Egypt

On 21 November James and I flew to Sharm el Sheikh for a week long holiday in Egypt. The British seem to think of going to Egypt a bit like Americans think of going to Florida, it's funny. Sharm el Sheikh is a beach town on the very tip of the Sinai peninsula, about six hours drive from Cairo. When booking our trip, I noticed that there were quite a lot of hotels, and I should have taken note b/c this town has to be the most touristy place I have ever stayed, save maybe South Padre Island for one of my spring breaks in college. In spite of the garishness of some of the city, we still made the most of it and had an amazing and very relaxing time.

We arrived on Saturday evening, and immediately were met with our first bartering opportunity. We had read and been warned by former travelers to Egypt that you have to barter for everything and anything in Egypt, even in places like pharmacies, and they were right! Bartering for a taxi from the airport was something we expected, and we ended up agreeing on 100 LE (Egyptian pounds). The exchange rate is about 10 to 1, and we thought that £10 was pretty cheap for a taxi anywhere, especially considering we're used to the exorbitant prices of London taxis. Later we got a taxi from the airport for 40 LE when we were in more of a bartering mood, so clearly we overpaid but it's all about perspective, right? Anyway we made it to the hotel, which was really a very lovely resort. There were two parts, one just on the beach, and another larger portion across a rather busy four lane road, called the "mountain side" of the resort. Sometimes there were men outside who would stop traffic to allow us to cross, but usually we just had to dodge traffic to get down to the beach. It wasn't really that bad though, I'm probably making it sound worse. Of course everyone at the resort spoke English, which was nice but we felt spoiled. Just another indication of how touristy Sharm is.

After checking out our cute and cozy hotel room and changing into some lighter clothes (yay!), we headed down to the promenade on the beach in search of an Egyptian meal. When we made it down to the promenade we realised just how touristy the place was. When walking down the path, one passes nothing but resort after resort, with their restaurants front and center. I was a little shocked, but on the plus side I always felt very safe, b/c they had loads of security for all the tourists. Most of the tourists were British, Italian and Russian, but there were a few from other countries as well. The staff at resorts could generally speak at least one of these languages, and sometimes all three, as well as Arabic of course! One of the nice things about the tourists from other nations is that James and I could play dumb to the endless men hocking excursions and meals to us and pretend we didn't understand English, or whatever language they were speaking to us.

We found a restaurant that served Arabic food, and settled down on the long, low cushioned seats to an Egyptian beer called, ironically, Stella. Not Stella Artois, this was a different Egyptian Stella. It was very good though! James and I ordered enough food for a king and queen as we hadn't really eaten since the morning, and certainly did not leave hungry. We had loads of hummus and lamb dishes. The dishes we ordered were smaller, about the size of an appetizer, and we just shared all of them. My favourite was minced lamb sort of spread across a thin pita with herbs and spices, and I would spread hummus across the top before eating it too. Delicious! We had also been warned by friends that we may get sick from the food, and were told never to drink the tap water, not even to brush our teeth. It felt very luxurious and slightly wrong to brush my teeth with bottled water. But I suppose it was worth it b/c we never did get sick during the week of our stay.

The next day, Sunday, was my birthday and James wanted me to indulge in whatever I wanted to do. Which was easy to fulfill b/c all I wanted to do was a whole lot of nothing. We just laid by the pool drinking beers and soaking in the sun all day. I had heard that the resort we were staying in had a Japanese restaurant, so we went there for dinner. We had sushi to start and teppanyaki for the main. I was so full by the end I thought was going to have James roll me back to our room. The restaurant was very empty, we were the only table having teppanyaki that night, and there was a very nice German couple sharing the meal with us. We had some good conversations with them, as James speaks fluent German and the wife of the other couple spoke fluent English. At one point our chef called me up to cook some of the vegetables for everyone, it was good fun! I tried to flip some of the veggies into James' mouth like the chef's often do, but I always missed. Our chef was actually Arabic, which was a bit odd, but he was very entertaining and made delicious food.

The next few days were more of the same - waking up just in time to get breakfast before it was taken away at 11 am, then laying by the pool/beach for hours till we got bored or the sun went down, then eating another delicious meal somewhere along the beach side promenade. It was such a relaxing time. With all this laying out you would think that James and I would have come back to London tan, but we are both very pale and slapped on the SPF 50 everyday. Shamefully, I barely even had a tan line. On one of these days we decided to walk up to "the strip", which I decided was aptly named after I laid eyes on the thing. It looked like the Vegas strip. Neon lights everywhere, and hockers every five steps. We had come to collect some presents for friends and family, which ended up being slightly stressful for me as we had to haggle for everything. But in the end I felt like we got a decent price for everything. I'm sure we could have done better, but it was a good price to me. I ended up with a silver scarab necklace for Megan, and some red coral necklaces from the Red Sea for my girlfriends.

