The Third Leg: Sharm

I've covered part of Cairo and all of Luxor, so now it's on to the beaches of Sharm el-Sheikh. But first, the flight there. The flight to Sharm was not full of tourists as the previous flight had been, but rather, filled with locals. The flight was relatively quiet for most of the trip, the air laced with the scent of baby spit-up, but the landing was a different story. It was bumpy. A lot more bumpy than I had really ever experienced, even when flying Big Scare Airlines, and that says a lot! Once the turbulence started, men throughout the plane could be seen comforting their wives, who were obviously, yet quietly, freaking out. At the same time, this huge conversation started in the back of the plane where we were sitting. It was in Arabic, so pretty hard for me to follow, as I'm sure you can imagine, but it was definitely funny. After lots of laughter and a few (what seemed like) 10 or 50 foot drops, the guy across the aisle looked at us with big eyes and says "Oh My God!" It was really funny and the whole back half of the plane started cracking up! After, our new friend from across the aisle started testing Keith's knowledge of Arabic while the rest of the listeners criticized each other's English. Entertaining. Soon after, we touched down safely. Nice, because survival did seem a bit questionable for a while! We exited to begin our adventure in Sharm and all of our friends from the back continued on to Alexandria.

After a short car ride, we arrived at the hotel. It should be noted that driving and crossing the street are much less frightening in Sharm than in Cairo. The hotel was amazing! Absolutely beautiful and definitely the nicest place that I have ever stayed! After checking in and making friends with a sweet girl who works at the front desk, we hopped on the back of a golf cart for a ride to our room. The ride was scary, the view upon arrival, stunning. The living room and the bedroom each had private balconies overlooking the Red Sea! Amazing! The room also had a full kitchen with range, full-sized fridge, microwave, and washing machine. Fancy stuff indeed. Since we were what you would call "starvin' Marvin," we quickly changed clothes and headed up to the dinner buffet in one of the hotel restaurants. Yum! They had seafood stew, which was amazing! I had at least 3 helpings. Hehe! A little pricey, but good stuff. Apparently everything in Sharm is a little pricey because it's a resort town. Figures.
I woke up with the beginnings of a cold the first morning, which was a bad deal but didn't slow me down much initially. After stuffing ourselves with a delicious breakfast spread, we wandered down to the beach. Beautiful, as you can see, but pretty windy and therefore, chilly on this particular day. We walked around down by the beach for a while, checking out prices on diving and snorkeling gear, then headed back up to the room for a nice long nap. Slackers, I know. We finished up the day by doing some laundry, which was much-needed by this point in the trip and headed off to bed, so we'd be well-rested for Lynn's arrival the next morning!
On morning 2, we rented gear and went snorkeling! Yeah! I'd never been snorkeling before, and it was so much fun! The fish were so vibrant and beautiful and I was surprised by how many of them there were! I have to admit, though, that breathing through only the snorkel freaked me out a little bit at first. Keith said that I'm a long way from going scuba diving. Guess I'll have to work on that. Keith headed back up to the room to meet his friend, Guy, who was driving through and was going to pick up Lynn at the airport and I stayed on the beach to catch some sun! It was glorious! After Lynn arrived, we switched to what we thought was a triple room. I guess that it was, but it was about half the size of the room we had for the first 2 days. We ended up switching back and took turns sleeping in the king-sized bed and on the paper thin mattress of the hide-a-bed. We went snorkeling one more time after Lynn arrived and sadly, that was the last time for the trip. I didn't figure snorkeling with a runny nose and a cough was the way to go. Sucking a bunch of water into your lungs is bad, I hear.

I woke up the next morning not feeling well at all. I had a runny nose, headache, and a nasty sounding cough. Lynn hooked me up with a few meds and the workers at the hotel all offered their own remedies. The guy who cleaned our room said that I should drink hot water with lemon it in. Good hint. It did seem to make me feel a bit better and calmed my cough. So, next time you're somewhere with a lack of cold meds, try that. Anywho, we spent most of the next 2 days on the beach, swimming, playing with the blackberry, working on our tans, and being waited on. It was pretty rough, let me tell you! Despite my busy schedule, I did manage to sneak in a few naps as well.

On our last night in Sharm, Keith and I went to the local marketplace after dinner and did the drinks and sheesha thing. As I was sick, I had fresh strawberry slushy drink that was delicious. Our waiter had a broken arm and when we asked him what happened he told us a pretty funny story. I guess that he ran into another guys car one afternoon. We think he may have been walking and bumped into it. Anyway, the guy in the car got really mad, drove around the block, and hit our waiter as he was crossing the street! Crazy, huh? He said that he called the police and everything and I think that his medical bills were paid for, but wow! As a random comment, we of course, felt that this was a place to take yet another series of goofy photos, so here's 1, just for a sneek peek.
We woke early the next morning, as we had a fairly early flight back to Cairo to catch. I mention the early part because it was the first time that any of us had been up early enough to see the sunrise...and it was spectacular, as you can see in the pics below! After stealing some breakfast from the buffet that didn't open until 7, we were off.