both work as movie producers. Some American movies some commercials and some Mexican movies. They were both really sweet and Mario was super funny. Mario is one of those, you have to see him be funny kind of people. His whole face gets into what he is saying and he has everyone laughing. We talk for a while and then everyone tries to get some sleep. It is hard to sleep on the train even though we had sleeping masks and earplugs in. Every once in a while we would open our eyes and we would see them in a different position, they said the same thing about us.