Tuesday - Resort day

I woke up at 5AM this morning. Yes, I know I’m on vacation. I just woke up, can’t help it. I did lay in bed for some time before I got up and probably dozed in and out during that time. I finally hauled out at 7. Bonnie was doing her exercises so I did my morning stuff and decided to go for a walk to the beach.

Got the camera together and off I went. Got to the gate to the beach and found that it was locked. I could have went the long way around but decided not to and just went back to the room. Egyptians, I guess, don’t generally do things at a resort at 8 AM when they are on vacation. That is one interesting comparison, at Sharm El Sheik there were mostly tourists when we visited last time, here there are mostly Egyptians.

Got down to breakfast around 9. I thought there was chaos in the dining room at dinner last night, this morning was even worse. We should probably get here earlier tomorrow but don’t think that will happen. The meal was very good. There was certainly variety in what to have. Many different breads and rolls, salads, ful, cheeses, cereal, eggs made to order, most anything you can think of for breakfast was there. My brother would have loved it as he is a “carbaholic” at breakfast time.

We went back to the room after breakfast and got ready for the beach. Wasn’t much for me to do but Bonnie seemed to take quite a bit of time. We picked up some towels and off we went.

The beach we went to was a private beach for residents of a housing complex next door to the resort but the people in the complex let the hotel guests use the beach. There were ‘thatched’ umbrellas with beach chairs to sit in so you can get out of the sun. All ten of us eventually arrived at the beach. Ephraim, Kaja, Megan, and I went for what would turn out to be a long wade in the Red Sea. The tide was out so we could walk almost 1/3 of a mile out in the water without getting over our heads. There is a pier on the north end of the beach and we waded almost to the end of it before literally getting in over our heads. The water was very pleasant. Not nearly as warm as the Gulf of Arabia on the shores of the UAE.

On the walk back to shore we encountered Bonnie and Ezzat wading out. Bonnie wasn’t very excited about being in the Red Sea but brought her swimsuit so she was determined to use it. She didn’t really want to get very wet but Meg and I toke care of that for her. Bonnie and Ezzat joined us on the wade back to shore. We soon encountered Nana and Ehab on their way out to the sea. Ehab pulled Nana into the water and all was well. We finally got back to shore, showered off some to the salt, and hung out with the crew for a little while longer. Soon we headed back to the resort.

We got showered and changed. Bonnie laid down for a couple of hours and I tried to catch up on my writing. The hardest day to write about was the Saturday of the wedding. I could have written many pages but most of the people reading it wouldn’t be very interested in most of it so cutting was essential and difficult. I could ramble on in most of my entries and probably do. I don’t generally proof them before I post so there are many spelling and grammatical errors as well. Hope you will forgive me.

There is a small water park that is part of the resort. The “kids” went over there late in the afternoon. They took a number of short videos that I’m sure Megan will post on Facebook. We walked over to watch for just a little while and it looked like they were have great fun.

We said goodbye to Nana and Ehab about 5:30 in the afternoon. They have to get back to Cairo to catch a plan in the morning for their honeymoon in Europe. We won’t see them again on this trip. We will miss them but I’m sure we will see them again. We will be back to Egypt at least one more time since we still have not seen the upper Nile. There are many more things to see in Egypt than can possibly be done in even three trips. This trip has been mostly about seeing people though and not seeing the sites.

Dinner was much the same as the night before though I didn’t think the food was as good. More of the same from the night before with a couple of new dishes. We did eat outside this evening though. The temperature cooled down to about 24 C. The dining room was down right frigid. I certainly felt chilled inside and was happy to eat outdoors. It was a little breezy but that helped to keep the flies away. There is some type of mystery scheme going on and Kaja and Ephraim drove back to Cairo this evening and were either going to come back tonight or in the morning. Do know the whole story or any of it for that matter but it will be interesting to watch it all unfold.

I commented the night before that it would be nice to have a beer. Melanie found me one this evening and we toasted and had our drink together. Meg and Mel showed the videos they had done while we sat around this evening. But soon we all got tired and decided to go off to bed.