From Lake Buynonyi, we had an 8-hour bus ride to Kampala. When we got in, we grabbed a taxi straight to the (other) bus office to book our tickets to Nairobi the next day. The next morning, we ran errands, sending postcards and exchanging money, before getting on the 1pm bus to Nairobi.

The 14-hour bus ride to Nairobi got us into the city around 2am, but we were prepared — we had reserved a room at the Downtown hotel earlier that day. We managed to get a taxi to the hotel and got 5 hours of sleep before getting up to run more errands (internet and gift-shopping) before heading to the airport.

We still had a lot of traveling before us: a 5-hour flight to Doha, Qatar, then a 14-hour layover there before our 3-hour flight to Cairo. But that long layover was all part of the plan.

When we had booked our flight from Delhi to Nairobi way back in India, the Qatar Airways agent told us that the airline would put us up in a hotel since we had a long layover and there was no other flights we could have caught earlier. (We didn’t end up getting the hotel because we met up with Matt, see: Qatar in A Day)

We had the option of flying directly to Cairo from Nairobi, but armed with this knowledge, we had intentionally booked the long layover Cairo on Qatar Airways, in hopes of more good Middle Eastern food, some shisha and a decent, clean hotel room for a change of pace.

As we boarded the plane, we were giddy for the good food and free wine coming our way (Lauren: Looking forward to airplane food — always the sign of budget backpackers). After eating and drinking, we rested and soon arrived in Qatar around 10pm.

We stood in the layover line, waiting to see if we actually would be able to snag a hotel. While we waited, we watched in disappointment as person after person was turned away and told that their ticket did not guarantee a room for them. We resigned ourselves to sleeping in the airport, grateful, at least, that it was a clean airport that had plenty of room to stretch out and an internet port.

As our turn came, Lauren made me do the talking (Lauren: hoping, of course, that Beth could put on more professional yes-we-have-money airs than I). I put on my best “business mode” and said, “your agent in Nairobi told us we should inquire about a hotel room for the evening, since we have an unavoidable layover here.”

The woman nodded and took our passports. “Is it okay for you to share a room?” she asked. We nodded and suppressed grins as she started typing. The next thing we knew, we had a voucher in our hand for a night in the Marriott, with dinner (a second dinner, since we had one on the airplane), breakfast and refreshments included. She directed us outside (our visas we also paid for the airline) to the Marriott bus that was waiting for us.

When we arrived at the Marriott, it wasn’t the dingy airport hotel we were half expecting. It was, in fact, a full four-star hotel, complete with swimming pool and multiple restaurants.

We checked in, still trying to keep straight faces. Lauren asked about internet access and the woman told us it was gratis, and gave us a wireless internet access password. We headed up to our room and when we entered, we could not stop laughing out loud. It was huge, with two beds, a decent view and an amazing, pristine bathtub that neither of us had seen the likes of since we’d left the U.S.

We booted up the computer and logged onto the internet. We were hundreds of photos behind because the whole time we were in Africa, we were never able to get fast enough internet access to upload more than 15 photos in an hour.

We started uploading photos and were blown away when one photo uploaded within 10 seconds, right before our eyes. We set up 40 photos to upload and ran downstairs to get dinner before the restaurant closed.

When we arrived, we discovered dinner was an enormous buffet of Middle Eastern foods and other cuisines, waiting for the taking. We started loading up plates of food (Lauren, being a much better master of the art of the buffet than I, managed to cram a taste of every dish on her plate) and gorged ourselves, barely speaking except for me to say, “we have to act like we haven’t been starving for the last three months.”

We decided to take a look around the hotel before heading back up to our room. Outside, we found the swimming pool (complete with a bar, though it was closed at that hour and we hadn’t thought to bring bathing suits) and a guard told us about a club around the corner that we didn’t end up going to.

On the way upstairs, we heard music and decided to explore. We discovered an Irish pub on the second floor — and more importantly that it was (almost) St. Patrick’s day and they were celebrating it here that night.

We sat down and watched the Irish (real Irish!) band play Irish tunes. We decided that it would be sacrilege not to order some Guinness’s. But when they came, we found out we couldn’t charge them to our room.

I left to go to the room and get my credit card, but when I returned, Lauren told me an Irish guy had bought the drinks for us — and, better yet, he wasn’t expecting anything in return (no conversation, no one night stand, no marriage for a greencard… wait, where were we??).

We finished our beers and headed back to the room, staying up until 2 or 3 a.m. working on uploaded photos, blogs and unsent emails while taking turns bathing in the amazing bathtub. We finally collapsed into bed.

The next morning, we went downstairs to discover another amazing buffet for breakfast, which we inhaled before catching the hotel bus back to the airport. (Lauren: I had blue cheese and milk….) We hadn’t spent a dime in the last 24 hours, but we had gotten two dinners and breakfast, the nicest hotel we could expect and had uploaded more than 700 photos and sent a dozen emails. It was about as close to heaven as we could expect.