Thursday (which was also Thanksgiving!) we went on an excursion to Cairo. This was one of those guided tours which at first I felt a bit lame about, but once I saw Cairo I was SO glad I had a guide with us. Cairo is one of the dirtiest, poorest cities I have ever seen. I knew it was Africa, but I was expecting a little more from Cairo. I mean they have had 2000+ years to develop the thing, after all. Seriously the ancient Egyptians must be turning in their graves if they could see the city. There was trash everywhere, and the sand had created a horrible film on all of the buildings. When we were on the bus on the way to the pyramids, we were driving along a canal with a horrible amount of rubbish on the banks, and at one point the rubbish got so thick it filled up the canal, you couldn't even see the water. It was nauseating. In Cairo I also figured out where all of the 80s and 90s cars go once we sell them - Africa. Also in the bus whilst on the highway, James and I had a good laugh when we saw one of those old small pickups with a cow tethered in the back. By the end of the ride we realised this was fairly commonplace, and not only with cows but goats and donkeys as well. Speaking of donkeys, we saw several people using donkeys as transport - I didn't think this had happened seriously since Jesus days. I mean I suppose it works, but can you imagine taking a donkey to work?!

To get to Cairo, we had to be at the front desk at 4:30 am, where we were picked up and after picking up a few more travelers, were taken to the airport. After the flight we boarded a bus in Cairo and our first stop was the Egyptian Museum. This was a fairly old school museum, where at times it looked like things had just been stacked in and hadn't been moved or cleaned since its opening in 1901, and it was odd and a bit sad to think that such rare and incredible artifacts were sometimes so haphazardly displayed. Other exhibits were breathtaking. My favourite was of course everything found in the tomb of King Tutankhamen. It was nothing short of amazing to see that famous mask with the gold and turquoise that I had seen so many times in books and magazines. There was so much stuff in his tomb, and so much gold! Our guide made the interesting point that if he was only a fairly minor, un-influential pharaoh, imagine what the tombs of the important pharaohs must have contained.

After the museum we had lunch at a buffet style place, then stopped at a "Papyrus Museum" which really turned out to be a glorified sales pitch. After a short 5 minute demonstration about how papyrus is made, they tried (in vain) to sell us some of these very cheesy paintings which had been done on the papyrus. Think pyramids in the glow of sunset and your name in hieroglyphics, those kinds of awesome paintings. Finally, we made it to the pyramids. They were unbelievable, but not surprisingly they looked pretty much like they do in photographs. I still felt rather in awe of them, and Thanksgiving was a good day to be there as I had a special appreciation for how blessed I was to be able to see these in my lifetime. We drove to several different locations around the pyramids for different photo ops, the last being right in front of the sphinx. An odd juxtaposition that we couldn't help laughing at was the Pizza Hut directly across the street from the sphinx. It was really all so amazing though and I highly recommend a trip if you ever have the chance. Our last stop of the day was another loooong and annoying sales pitch in a perfumery, where they tried to sell us some "special Egyptian essential oils" or some crap like that. After a sales pitch that lasted about 30 minutes, no one bought anything and we all headed straight for the bathroom to wash off all the smelly stuff they had rubbed all over us to sample. Despite the two disguised sales opportunities, the day was one of the best parts of our entire holiday, to me. Of course the best part was being with James for 7 straight days. It was wonderful, and when we got back to London I missed him so much the first time we were apart. Mushy I know, but I can't help it.

Thanksgiving night we tried to find Mexican since I knew we wouldn't find turkey and it is American like Indian food is to Britain, but couldn't find a restaurant. We went to Thai instead and I had the most awful representation of pad thai I've ever had. However, while sitting on the upper level of this restaurant, we had a good view of the strip and managed to spot a Mexican place! We went there the next night for our last dinner in Egypt, and it was surprisingly good, for Mexican food in Egypt.

We flew back Saturday evening and were welcomed with wind and rain for the next three days. We missed the sun very much. Although it hadn't been super hot there (high 70s every day, and zero humidity), it was still much better than the cold and rain. Ah well, it was a fantastic holiday and I can't wait for the next one!

xoxo,
Heather

PS - there are Egypt photos on facebook too, have a look!