Berlin Hotel, Cairo

The hotel we had tried to book in advance, the Berlin Hotel , refused to give us a reservation unless they personally picked us up at the airport to guarantee we would keep our reservation, and also to avoid taxi drivers demanding a 'finders fee' for bringing us to their hotel. We didn't want to use Berlin's taxi service, as we had arranged complementary airport pickup from the travel agency which would take us to some outlying pyramids the following day. So, we ended up booking into the Victoria Hotel.

We tried to stay at the Berlin Hotel again. The outside of the building is grungy, and the elevator had long since passed away. 6 flights of stairs later, we were showed to a room which seemed ok. As we were checking in, another guest came out of another room, complaining how loud it was. The owner told him not to worry, that he would switch him rooms. He told us the room he showed us wasn't available, and that we could leave our bags with him, and he would move our bags to the room (or one similar) when it was cleaned. I specified with him that it would NOT be the room that the other guest had just complained about.

Fast forward to when we came back to our room at the end of the day. Of course, it WAS the room the other guest had complained about. Luckily, we hadn't paid yet. We screamed and complained, and of course no other rooms were available. At this point, we only had one more night left, and we had really had it with being screwed over by unscrupulous businesses. We grabbed our bags and left the hotel. We wandered the area and eventually settled at the Lotus Hotel.

This is part of a larger trip report from a backpacker's trip to Egypt.
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