Starting with an early flight at 5 AM is not ideal… it meant I needed to travel the evening before, so I left home at around 10PM to take the last possible connection to Schiphol that day.

Arriving just after midnight I noticed how most shops and bars were closed with the exception of the standard hamburger “restaurant”. Check-in was not open yet… I had to wait at least 2 hours until I could drop off my bags. I just found a quiet place at the airport and dozed for a bit.

Then finally I could check in… having a bit of bureaucratic nonsense with the Martinair Overweight/Divegear policy meant that I needed to check in my overweight bag at a different counter… that should open at 02:30… but did not open until 3. I figured I needed to wait anyway so I was not really worried, only a little frustrated as I had not really had any sleep. Then finally all was settled, emptied my waterbottle went thru the final check before boarding, refilled my bottle and got on the plane.

On the Martinair flight I could not really sleep either, a baby in the row before me and some noisy guys behind me (I got to know them quite well, later on) meant I remained awake for the first hour or so. After that I managed to doze a bit again.
We arrived during day time, which was new to me. I got to see desert, Nile and Luxor from the air. Great. We landed 10 minutes ahead of schedule or so, also good.