When we got to Cairo (drove from Israel), the government confiscated our hotel for some reason of another earlier in the day. A replacement was found in downtown Cairo - a beautiful 1/4 star hotel, the Hotel Tonsi. Main course consisted of chicken and stars soup and a forgettable roasted animal offering. The building was not entirely dedicated to human habitation, as we could hear the lowing of cattle and bleating of sheep as the elevator went by the floors where they were quartered.
But the exhibit was huge and saw lots of gold this-that-and-the-other.
On our flight out, we took TWA 847, piloted by Capt. John Testrake. Yep, same flight number and pilot as the one that was hijacked - we missed it by a couple of weeks.
We saw the Tut exhibit in Chicago. We took our then young kids.
Your mention of flying out of Cairo on the same flight as Testrake reminded me of a flight my husband and I took out of Amsterdam in September 1970. Two flights had been skyjacked from Amsterdam, September 6, just before we flew out and security was extremely tight. They took every thing, including my purse, away from me. I didn't start feeling safe until we passed Ireland.
When we got back to USA some suspicious (blackpanther types to me) paid cash for first class seats on our continuing flight and then paced back and forth before entering the plane. This was from LaGuardia to Birmingham. I just knew we were going to be taken to Cuba.
This wasn't an unreasonable fear since a friend of mine had been highjacked to Cuba on a flight from Minneapolis to Miama by the Black Panthers. She and her baby were there overnight and flown back to US.